Questions I get asked

Answers in my own words — Bharath S, AI-first Product Designer in Chennai, IN.

who are you?

I design complex systems that feel simple. Five years at Zuper — field service management — from founding product designer to associate lead. Workflow builders, dispatch boards, CPQ, roofing operations: heavy software for people who work with their hands.

what's your process?

My default move is subtraction. The value lives in the logic, not the interface — so the interface has to stay out of the way. I win when a workflow gets shorter. Evidence before opinion: product analytics, recorded customer calls, and whatever already exists in the product before I go invent anything new.

how do you use AI day to day?

Every day, and on the parts that used to eat the week. Claude Code and Conductor run several agents at once. MCP servers connect them to the things I actually need: Fathom for recorded customer calls, PostHog for usage data, Notion, Granola and Obsidian for notes, specs and thinking. So I read what customers said at scale, check whether a feature is even used before I argue about it, and hand engineers a working prototype instead of a redline. That is also how the product-manager half of the job gets done — scoping, briefs, sizing — without eating the design time. What I do not do is let it decide. Every answer in this terminal was written by hand — that is the whole point of it.

what do you believe about design?

Three, in order: 1. Obvious in five seconds. If a dispatcher has to think about the interface, the interface has failed. 2. Reuse before invention. A new pattern is a debt the whole product pays — and I maintain the system, so I feel it. 3. Design for the worst shift. Low battery, direct sunlight, wet gloves, one bar of signal.

what's the hardest thing you've designed?

Intelligent Quoting — quoting for roofing contractors. The interface was never the hard part — the pricing model is. Every contractor prices differently, and the flow had to encode that flexibility without exposing it. Most of the design time went into sequencing decisions, not screens. That is where the simplicity came from. Opening the case study.

what have you gotten wrong?

Two I would take back: On the Settings rebuild, the fix was information architecture, not UI — the screens changed far less than the map did. I started the sitemap in week three. It belonged on day one. On the Customer Portal I nearly over-built v1. Shipping the honest 80% early is what actually moved the roadmap — real end-customer feedback beat every internal review.

can I see your work?

In work.fig — three written up properly: intelligent quoting, a document builder for contract paperwork, and the mobile job gallery I built 0→1 so field photos could stand up as evidence. Opening it now.

why field service?

Because the workflows are heaviest there. Dispatchers, admins, technicians mid-shift on a phone with gloves on — design for the worst shift and everything else gets easier. Before Zuper it was blockchain: NFT marketplaces, exchanges, wallet dashboards. The through-line is complexity, not the industry. I go where the workflows are heaviest.

how do you think about design systems?

I maintain Zuper’s, which means I pay for every new pattern I approve. It began as the standards I set building the Customer Portal; those patterns grew into the formal system. So: reuse before invention. A new component is a debt the whole product carries, and someone has to service it. Usually me.

how do you work with engineers and PMs?

Close, and early. On the Settings rebuild I paired with PM and engineering to pressure-test the new structure in usability tests before any of it shipped. On intelligent quoting the design reached into intake and the workflow builder, so engineering was in the room from the first lifecycle map. A flow that ignores what is buildable is a mood board.

what have you built outside work?

Two things, and they are not much alike. Namma Madras — a free directory for people arriving in Chennai with very little. Food, shelters, healthcare, work, hygiene. Most of it works offline, because the people it is for do not have reliable data. It also admits on its own front page that it is not official and may be out of date: someone crossing the city to a shelter that moved is not an inconvenience, it is a night outdoors. Conductor — a deck you play with your hands and a webcam, built for the Figma Make Athon. Wave to move particles, make a fist to strip the vocals out of a track, pinch to draw in the air. Almost no interface, so the feedback has to teach you. · one is for people with nothing. one is a physics engine and a webcam. both shipped.

what tools do you use?

Figma, FigJam, Claude + MCP, n8n, PostHog, and HTML/CSS prototypes when a static frame cannot answer the question. English, Tamil, Hindi, and a little Sanskrit.

are you available?

Chennai, IN. Currently designing at Zuper. Best route is email — opening contact now.