Widening responsibility beyond the screen we delivered

Mandate

Define navigation products around the visitor's task and the limits of site information

Outcomes

• Revised kiosk orientation after seventeen wrong turns in a forty-person exercise
• Aligned public destination names and approved aliases across outputs
• Added an unconfirmed-route state for known stale-information conditions

Decisions in context

I lead eighteen colleagues through three leads, with ₹4.3 crore annual function expense and a separate ₹1.2 crore approved investment allocation. The mandate connects design, research and product choices while engineering has its own reporting line. I own the priorities that determine how a visitor encounters approved information and its limitations. The cases include decisions to postpone attractive demonstration features in order to repair orientation, naming and stale-route behaviour. I had approved assumptions behind those problems and explain that responsibility alongside the correction. My 0.4% shareholding is part of the employees' 25%; it does not give me a statutory seat. I present to directors as an executive. A future role should allow research to change the product definition and should preserve the authority of site, access and safety specialists whose assessments our interface cannot replace.

Reason for the move

Current role; interested in physical-context product mandates and a first outside board contribution

Mandate

Develop a maintainable range across kiosk, digital and printed information

Outcomes

• Connected destination content across several output formats
• Brought site configuration into product planning
• Established research reviews before major range changes

Decisions in context

The product director title was an executive role and did not involve statutory board service. I led twelve colleagues through two leads by period end with ₹2.9 crore annual function expense. We developed a range that could support digital maps and printed information from related content. Consistency became an important design goal because customers needed a practical way to maintain their information. I later learned that I had sometimes applied that goal too broadly, particularly when a uniform screen arrangement ignored the place where it was read. This period taught me to consider configuration, content ownership and support as parts of the product rather than tasks after release. The move to CPO widened my responsibility for choosing which problems the company would solve first and for explaining the commercial consequence when research changed an established design decision.

Reason for the move

Appointed to lead the full product programme as CPO

Mandate

Translate visitor navigation research into maintainable product requirements

Outcomes

• Observed decisions at entrances and corridor junctions
• Recorded site-owner approval needs for route information
• Connected physical placement with digital presentation requirements

Decisions in context

I joined Dervaqni to work on a product that people used inside a changing physical environment. Eight colleagues worked with me within ₹1.6 crore annual product-delivery expense. A hospital visitor might enter at a different point from the one assumed by a map, carry a department name absent from the directory or need assistance the display did not explain. I worked with researchers and site teams to turn those observations into requirements. I also learned that our product could not authoritatively decide every route or access question. Hospital owners and qualified reviewers had to supply and approve that information. My contribution was to make the dependence visible in the product and its installation process. Promotion to product director brought responsibility for maintaining those decisions across a range rather than solving each project as a separate visual-design commission.

Reason for the move

Promoted to responsibility for the wider product range

Mandate

Coordinate public information across print, signs and directories

Outcomes

• Aligned public labels with content owners
• Tested information at the point where readers used it
• Documented differences between internal and visitor vocabulary

Decisions in context

I supervised five designers and managed ₹48 lakh annual delivery expense. Our work often involved several pieces of information that needed to describe the same service or place. I learned that a directory, instruction and sign could each be well designed while disagreeing in the words they used. The client had to decide what a destination should be called, and our job was to preserve that meaning across the material. I began asking where readers would encounter each item and what they already knew. This changed the review from a discussion of appearance into a discussion of action. The studio experience also taught me the limits of a one-time commission: information could become inconsistent after handover. Joining Dervaqni offered a way to make maintenance and configuration part of an ongoing product relationship.

Reason for the move

Moved into a product business to follow information through ongoing use

Mandate

Prepare layouts and diagrams for people using services away from the author

Outcomes

• Checked instructions against the reader's intended task
• Reworked diagrams after observed interpretation problems
• Maintained agreed terminology through printed material

Decisions in context

After my design degree I joined a three-person studio group and prepared layouts, diagrams and public information. I had no independent budget or line-management remit; the senior designer approved production costs. I initially judged a page by its hierarchy and visual balance. Review with readers showed that a clear-looking page could still leave the next action uncertain. A diagram needed a point of view, a label needed a meaning familiar to its reader and an instruction needed to appear before the decision it supported. I learned to ask those questions while accepting that the content owner retained responsibility for the underlying service. The promotion to lead designer added supervision and delivery accountability, but the useful habit came from this earlier work: test what the reader understands rather than assume that the designer's intended meaning has survived the page.

Reason for the move

Promoted to leading information-design delivery