#63 | Kadambari Sahu | Driving new sensing experiences.

"Unfortunately or fortunately UX design is now being the hot topic everybody wants to give you suggestions. So how not get irritated but understand that why people are showcasing so much of interest is because our discipline matters and take it constructively and take that opportunity to educate people about not being a pretty picture but how it is driving strategy is important." - Kadambari Sahu. We are super excited to launch another episode of Designdrives where we explore why, how, and what design drives forward. In EP63 We chat with Kadambari Sahu SVP Design at ValueLabs, about her learnings working as a design leader for many years. Recently she has been winning many global design awards and building up her design competence at Value Labs India. Kadambari creates design cultures by infusing design thinking within organizations and businesses to create a holistic strategy and marketing experience. We learn how she positioned up and build design within the company from scratch and grow raw responsibilities of design and value of design within the organization. We also have a super interesting chat on one of her most awarded projects called "Sniffing out the differences" where we not only learn about the challenges and opportunities designing with smell as a creative medium but also the business value considering it in a commercial setup and what it could be if brands would invest into the design with sniffing. With Kad, we jump into; What were the key challenges that she had to face in the “Sniffing out the differences” project. How can interaction designers and companies incorporate the sense of smell more into their projects. What are the positive outcomes when designing with the “smell in mind”. How does she grow and position design within the company. What strategies she uses to communicate the business value to design. Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Kad! ***** The Guest Kadambari Sahu is a Design Leader, working as SVP Design at ValueLabs. She founded the award-winning design team, User Experience Group at ValueLabs, and is currently leading 50+ designers to create world-class and award-winning products and services to have a positive impact on businesses. Kad is the founder of Sniffing out the differences collective, that started with the grant received from Prince Claus Fund and British Council to explore storytelling through multisensory installation with a focus on smell interactions. Her forte lies in building, growing, coaching and mentoring high performance design teams from scratch. She creates design culture by infusing design thinking within organizations and businesses to create a holistic strategy and customer experience. Her practice in design allows her to work on intangible and tangible aspects of design breaking the boundaries between physical, digital, and service design and creating a seamless experience across media, devices, touchpoints, cultures, and geographies. She has worked for clients across geographies spanning, North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. She has won many awards for her work. The latest includes Red Dot awards 2020, Vega Digital Award, DNA Paris 20 awards for Interactivity and Graphics, India’s Best Design Project 2019, India’s Best in-house design team, and many others. She has been part of many national and international fellowships such as BMW Doathon, VR storytelling guild, etc. She is an international speaker on design and has given talks on many design conferences such as Interaction 20, Interaction 18, organized by IxDA, UXindia, and many others. She is on the international committee of World interaction design day and organizes and hosts the same in Hyderabad. She is an alumna of the National Institute of Design, India, where she did her Post-graduation in New Media Design, which has led her to examine the impact that technologies have on human interactions and culture. She has been curious about the role of design in everyday life and the ways in which human interactions can be mediated, shaped, enhanced, or augmented by technologies. We are super excited to kick off 2022 with a fresh episode of Designdrives. In EP62 we had the chance to chat with Darshan Gajara Head of Design at GraphCMS a growing startup based in Berlin. He is also the creator of Product Disrupt.com which is a popular newsletter and website for design resources linked towards the best design blocks, the best podcasts, the best resources, and also a great newsletter for young designers to advance themselves as a designer. With Darshan, we jump into; What it means to join an early-stage startup as a designer as he joined GraphCMS as the founding designer. What it means to grow together with the team and the company as a designer. What kind of challenges come ahead as you work in such an environment. We also talk about why and how you can use the power of online education and inspirations to advance yourself as a designer using good resources and online programs. During the episode, he also shares his insights on: As a designer how you can find fresh materials online. What to expect and how to adapt to your job role after joining a startup. How to stay agile and structure the design projects? How to set up projects and design teams? Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Darshan! ****** The Guest Darshan Gajara is a Product Designer driven by the passion for making products and helping others do the same, or even better. He is Head of Design at GraphCMS and runs ProductDisrupt.com where he shares his insights and curated list of resources to learn product design for young designers and wannabees. The reason why he created this side-project ProductDisrupt.com is he is an internet-made designer and strongly believe in giving back to the internet. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai. Darshan experienced in delivering end-to-end product solutions for India’s top ticketing portal BookMyShow and building a crowdfunding platform for creatives – Wishberry. He also worked towards building a community of design enthusiasts for Panda Network. His key skills included business requirement mapping, product specification, user experience by user research, user interface and interaction design and studying the user feedback on an iterative basis. He has been working as an independent Product Design Consultant for 6+ years now. His clients include startups and established businesses from US, UK, UAE, Canada and India.