— Team Leadership —
I have been lucky to be able to work with some of the very best! One can easily get lost in the daily grind of work and deadlines. I listen to each person on my team to understand where they want to grow and give them opportunities to do so.
Principles
– Time Management
– Conflict Resolution
– Reliability
– Mentorship
– Delegation
– Open Communication
– Shield from project politics
Design Principles/Processes
I defined processes to bring structure to the inherently chaotic nature of simultaneous design and build phases at a startup. By establishing a clear framework upfront and iterating on it as projects progressed, I ensured smoother collaboration and adaptability. The process facilitated rapid onboarding of new hires, clarified workflows, and provided flexibility to adjust based on project-specific challenges or successes.
- Created an onboarding for new designers.
- Communicated regular summary of the work that the design team has done.
- Migration from Sketch to Figma to cut down costs and to increase the transparency of our design process.
- Bi-weekly learning sessions – either a teammate presents a topic they recently learned about or we view a video I have lined up.
- Weekly fun Friday sharing – 5-7 minutes of videos shared on our favorite non-work related topic. Each person on the team shares in rotation.
- Weekly design challenge, where we pick one screen a week and set a timer for 15 minutes and each person edits it in their own way/style. This has given us so many new ideas, because for those 15 minutes we design free of any limitations.
- Daily check-ins to make sure there are no roadblocks and to answer any questions and share updates.
- Bi-weekly 1:1 – helping my team work on their goals.
— Processes —
— Triple Diamond Approach
The Triple Diamond Design Process is a strategic framework that takes designers through three key phases:
Discover, Define, and Develop.
Each phase is structured to promote a well-rounded approach to problem-solving and crafting solutions, ultimately leading to innovative, user-focused designs.
I further detailed this to meet the needs of the startup by including all the various teams that were involved in the process of building a product. This helped not only current teams but also new recruits to understand who to involve at what time during the product lifecycle.
Principles/Considerations
Alarm immunity is real! Alerts are crafted such that they are not overwhelming for the user.
Design for scalability. Understand that products change and grow over time.
Formative and Summative user testing is conducted before V&V and launch.
Ensure that the very basics of accessibility are covered. Strong accessible milestones are added in phases for every product.
Hazard Analysis. List all potential hazards proactively, then design to avoid them.
Reduce Training. Intuitive experiences reduce training requirements and customer support hours.
Customizable Dashboards. Not all users are the same, each type may need a different set of information upfront.
— Problem Solving —
Issue Tree Framework
I extend my love of problem solving beyond the screens and interactions I design. Only 2 weeks into my job, I noticed a few operational gaps within teams and approached my manager on how Issue Trees could potentially help us resolve a few of these issues. He asked me if I’d be willing to conduct a workshop during our company event. (Of course, I did! ) I let out an enthusiastic “absolutely!”
So here I was, prepped and ready 2 months into my job, conducting a four-hour workshop on problem-solving for the entire company. I designed and led the workshop myself but I needed help and I reached out to colleagues across different functions and asked if they’d help during the workshop.
Issue Tree
Examples from Crafting Cases
— Covid & Mental Health —
Mental health has become even more important since the pandemic with all of us juggling multiple roles at the same time in the same space.
For this, I lead the “mindfulness in minutes” initiative where we post an activity every week which should take anyone 5-7 minutes to complete but will hopefully help them decompress in that little time. I initially started this within the design team but more people requested to be a part of it.
A few examples of the activities (each done by setting a 5-7 minute timer):
– Stand up and a little away from your desk and breathe!
– Write a daily personal retro.
– Pick a song and dance.
– Write down everything you are thankful for.
– Stretch after your longest meeting of the day.
– Smile before you begin every meeting! …
Testimonials
Rutu was entrusted with the responsibility for leading our UX/UI design team. Over her 3 years with BrightInsight, Rutu grew to be an admired, trusted, and respected member of our team. Words and phrases to describe her? I think of leadership, personality, dependability, self-motivation, adaptability, and the ability to jump in and bring people together to resolve any problem at hand.
Rutu capitalized on every opportunity to make a positive contribution to the business we are building. Rutu and her team delivered design proposals with speed and quality. When we were all working from our homes due to the pandemic, Rutu authored company-wide mindfulness activities.
Rutu remains a member of the BrightInsight family and a person that I could not more highly recommend. Simply put, she made everything better.
I’ve known Rutu for 4.5 years and had the pleasure of working with her at BrightInsight. Throughout her time at BrightInsight, I’ve always found Rutu to be very easy to work with, very creative, and always does what’s best for the company and our customers. She built out and mentored the design team, and led the design of a number of our core products, covering multiple mobile apps and web portals for patients, clinicians, and business users.
Overall, she demonstrated a strong mix of leadership, design, and being customer-focused.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Rutu and her team for over two years. Rutu is a true professional in her discipline. Here are a few examples. She leveraged frameworks and implements best practices in our designs (web and mobile interfaces for patients and providers). In doing so, she brought design awareness and consistency to our solutions (software as a medical device in a variety of use cases).
She was effective in leading focus groups to reach actionable conclusions, to ensure we were user-focused and solved for the most important unmet needs. She worked with cross functional teams to contribute to sales, marketing and delivery.
She is a terrific mentor to her team ensuring staff growth and career development.
All in all, I highly recommend Rutu, both personally and professionally.
In my experience, the focus on regulatory compliance can often impact the user experience of a digital health product, and ultimately, limit end user adoption and engagement.
In this context, Rutu is a rare talent who won’t settle for a ‘good enough’ user experience- she challenges us all to do better. Her ability to place herself in the shoes of the end user and deliver software they love is truly impressive. I’ve seen first hand the impact she has had on the adoption of our products through great design.
It’s been a pleasure working with her.