Inquisitive of the unknown, and a designer by accident.this is Abhi.
Growing up in central India, my early exposure to Lego and Mattel toys already differentiated me from my peers. I had a high affinity towards the experiences that brands created — the way they made you feel something before you even understood why. That pull gave me a keen eye, whether I was grabbing a new toy or fiddling with new software and hardware.
I was privileged to have exposure to computers early on, with an innate intuition to just... fiddle. CAD tools like Max and Maya had a strong influence — knobs, controls, things moving and dancing. But it was precisely that rawness, that visible machinery on the interfaces, that first sparked something in me.
I never knew design existed as a profession — not until much later, post engineering. But before that inflection point, I had already built a quiet freelance portfolio. Graphics, graphiti, tee shirt prints, greetings, calligraphy. On my very first day at Tata Consultancy Services, by pure serendipity, I got to choose design. Since then, there is no turning back.
Inquisitive towards the unknown, I trained as a Vedic astrologer — studying the patterns of planets and their effects on human life.
I have three distinct manifestations of Venus.
the Venus in me
I am the metronome of my band
I play djembe and sing — and live music is where coordination becomes everything. But the real magic begins when the music takes over. Timing is everything. Music works very closely on the lines of design fundamentals — or to be honest, even more precisely. I like giving back to society, and music is one of the ways I execute it.
the Venus in me
collecting smiles on weekends
- I think human emotion is most deep and profound, and as designers, that’s what we strive to understand and model for.
The Venus in me
I stumbled into design — pure serendipity. I had freelance artefacts before I walked through TCS's doors in 2015, but I didn't truly understand what design meant yet. Building the usability team from scratch taught me that design is fundamentally a feedback-first mechanism — and the sheer size of TCS's user base forced me to learn interaction at scale fast. I was always an engineer first — part of front-end code reviews and opening my first PR that same year, and that instinct never left me.
After six years shipping enterprise products at TCS, I moved to the US to study Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Washington — where peers from across national boundaries pushed me to think seriously about how context shapes what a product needs to be. That perspective carried into my work at UnitedHealth/Optum, designing for seniors and clinicians through the HouseCalls program. Now at Highspot, I'm shaping the next generation of interactions for specialised Agents and design systems.
Systems before screens
I start with the system, not the interface. Every component I design is a decision about what's possible elsewhere — the primitives determine the ceiling.
Code is a design tool
Figma answers composition questions. Code answers interaction questions. Shipping prototypes in the same medium they'll run in is the only way to know if something actually works.
Empathy at scale
Good design isn't just usable for the person in front of you. It's legible for the nurse in a hospital hallway, the sales rep on a call, the senior on a small screen. I design for the edge.
INQUISITIVE OF THE UNKNOWN
Silence at will
I have a natural knack for strong intuition — and its primary contributor is a meditation practice I've kept for the past 15 years. There is plenty of restlessness within, but tools and techniques help stabilise the noise and listen more clearly to what's underneath.
I believe in contributing back — but to do that well, I need to fill my own cup first. Meditation is how I do that.