About me

Engineer turned designer!

I live at the intersection of analytical thinking and empathy, given that I started as an engineer before falling headfirst into design at NID.

For the past decade I've specialized in the kinds of problems most designers find daunting: AI tools, healthcare systems, enterprise analytics. The domains where the cost of a confusing interface isn't just frustration, it's a missed insight.

At a glance
📍
Based in
Pittsburgh, PA
💼
Currently
Product Designer at Abbott (Contract)
✓
Certification
Certified Usability Analyst (CUA)™
🌏
Background
Grew up across India · Worked across geographies
📬
Get in touch

How I got here

Growing up across cities in India and later working across geographies taught me to adapt quickly to new environments, new stakeholders, and new cultural contexts. That's shaped a core instinct in my design work: the "average user" rarely exists. Good systems have to flex for real variation in context, language, and mental models.

At AbbVie, I spent five years designing for the intersection of healthcare and analytics — building executive dashboards that give leadership visibility into business-critical KPIs, and designing AI tool that helps Quality teams to produce more compliant, higher-quality documentation. I care deeply about information hierarchy, the moment a user loses trust in data, and what it takes to make a complex workflow feel effortless.

At Abbott, I design customer support and self-service experiences for FreeStyle Libre — a medical device used daily by people managing chronic conditions across multiple geographies.

I've done end-to-end UX across the full spectrum, from early research and synthesis, through prototyping and usability testing, to final delivery with developers and cross-functional teams. My engineering background means I genuinely enjoy the handoff conversation, constraints don't frustrate me, they sharpen the design.

Outside of work
🧱 Building Lego with my daughter — the design feedback is immediate and unforgiving.
🍳 Experimenting in the kitchen, where iteration and taste-testing are mandatory.
🚶‍♀️ Long walks that solve more design problems than I'd like to admit.
🌍 Community advocate for a more inclusive world — especially in tech.
🇯🇵 650+ day Duolingo streak learning Japanese.
🏆 AbbVie Excellence Award × 2
Recognized for planning AbbVie's first UX Summit and for supporting the Tech in Residence program to bring more STEM women into AbbVie.

Expertise & specializations

🤖

AI & Emerging Tech UX

Designing human-in-the-loop AI tools where trust, transparency, and explainability aren't nice-to-haves but they're what makes adoption possible. Experienced with AI authorship tools, GenAI interfaces, and ML-assisted workflows.

📊

Analytics & Data Platforms

Turning complex data into actionable, decision-supporting interfaces. From executive KPI dashboards and alert frameworks to data marketplaces. I design for user who needs to understand something fast and act on it confidently.

🏥

Healthcare & Regulated Environments

Experience designing in highly regulated, compliance-driven environments — pharmaceutical, quality operations, and medical device support. I understand what it means when the design has to be right, not just good.

🔬

User Research

Interviews, empathy mapping, journey mapping, surveys, usability testing, card sorting, heuristic evaluation — I use research to make the case for design decisions, not just to validate them after the fact.

♿

Accessibility

Conducting accessibility audits, delivering actionable recommendations, and designing with EAA and WCAG compliance in mind from the start. Accessibility isn't a pass/fail checklist it's a design quality bar.

🤝

Cross-Functional Leadership

Comfortable owning UX strategy while working closely with developers, and product managers/owners. I speak the language of constraints and use them to make design decisions more defensible.

Design tools
Figma Adobe XD Miro Adobe Creative Suite Copilot Claude Miro AI
Research & methods
Usability Testing Interviews Empathy Mapping Journey Mapping Card Sorting Heuristic Evaluation Accessibility Audits Ethnography Personas & Scenarios Task Flows
Technical
HTML / CSS Salesforce PowerBI theming Qlik theming MS Office

Qualifications

Certificate

UI/UX Design for AI Products

Stanford Online · August 2026

Certification

Certified Usability Analyst (CUA)™

Human Factors International

Postgraduate

Master of Design — New Media Design

National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India · 2009–2011

Undergraduate

B.E. — Electronics & Communication Engineering

University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India · 2005–2009

Let's connect

Get in touch for opportunities or just to say hi.

annapurna04@gmail.com