Chief Product Officer / India
Make the personal intention consequential in the design
- Personalised keepsake retail
- 17 studios
- Online creation service and 310 company employees
- Product organisation
- 38 colleagues
- Four heads with ₹8.6 crore FY2026–27 development expense
- Design, proofing and product work
- 28 years
- July 1998 entry; CPO since January 2022
Decisions & consequences
01Giving family contributors a voice without making every upload final
In2022 we reviewed a proposed shared family-album editor. The simplest design gave every invited person the same ability to replace photographs, change captions and reorder pages. Product colleagues liked the openness: one link and one set of controls would be easy to explain. Research with forty family groups showed a different picture. Twenty-six wanted an appointed editor to assemble contributions, while fourteen preferred shared editing. These were observed preferences within the study, not an estimate of all families.
Elena Qavzari showed how an image contribution could be mistaken for an instruction to replace another person's choice. Contributors sometimes wanted to offer material without making the final decision, and the buyer could assume a book was approved when other people were still discussing it. I had initially favoured the universal shared editor because it seemed less restrictive. I came to see that equal controls did not necessarily reflect equal responsibility for the finished object.
We funded ₹61 lakh of development for two explicit modes. In the appointed-editor mode, contributors supplied images and suggestions while the editor approved the final sequence. The shared-edit mode remained available where the group deliberately chose it. The design made contribution state and final approval visible in ordinary language. Engineering owned implementation and review of the permissions; product owned the task and the explanation. We accepted additional design and testing work rather than force every group into the same arrangement.
In a later fifty-two-group pilot, thirty-nine completed a book within the observation period and thirteen remained unfinished. We did not label every unfinished project an abandonment or attribute the completion count solely to the new modes. The useful result was a product that represented two different ways of collaborating and a clearer account of who could finish. I would now begin with the decisions people want to share before selecting the controls they can use. Collaboration is not proved by the number of people who can change the same page; it depends on whether those changes mean what the group believes they mean.
Replacing a beautiful crop assumption with an inspectable choice
In2023 I approved a wall-print preview that placed a borderless photograph in an attractive room scene. It made the product easy to imagine, but it did not draw enough attention to the difference between the source image and the visible crop. A person could focus on the room presentation and overlook a face or detail near the edge. The design team had made a plausible compositional choice; the problem was that the customer might not recognise it as a choice still available to them.
We examined 420 previews with participating customers. Ninety-six were deliberately recropped and 324 retained. A recrop was not automatically evidence of a defective first version: the customer might prefer a different emphasis once the options became clear. Elena argued that the review should observe what people wanted to preserve, while commercial colleagues wanted to retain the cleanest possible route to approval. I supported showing the decision more explicitly, accepting an additional step for those who needed it.
The ₹28 lakh product programme introduced a view of the source image, the proposed visible boundary and the relevant mount relationship before final approval. Customers could inspect and change the crop, then return to the room presentation. Production and quality colleagues checked the relationship to their own specifications. We did not describe a screen preview as a complete certification of physical colour, paper or finish. The improvement concerned the customer's understanding of a consequential composition decision.
The outcome was a revised approval experience. We did not claim that every print complaint disappeared or that the change produced a measured sales increase. Some people retained the original crop, and that was as legitimate as changing it once the distinction was understood. I recorded my initial approval of the borderless mock-up because the error came from valuing a convincing finished scene over an inspectable decision. Next time I would ask what the preview has already decided on the customer's behalf before judging how elegantly it presents the result.
Making the physical gift complete before offering a digital companion
A2024 proposal paired our printed keepsake book with digital companion material. The first product flow required the recipient to create an account before reading the main personal message associated with the gift. Commercial colleagues saw a useful extension of the relationship: the person receiving a book might become the next creator. The buyer already used our online service, so requiring another account initially appeared like a small and familiar step.
Interviews with sixty adult recipients challenged that assumption. Thirty-eight wanted a complete physical experience; twenty-two were interested in an optional digital companion. The study did not establish market shares or show that the first group could never value digital material. It did show that receiving a gift and choosing to join a service were different actions. I recommended that the printed book and message remain meaningful without an application, account or additional device interaction.
We allocated ₹39 lakh to revise the proposition and creation flow. Buyers could include a printed personal message as part of the complete physical gift. Optional companion material had its own clear invitation, with the recipient free to decide whether to engage. Engineering, content and the appropriate privacy and legal owners reviewed their respective parts. We gave up the design in which the emotional centre of the gift served as the reason to open an account. That was a real loss to the preferred acquisition route, even though we had no defensible revenue figure to attach to it.
The resulting product separated receiving from enrolling. We reported the design change and the research that supported it, without claiming a measured increase in recipient satisfaction or a future account-growth outcome. The commercial team's interest in a continuing relationship remained legitimate; it needed to earn that relationship through an optional benefit. My lesson was to define whose task each step serves. A step can be effortless for a buyer who wants to create a book and still be an unnecessary condition for a person who simply wants to receive it.
Offering capture while the original stayed with its owner
In2025 we examined a service for turning older photographs into a new keepsake. The initial proposal asked customers to send original material to a central capture location. A central workflow offered consistent equipment and a simpler operating model. In research with twenty-four families, eleven were unwilling to send their originals away and thirteen were willing to consider it. The concern was not merely the effort of packing a parcel. Some objects carried a personal history that a replacement print would not restore.
Studio operations preferred the central route because it concentrated skills and scheduling. Elena asked us to treat the reluctance as a service-design boundary rather than persuade every customer to accept it. I recommended a limited assisted-capture offer in which the original remained with its owner during a studio appointment. This would require local capability and would initially be available at only eight of our seventeen studios. The narrower coverage was an explicit part of the proposition.
We approved ₹43 lakh for the bounded programme, including preparation of the participating studios and the capture appointment experience. Production and studio leaders defined what material they could examine and the quality review required before accepting a project. We did not promise archival preservation or suitability for every original. Customers could inspect the proposed result and decide whether to proceed. The service was an alternative arrangement for creating a keepsake, not a claim that central capture had become inappropriate for everyone.
Across eighty-five initial sessions, sixty-two customers authorised a project and twenty-three declined. Those counts describe the sessions at the participating studios, not a population conversion rate or the lifetime return on the programme. A decline could indicate that the proposed result or scope did not meet the person's needs. We retained it as a useful outcome rather than treat every appointment as an order waiting to be extracted. I would now ask what makes an original irreplaceable to its owner before designing the journey around the efficiency of reproducing its image.