Second year at the Kochi Biennale *Drum Roll*
I carry this fact with a quiet pride. If given the opportunity, I would return again, without needing a reason.

Why I Went

Since my first visit, I have spoken about the Biennale almost instinctively. I have promised more than fifteen people, at different points in time, that I would love to experience it with them. That urge comes from how deeply my initial visit altered me.

The previous Biennale reshaped my perspective on a looot of things- everyday life, politics, art, culture, spirituality, and the fragility of existence itself. I arrived then driven largely by curiosity, the allure of seeing celebrated artists and designers share a common space. I left with a fundamentally changed way of seeing.

The post-COVID context amplified that shift. The works felt heavier, more unsettling, and deeply relatable in light of what we had collectively endured. The impact was not fleeting, it stayed with me, long after the Biennale ended.

This year, my intent was different. This visit was about the experience. I arrived with a more mature gaze, one that allowed me not only to observe but to understand. I found myself recognizing the visual and conceptual language artists were speaking through their work. More importantly, I felt them.

First Impressions

Returning felt familiar and grounding.
Ernakulam. Fort Kochi. The art-seeking crowds. Even the relentless heat.

Oh not to mention my newly acquired financial power (Lol, I am employed, thus money to spend. Lat time I visited as a student)

There was a sense of coming back, not just to a city, but to a particular mental and emotional state.

Themes I Couldn’t Ignore

Caste oppression emerged as an unavoidable presence. Maybe it did last time as well, but I was too blind to see or feel it.

The past two years of my life have significantly shaped the lens through which I now engage with the world. That awareness sharpened my reading of several works. At times, it was deeply unsettling, not only because of what was being communicated, but because many around me seemed to observe without truly seeing.

Hurtful ? Very much.
Is this Normal ? Very much.

My Body in the Space

Day One was about orientation. Acclimatizing to the city and the density of the art it held. There were constant moments of intellectual engagement, sudden realizations, shared glances, silent acknowledgements of meaning. More than anything, it was about attuning myself to the rhythm of the space, bringing me back to feeling the works.

Day Two felt quieter in conversation but louder in movement. Crowds circulated rapidly around each work, leaving little room for pause or contemplation. Not my type of a day I guess.

Day Three was where I fully arrived. I stopped often. I lingered. I processed. Conversations unfolded, many of them, and deeply. While a few works did not resonate with me and felt conceptually weaker (a personal reading, possibly shaped by my own limitations of interpretation), several others provoked a persistent question:
How can I contribute to positive societal change, even if only in the smallest way? (Which by the way I am still super stuck with)

Day Four, December 31, carried a distinctly different energy. There was visible joy, families, shared laughter, a collective lightness in the air. Although a few venues were closed, we managed to visit the remaining spaces, bringing the experience to a close with a sense of quiet fulfillment.

What Now?

The Kochi Biennale, for me, is no longer an event I attend, it is a space I return from changed. Each visit sharpens my ability to observe, to sit with discomfort, and to question what I often take for granted. I leave not with conclusions, but with responsibilities: to look closer, listen longer, and carry forward what art makes visible, even when it is inconvenient.

I would visit again simply to sit with discomfort and recognition, to feel seen, unsettled, and quietly reshaped by the experience.

Wah ! What a nice way to start a New year.

P.S.: “What an irony, I ended up posting this on the last day of the Biennale 2026, a post that had been sitting in my drafts ever since.”

You call. Or they message you first.
Sometimes, they quote a higher price.

On some days, you cancel and try again.
On others, you don’t, you just want to get where you’re going.

It’s a frustrating but familiar experience.

The first time I saw Rapido show this:

“Did your captain ask for extra cash?”
right when the captain arrived, I felt relieved.
Finally, something that acknowledges what actually happens.
I clicked “No.”
The ride started.

After I got down, the captain asked me to pay extra. I paused. I knew this wasn’t right.
But I still paid.

(Being the “cannot speak back” person that I am.)

And that’s where the experience breaks for me.

Because I had already said “No” earlier.
And now there’s no way to correct that.

The system thinks everything went fine.
But that’s not what happened.

The gap

If I break this down, there are three moments where this usually happens:

• When the ride is booked

• When the captain arrives

• After the ride ends

Right now, the app is asking only at one of these moments. So the feedback we give is… incomplete.

Initial Thought (and Why It Falls Short)

My first thought was:

Why not just ask this twice?

Once at arrival, and once after the ride ends.

It felt like a quick fix. It solves the coverage problem.
But it introduces new issues:

• Repetitive prompts

• Conflicting responses

• Unnecessary friction

It treats the symptom, not the system.

Product Insight

But the more I think about it, that’s not really solving the problem.
It just adds another prompt. And as a user, I don’t want to answer the same question twice.

The real issue is simpler. The app is asking too early.

A cleaner way to handle this would be

• Ask this once, after the ride ends

  • “Did your captain ask for extra cash at any point during this ride?”

• And if needed, give an option during the ride to report an issue

  • Not forced, just available

This way

• I can answer based on the full experience

• The system gets more accurate data

• And there’s no unnecessary repetition

Sometimes the instinct is to add more prompts to cover more cases. Just like I first thought (Lol). But I think in this case, it’s just about asking at the right time.

Okay, let’s dive in.

Case 1

A common practice when we ask someone else to book our rides is to send us the screenshot. “Dude, send me the screenshot.”

Necessary details to figure out the Captain: Estimated time of arrival, Vehicle Number, OTP.

We find the Captain and start the ride, but then suddenly, “How much should I pay?”

The sender might not have sent the fare separately in the chat where they shared the screenshot. You check the screenshot, but this detail is hidden behind the “Trip Details” button.

If there is a way to show the pickup, drop details, and the fare upfront on the main ride screen, I think it would be super helpful.

Thoughts?

Case 2

Letting users have the ability to control.

The other day when I was trying to book a cab for work, I was simultaneously trying on both Uber and Rapido. No luck. My mom chipped in to help me book too. Immediately I prompted her to book it on Rapido and use the slider to reduce the price.

For a minute, I had to stop and think why I did that unintentionally.

Damn Rapido. Wow.

Giving users the ability to control prices, or at least feel like they are controlling the price, gives them a sense of agency. It makes them feel like they can take an action to reduce cost.

This very ability might also be one of the prime reasons why many users, including me, use the platform.

Now this might be a really small feature to even notice.

But the impact? Wow, Smart.

There’s something exciting about breaking things down to their essentials and rebuilding understanding from the ground up. Now feels like the perfect moment to finally begin this exploration.

Starting with an “Accordion”

Motive

To Explore Components and Variants

Back at IIT, there were two startups, D&S and Mazdoor Mitra, both working in the construction management space and focused on bringing a mobile-first approach to on-site operations.

Around the same time, Phase 3 of our campus was under heavy construction, which became the perfect real-world testing ground for their apps. Both teams needed someone who could step in, talk to real users on-site, and translate their challenges into meaningful design solutions, and that is where I came in.

I collaborated with both teams at different times, spending days on-site observing, speaking with workers, supervisors, and managers to understand their pain points firsthand. Once I had outlined the key problems, I began designing workflows to simplify their tasks and reduce on-site friction.

After defining the core user journeys, I moved quickly into wireframing and MVP design. The focus was on speed and clarity, scoping down features to only what was essential for launch. The goal was simple: deliver something that worked, fast, and could immediately make life easier for people on the ground.

Here are a few screens from D&S. (Mazdoor Mitra was done under an NDA.)

Every decision begins with UX Strategy & Product Thinking, understanding what to build and why it matters.
It’s strengthened by Data-Driven Design & Decision-Making, ensuring ideas are anchored in measurable insights rather than assumptions.
And it’s perfected through Usability Testing & Iterative Refinement, where real user behavior shapes the final experience.

This trio forms my design core.

In fact, I rant and used to document my everyday progress here

My Entrepreneurship journey started with

BlackPages began in my fourth year of architecture school when I realized how difficult it was for students to find and apply to the right firms. While I was fortunate to intern at one of the best studios in Chennai, many of my peers struggled, some missed deadlines, others didn’t know where to look, or how to apply.

What started as a simple idea to make this process easier evolved into a full-fledged platform that lists architecture firms, streamlines hiring, and makes opportunities accessible for both internships and jobs.

Building BlackPages has been my way of giving back to the profession that shaped me by helping the next generation of architects find their place in it.

Milestones

• Documented 350+ architecture firms in the listing

• Evolved into a growing ecosystem for architecture students and firms.

• Hosted an Architecture Fest, 15+ workshops and meetups, and trained 250+ students through mentorship programs.

If you want to read how the fest went (One of my coolest deeds indeed :P),
find it here.

On to my Second baby, a beautiful chapter I had to close sooner than I hoped (@IIT Jodhpur)

XR Daily (formerly XR Digest)

A one-stop app for the XR (Extended Reality) community. Built the app from scratch, had a way lot of fun doing so.

Milestones and Stones :P

• Validated the market with XR Digest, then rebranded and rebuilt as XR Daily for daily XR insights and networking.

• Designed the App from scratch in the blink of an eye to finish the MVP. Read more about the App design process here

• Led a cross-functional team until we parted ways due to alignment issues, but the project remains a milestone in community-building and product direction.

  

That’s all for now, ladies and Gentlemen

Another venture? We’ll see.
What I do know is, I’m dangerously passionate about building the right kind of product. The kind that keeps me up at night (in the best way possible).

Context

The Task was simple: Pick two applications of your choice, perform a UX Audit for the app, and, most importantly, rectify it.

I picked Sketch AR, an augmented reality platform that teaches you how to sketch, and Naer, a VR remote working platform that helps teams socialise, play games, and ideate in the virtual reality realm.

SketchAR App

Research and user interviews

UX Audit + Re-design

Naer VR App

Takeaway

I’ve gotta say, UX Audits are always my favorite part of the process. Seriously, I went all in on this one. I made sure to grab a diverse group of awesome users for feedback and dug deep to create a super detailed study. It was a killer exercise that taught me the biggest lesson of all:

Every single user gives you a brand new perspective.

You think you’ve cracked it, right? You start to conclude, “Okay, I’m beginning to get similar feedback now.” That’s the exact second a user will casually drop some insight that sends you into shock and pushes your entire perspective sideways. It’s a fantastic, constant reminder that you never truly know everything, and that’s why we keep testing!

To bridge this gap and ensure our final design delivered the maximum user and business value, we deployed a structured methodology.

In this module, we realized a powerful combination of established frameworks, including the Business Model Canvas and the Kano Model, to systematically prioritize features, manage effort, and align every design decision with both user needs and project viability.

This rigorous approach allowed us to move beyond mere feasibility to focus on true impact. (I call it the corporate way)

1. The Business Model Canvas

2. Voting for Ideas (A common framework)

3. Effort Prioritization

4. Effort Matrix Diagram

5. Moscow Analysis

6. The Kano Model

The Brief

The design brief was focused and challenging: How might we enhance the Amazon Kindle reading experience and ecosystem?

Amazon Kindle is the established market leader, but the brief required us to look beyond incremental changes. Our goal was to uncover unmet user needs and explore features that could redefine the value proposition for the next generation of digital readers.

This is where our suite of prioritization frameworks became the foundation for our design strategy.

The Business Model Canvas

A strategic management template for developing new or documenting existing business models, divided into nine key areas (e.g., Customer Segments, Value Propositions, Revenue Streams).

Voting for Ideas

A simple, democratic method where team members (or users) are given a set number of votes (dots) to allocate to their preferred ideas, concepts, or features.

Effort Prioritization

A high-level approach, often performed early, where features are roughly ranked by the anticipated development effort (e.g., Low, Medium, High).

Effort Matrix Diagram

A 2x2 grid (often called the Impact/Effort Matrix) that plots features based on their potential Impact (Y-axis) versus the Effort required (X-axis).

MoSCoW Analysis

A technique used to categorize requirements into four levels of priority: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have (for now).

The Kano Model

A framework that classifies features based on how they influence customer satisfaction, categorizing them as Basic (must-have), Performance (more is better), or Excitement (delighters/unexpected).

My key Learnings

Real Talk: Sometimes you have to kill your darlings. I had tons of ideas and features I personally loved and really wanted to push to the next level, but the framework was like a strict teacher saying, “Nope, not today.”

The biggest win wasn’t just learning the tools, it was learning to trust the process over my own gut feelings. It’s tough, but that discipline is what turns a cool idea into a successful product.

Design Challenge

We accumulated a lot of digital assets in our lifetime, aside from physical assets. They occupy huge amounts of space and leaving them there at the end of our lives, is not only an unsustainable proposition, it’s not an easy task for our successors to manage either.

Problem Statement

Amidst a data-rich era, the fate of our digital assets remains uncertain. This project delves into the posthumous transfer of data and digital assets, exploring the destiny of personal information while aiming to create a smooth transition process and also address the data’s status.

The goal

“Our goal is to set up an effective, ethical, humane, and secure inheritance system for the digital assets we want to pass on to our successors and educate the masses about the same”

Major Takeaway

This module was intensely process-oriented, and our primary focus was ensuring that every step of the methodology was executed flawlessly. This approach guided us through the entire cycle of a UX project, starting from deconstructing the problem statement all the way to delivering a high-fidelity prototype.

Talking to users across campus was crucial. Their insights not only deepened our understanding of the core challenge but also enabled us to narrow down and validate the most effective solution.

Furthermore, adopting rapid paper prototyping proved invaluable. This method significantly accelerated our iteration cycles, allowing us to test and refine concepts quickly and efficiently throughout the project.

Sarnath Banerjee walked into the module with a promise: “So I will teach you guys the basics of how and when a comic can make an impact, and all the ways you can make a comic, the tricks, the nuances, the meaning, and everything.“

This man is mesmerizing, I tell you.

True to his word, we received hours of beautiful lectures and deep insights. Yet, the final assignment was deceptively simple: Just make a comic.

Constraints help, but when they vanish, you often don’t know where to start. That was the reality of this module. I still vividly remember sitting with him over a cup of coffee, confessing I hadn’t come up with an idea and felt utterly unproductive.

He paused, smiled, looked at me, and said: “So what, be unproductive, and enjoy being unproductive. You still have a lot of time. I just want you to enjoy this, this is a part of the process as well.“

I smiled, and something important clicked that day.

The Concept: The Multiverse of “Varsha”

I named the comic “Everything everywhere all at once”

My central personal struggle became the core concept for the comic. I’ve always had this urge to do a lot of things, to be many things, and to be everywhere at once. As interesting as that sounds, it’s equally draining. I’d pick up ten different things, remain unproductive, feel a wave of guilt, and then drop off midway, only to start the cycle over.

Comics give you superpowers. You can be a superhero in one frame and a dead person in the next. You can be a pilot and then suddenly become Superman. This limitless potential became my theme: Nine universes converging at one place.

In this narrative, one “Varsha“ is killed by another “Varsha,” and the case is being solved by yet another “Varsha,” and so on.

The Twist

To make it even more open-ended and let the readers become storytellers, I designed an open comic with nine independent panels, with no particular reading order. The viewer can start anywhere and piece together their own story and predictions.

And, of course, as an ardent believer in process, I felt it was essential to showcase the journey itself. So, I deliberately made the process of creation a visible part of the final comic.

The Process

Final Exhibition

Takeaway

Takeaways, you ask? Man, oh man, I took life lessons from this module.

Hmm, what about office wear? A woman who would love to wear something bold but also something very professional? It’s like they make a statement professionally. The name Empress came around at the later stages but the essence was clear from the beginning.

Why?

It was the beginning of 2020 and I was an Intern Architect working for Urban Frame in Bangalore. The office and the people vibe in there? Encouraging, welcoming.
And the Architects’ dressing? Classy. It would be such a sight to see all the associates, Senior and Junior Architects walk in every morning beaming with confidence. Hmmm, but something seemed missing. And I would say this heavily inspired “Empress”.

I love statement jewelry not to wear but to design. When pondering over the same the idea of “Why don’t we make one ?” struck hard. And I am really glad that thought came by. Because to see something get shaped from scratch, the number of iterations, corrections, trials, mistakes and repeat until the final product is in your hands? It’s way too beautiful than I can ever describe. So that day the sketching began.

“Bold” meant “Mummies” 𓂀 𓁈 𓆣 𓋹 𓀛 𓁀𓀾 𓀮 𓆙

Intuitively to me bold meant Egyptian symbols and patterns. The first attempt looked like an abstract Egyptian-inspired statement piece.

But due to the resource and making limitations, I had to drop this idea and go for something easier to get made.

The Voronoi fever - RUA

In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a partition of a plane into regions close to each of a given set of objects. In the simplest case, these objects are just finitely many points in the plane (called seeds, sites, or generators). For each seed, there is a corresponding region, called a Voronoi cell, consisting of all points of the plane closer to that seed than to any other. The Voronoi diagram of a set of points is dual to that set’s Delaunay triangulation.- Wikipedia

At this point, almost all of my parametric explorations were majorly on Voronoi and I felt it would be great to extend this a little further. And thus the Voronoi fever.

The Design

The Making

Ah, how fancy the term “The making” sounds, but the process was not as enticing as it sounded. Laser cut had always been the option from the start, but also figured out CNC was not the best and the cost-efficient way to make these.

After the brass plates were cut into the design, it was time to do the “Finishing”
(The pieces are all 14K gold-plated).

Product Shoot

What’s next?

Super sincere thanks to all the wonderful people who were a part of this beautiful process- Dr. Harsha, Abijeeth (Talented DOP behind the teaser), Malavika+Sowmya (Who agreed to be my models), and Prasunambika.

For someone who is not inclined to wear statement jewelry, now “The Empress-Rua” is a part of my work life. The moment someone says, “That’s a cool piece of jewelry, I say yeah I designed that. Thank you”. 😃

Few handpicked stunts😅from the challenge

Vortex

Focussing —Vortex force-Lighting-Composition

BlackHole

Focussing —Shader exploration-Environment design-Concept Art

Overwhelming

Focussing —Concept Art- Lighting-Plane manipulation

Valuables

Focussing —Geometry manipulation-light-Texture

Forbidden

Focussing —Procedural modeling

That’s a Loop

Focussing —Geometry manipulation-light-Texture-camera angles

The Liminal Volume

Focussing —Volume-Environment-Light-Shadow-Concept Art

Let’s do Meshes

Focussing —Plane manipulation-lighting-Focus rendering.

So, how did the 30 days go you ask?

Those 30 days were like a crash course in consistency.
The first 5-7 days were easy to cope with and then began the actual test. I had to really push myself to sit and work. Ran out of ideas and concepts. And had to work twice than I even thought I would, to make it to the finish line.
Tried combining multiple concepts, took multiple inspirations for one piece of work, and so on. Anddd, Finally “Survived Beautifully”.

I hate to admit but I really think the Donut playlist by Blender Guru is a bit overrated that too for beginners. When I started out I found Ducky3D. That guy knew his stuff. He made the right balance between keeping it crisp, exploring new techniques, sticking to keeping a few familiar things on every tutorial, and oh the amazing outputs. If you knew him, you will see shades of his works in my initial phase of Blender outputs.

Few handpicked stunts😅from the challenge

The Unknown

Focussing- Procedural modeling-Concept Art-Sci-fi attempt

The Voronoi joke

Focussing- Geometry manipulation via sculpting- mesh- Procedural modelling-Lighting.

Unseen Alley

Focussing - Concept Art- Environment- Particles-Texturing

PODS

Focussing —A Close Sci-fi Attempt-Procedural Modeling.

SHADOW

Focussing - Concept Art-Lighting-Scale-Shadow.

Just the ORB

Focussing —Procedural modeling-Surface manipulation

Oh, the Particle system!

Focussing- Procedural modeling-Particle Systems

The Edge

Focussing - Concept Art- Environment design- volume-scene composition.

Check out part 2 here.

So, how did the 30 days go you ask?

Those 30 days were like a crash course in consistency.
The first 5-7 days were easy to cope with and then began the actual test. I had to really push myself to sit and work. Ran out of ideas and concepts. And had to work twice than I even thought I would, to make it to the finish line.
Tried combining multiple concepts, took multiple inspirations for one piece of work, and so on. Anddd, Finally “Survived Beautifully”.

I grabbed a piece of paper and sat down to analyze how 2023 went and what I was grateful for. For the kind of person I was becoming, I realized that 7 essential types of people came into my life this year and made it special, worthwhile, and beautiful.
So I gave them nice tags
We have

1. Amor Mio

2. The Mentors

3. Always

4. The Exemplars

5. The Treasures

6. The Confidant

7. The Significant

1. Amor Mio

The ones who I love and who loved me back selflessly. The tribe that’s called “Home”.

2. The Mentors

The Gurus who mean a lot to me!

3. Always

The constants or the support system/pillars

4. The Exemplars

The ones whom I truly admire and look up to for a lot of things

5. The Treasured

The ones who I value a ton.

6. The Confidant

The soul tribe that is almost on the same journey as mine. And those whom I can trust.

7. The Significant

The ones whose presence mattered a lot to me

The Design

The Process

And got them Printed

When I joined IIT Jodhpur, I thought design was about creativity, about making things look good and feel intuitive. Within weeks, that illusion cracked. Design wasn’t a playground of ideas, it was a battleground of intent.

Every color, every pixel, every movement had to defend its existence. I spent nights dissecting why a button should even exist before deciding how it should look. That relentless questioning, sometimes exhausting, always illuminating, became the foundation of how I think as a designer today.

The Challenge (The Foundation)

Like any other design program, my journey began with foundational courses. Since I already held a background in design, I found these courses to be interesting, yet challenging in unexpected ways.

As a firm believer in the power of process over just outcomes, these initial modules didn’t just teach me to produce outcomes, they helped me fundamentally strengthen and refine my design methodology. This focus on process will always be central to my work.

Here are a few outputs from the first semester that illustrate this foundational approach:

1. The “Releasing my inner Child” (Read) week by Prof Ruchi Shah- To enhance sketching and representation methodologies in design

2. A 3D visualisation module by Prof Rajiv Menon, IIT Bombay

3. Extra Light to Extra bold and everything in between, a typography module by Abhijeeth Keyar, Adjunct Faculty, IIT Jodhpur

4. The week of doing only the “Design thinking” with Prof Jhumkee Iyengar, IIT Kanpur

5. Ladybugs and Beehives with Design Sathyajith, Adjunct Faculty, IIT Jodhpur

6. “Comics, you say?” from the great Indian graphic novelist, artist, filmmaker, Sarnath Banerjee

The First Exhibition

Specialisation Courses that Sharpened the UX Designer in me.

“Conceptually strong, but let’s build our execution process as well“, was the guiding mantra as I began tackling the core specialization subjects. Having built a strong foundation, these modules became the crucible for my practical skills.

It’s safe to say I learned the most here, not just producing beautiful work, but internalizing the robust execution process required of a professional UX designer.

Let’s Dive in:

1. “The World of interaction design is nothing without the micro interactions” by Prof Venkatesh Rajamanickam, IIT Bombay.

2. “The Whole walk, from Defining to Delivering, UX Problem solving”, Design Thinking with Prof Jhumkee Iyengar, IIT Kanpur

3. “Prioritisation framework+ methodologies” with Mr.Kumar Ahir, Sr.UX manager, Cisco and Adobe

4. “Let’s do usability testing”, by Prof. Pranjal Borah, IIT Jodhpur

5. “Heuristic Evaluation in action” with Prof. Pranjal Borah, IIT Jodhpur

Specialisations that strengthened my design sense

I am documenting all this (Still a WIP 🥲)

1. Sound design and photography with Prof Hithesh Chaurasia, HoD NID Ahmedabad, and Prof. Deepak John Mathew, HoD IIT Hyderabad

2. Cinematography with Prof. Deepak John Mathew, HoD, IIT Hyderabad

3. “Storytelling yet again” with Prof Adithi Chitre, IIT Bombay

4. Environment and Space Design with Anokhi Shah, Founder, IoVR, Avinash, and Rohan Junja.

Specialisations that I have built so far

Each project that came my way taught me something wonderful, and I made sure I carried all of them with me until today. Forever indebted to everything that made me a designer I am today.

• UX Strategy & Product Thinking

• End-to-End UX/UI Design

• Information Architecture & Interaction Design

• Data-Driven Design & Decision-Making (One of my favourites)

• Usability Testing & Iterative Refinement

• User Research & Insight Synthesis

• Workflow Optimization & System Design

• Designing for Trust, Transparency & AI Systems

• Design System Development & Scalability

• Visual Design & Interface Consistency

• Rapid Prototyping & Design Validation

• Storytelling through Product Experiences

• Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Alignment

I designed the onboarding experience for the Darohar VR Museum, guiding users into the virtual environment. The goal was to create intuitive, immersive screens that introduced navigation gestures, spatial orientation, and interaction cues.

The most interesting part of this process was testing every small interaction inside the VR environment to truly understand the user’s perspective and experience.

Iteration was the key that helped me crack this experience creation.

Screens from the Experience

Design Sheets + UltraShip’s marketing campaigns

UltraShip’s marketing campaigns

As the next phase of the Loadboards module, we introduced Pangents AI, an intelligent calling agent that automates the carrier outreach process.
Instead of brokers manually calling multiple carriers, the system now initiates up to 40 simultaneous calls, verifying carrier capacity and collecting rate ranges (min–max) in real time.

This automation drastically reduces broker effort, enabling them to close deals faster and bring in more business, transforming what was once a tedious, high-friction task into an automated, insight-driven workflow.

My Role & Responsibilities

I led the UX design for the Pangents AI integration, ensuring the experience was both powerful and human-centered. My focus areas included:

• Designing real-time call progress visualizations to make ongoing AI actions visible and understandable.

• Creating intuitive and transparent AI interactions that instilled confidence in users.

• Ensuring brokers retained a sense of control and oversight through clear status indicators, fallback options, and confirmation prompts.

The Design

The Initial ideation wireframes

Key Learnings ( And still learning)
I invested some good time in research before starting this project to understand how to build user trust and make AI-driven workflows feel intuitive. This experience deepened my understanding of designing for AI systems, particularly how to balance automation with transparency and control. And I am still learning and testing better ways to make the interface and the experience easier for the users.

• Transparency builds trust: Clearly showing what the AI is doing, why, and with what outcome reduces uncertainty and encourages adoption.

• Control reassures users: Even in automated flows, users must feel they can intervene or verify outcomes at any time.

• Feedback is essential: Real-time visual and textual feedback bridges the gap between invisible AI actions and user confidence.

In logistics brokerages, brokers and compliance teams often have a love-hate relationship. Brokers, always racing against time to book loads, frequently joke about the compliance team’s delays, “Oh, the compliance team must be sooo busy,” they say with a knowing smile. This was something I noticed very evidently when I was in the field with the brokers.

For every 100 brokers, there are usually around 15 compliance team members. In smaller brokerages, brokers themselves might handle compliance checks, but for large 3PLs, the target audience for UltraShip TMS, compliance is a dedicated function.

The Problem

The compliance team’s role is to verify carrier compliance, insurance, and safety documents before brokers can assign loads. However, this process was entirely manual and unstructured. Brokers would message the compliance team in a shared group chat, and whoever was available would pick up the request.

The outcome?

• Delays in turnaround time leading to lost loads and frustrated brokers.

• Disorganization, as requests lacked clear ownership or tracking.

• No visibility into how long compliance checks actually took.

When stakeholders began noticing these inefficiencies, they asked our team to conduct user interviews and feedback sessions to uncover the root cause and design a scalable solution.

Insights from Research

From our conversations:

1. Compliance Team

• Overloaded with unorganized requests coming through group chats with no system to track ownership or progress.

• Lack of structure, any team member could pick up a request, leading to confusion and duplication.

• No prioritization mechanism, making it hard to decide which requests to handle first.

• Limited visibility into pending, in-progress, or completed checks.

• Constant pressure from brokers for quick turnaround without proper tracking or accountability tools. (This is one of the major frustration points for sure)

2. Brokers

• Delays in compliance checks often caused them to lose spot loads.

• No clarity on who was handling their request or how long it would take.

• Dependent on manual follow-ups and messages to get updates.

• Frustration grew due to the lack of transparency and slow feedback loops.

3. Stakeholders

• No performance metrics to track how long compliance checks took or identify bottlenecks.

• Inefficient communication channels between teams lead to productivity loss.

• Wanted a structured, measurable system to monitor request turnaround times and improve accountability.

• Needed a scalable workflow that could grow with the company as more brokers and compliance members joined.

The Solution

After multiple brainstorming sessions and idea iterations, we designed an intuitive Compliance Ticketing System, a structured, transparent, and trackable workflow seamlessly integrated into UltraShip TMS.

Here’s how it works:

1. A floating Ticketing button on the bottom-right of the dashboard lets brokers raise compliance requests anytime, from anywhere in UltraShip.

2. The entire Compliance team gets notified, but once a member opens the request, it’s automatically assigned to them and disappears from others’ queues.

   

3. A timer starts the moment a ticket is opened, tracking time-to-resolution for performance metrics.

4. Compliance members can mark a request as resolved once checks are complete.

5. Both brokers and compliance members can reopen a ticket within a defined window (set by the organization) if further action is needed.

6. Once the timer expires, the ticket is permanently closed, and a new request must be raised if needed.

Adding a New Ticket- Flow

Reflection

This project reinforced the power of listening to both sides, the frustrated brokers and the overwhelmed compliance team, and finding a middle ground through design. It was a perfect example of how a small structural change in UX can drive massive operational efficiency.

As much as I feel this documentation doesn’t yet do full justice to the module, it represents one of the best product decisions our team has made so far. I’ll continue to refine and improve this documentation as the product evolves.