A Design Thinker, Dreamer, Collaborator & Maker. Team builder. Practice Leader
A change maker who understands digital transformation from the inside out, from the grassroots to 1000ft up. Building inspired teams who use design thinking as a muscle and Agile as a tool. Knows how to make Agile work.
A thought leader who uses all the tools of the trade, practices learnt from deep experience in the field to innovate & collaborate with developers, designers, management and internal and external clients. To bring designs and dreams to life.
Ekta Rohra Jafri
- 20 yrs of experience in design & user experience of digital entities. From web & mobile to TVs, short form text to 3D reality.
- A sustainability designer with two award winning sustainability solutions. Fast-Infra, a sustainability finance platform & a healthcare service for rural India called Uma.
- A platform designer with business platforms live – an enabling healthcare platform that has received multiple rounds of funding and is profit making & a financial services platform aggregating loans for the heavy infrastructure sector.
- An outcome oriented expert who can create, diagnose and repair experiences through research led analysis.
- A people leader who is connected to her audience through thought leadership on LinkedIn with 6K+ connections & 8K+ followers.
- A mentor & team builder who has set up & led UX teams for COEs.
- Award winning service designer & systems thinker
- Prolific speaker & digital rights activist
- A keen learner – at the moment studying the impact of sustainability and policy on design.
Design Leader
Design Delivery
I’ve led the delivery of projects, enabling teams in designing the client’s journey to the cloud using principles of design thinking and agile delivery. Ensuring the latest tools & methods like Design Systems, XD & Invision prototyping, generative AI etc. are used to gain speed to market, even in the virtual setting.
Problem solver at large
I solve problems at enterprise scale and start-up speed using design tools like card sorting, Design Thinking, rapid prototyping, active listening etc. to empathetically solve project issues. Ensuring a great client and end customer experience.
After spending over 20 years in the field of design and seeing it come up around me, I have stories from the road which I liberally use to explain the emergence and superpower of design & innovation. The role of design in business is one of my favourite conversations.
People leader
Establishing a culture is also embodying it across my interactions with the team. I fostered a sense of well being and a career of a certain velocity within my chain of 45+ designers and across the whole practice.
My Team Says…
Building a Culture of Design
Ekta means unity and I unite teams in thought and action. Be it celebrating a birthday or arranging a panel discussion, I bring a natural energy that makes teams feel they are weekending when we talk design.
Inspiring Teams
Designers are artists and the best work comes with the best inspiration. Be it inspiring someone through my journey or to make a difference in the world by doing great work, I have the ability to incite young people to action. This one I’m proudest of.
Team Builder
Being a thought leader in the design community, I have access to a large pool of resources. From 8k+ followers, about 80% are designers working in the industry. Be it engaging from this pool or hiring from outside, my role in hiring is multi-faceted.
Consulting
A certified consultant advising clients on the way forward into the future through a design led strategy.
Evangelism
Leading the way from the front, I adopt new methodologies, processes & tools to use them in project delivery and evangelize them internally & externally.
Business Development
Haivng been in the consulting industry for nearly half my career, pre-sales and sales are an intrinsic part of my job. With experience on both sides of the table I understand the business of deisgn consulting and its nuances are second nature to me. All my life I’ve been a design evangelist so capturing the need for design intervention comes naturally. Solutioning and estimation of design projects is something I’ve gained a lot of experience at IBM. In fact I authored a transparent & usable solutioning tempalte to empower sales people to negotiate and close projects where design is a part of delivery. I’ve been an intrnisic part of the sales and pre-sales machinery, culminating in more than 20 sold projects out of which I delivered 3 from start to finish.
As a leader in the India Studio, I had also created a network with other Studies like MEA and Singapore studio to ensure that the talent we have in India is well recognised and utilised across the globe. In the delivery of international projects in service design, design research & delivery I have grown projects from one service to another thereby growing revenue.
Learning & Knowledge
I’ve managed learning and knowledge for the practice in my stint
Be it launching learning programs, negotiating premium learning, mentoring new designers in their first six months at iX, or pushing the service design agenda on all fronts, internal and external. This year made me truly experience the skill economy in all its aspects and colors.
What I’ve realized is there are skills and there are mindsets, courses can enhance skills but a mindset can only be delivered through culture.
Design Thinking Thought Leader
Trained more than 1000+ IBMers in using Design Thinking to innovate in their daily work and life. As a design thinker, I try to have an impact on the Design Education ecosystem, Establish Thought Leadership through design both internally and externally. Recently I taught ‘Sustainability by Design’ at Chandigarh University. Am a mentor at the AND Academy, IIAD.
Design & design thinking portfolio
Observe
Essentially data driven as a practitioner, I use the standard research triangulation method to drive insights. Innovation happens in my data sources!
Reflect
Although being a seasoned design thinker, my own thought process is unstructured, yet effective as an innovator, I use frameworks & tools like EDT, Service Design, Systems Thinking, JTBD, Business Model Canvas etc to bring clients & teams to the same page.
Make
Rapid prototyping is a skill that I have evolved over decades of prototyping and testing. Fastest fingers on the block, contributing to a carpel tunnel wrist and many products in the market.
The Product Designer
iQuippo Finance
A finance aggregator platform for the heavy equipment sector set up by iQuippo, an umbrella company of SREI, the NBFC. This platform enables NBFCs & banks to come together in co-lending agreements and offer loans to businesses looking to buy heavy equipment.
Already in the business of heavy equipment aggregation, this platform helped SREI lay down the foundation for a transparent ecosystem with far reaching impact to the grassroots of the Indian Infrastructure sector.
My Healthcare
A health application that uses a combination of m-commerce conversion optimisation & medical expertise to create an ecosystem that locks in consumers of a hospital. Offering them a way to easily do the following:
– Book an appointment with the doctors, receive prescriptions and diagnosis
– Take medication and follow the treatment and lifestyle change instructions given
– Get relevant information about a hospital at their fingertips
– Track their health using various health trackers like Blood Pressure, Weight, Pain etc.
– Manage all of the above for their family members and get treatment oversight as a guardian
Fast Infra Platform
An end to end workflow system for the assessment creation and use of a sustainability label; with a concentrated flow of documentation and data throughout the various project phases of sustainable infrastructure financing.
Through this labelling system, infrastructure developers can signal their sustainability credentials, independent bodies can validate, rank and audit the credentials and investors can trust that their money is going to projects that meet environmental, social, resiliency, and governance needs and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Uma, Every Pregnant Woman’s Companion As a Service
There is a high incidence of maternal and feotal health problems and fatalities in rural India. With thorough research, this was traced back to healthcare and adherence to supplementation regimens during pregnancy, e.g. Iron and Folate etc.
The root cause being the lack of communication and understanding of health information provided by the medical system. The rural pregnant woman faces unknown misunderstood side effects, contrary advice and lack of support from the family and thereby suffers far reaching health issues both during and after pregnancy.
Uma is a service designed to overcome the ignorance, shame and poverty barrier to facilitate better healthcare delivery during pregnancy especially for rural, uneducated women. It is currently designed for India but it can be scaled to anywhere in the world in the context of pregnancy and fertility.
This project was facilitated using service design and research, systems thinking, sustainability evaluation and futures explorations to prioritise the solution. The awards won are:
design educator
Forever an evangelist, I now think and speak on the future of design and its intersection with everything else.
I also evangelize the need for ethics, sustainable behavior and an inclusive mindset, especially for designers.
From an evangelist to a teacher was not that big a jump. I had lectured on User experience and what it means to the online news industry at Manav Rachna & Amity University in the early days but the transition to a teacher began with the first course I curated for ANANT UNIVERSITY, India’s first full fledged design university. The journey continues today as I mentor students at AND academy in design research.
Digital Data Rights Activist
I write on the regulatory landscape surrounding Digital Rights & Advocacy. I also am a co-founder of a non-profit that engages policy discourse around sustainability from a people’s perspective. We try to bridge the world of technology to the policy debate, personally I use human centeredness as a bridge to educate & inspire. Mentoring the students of policy in design research and service design. Currently using a service audit to understand how gaming regulations fit the bill in India.
Some of my work here:
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Exploring User Verification with Medianama – Notes
The new draft Personal Data Protection Bill – Draft 2022 is introducing mandatory user verification as a part of platform and other fiduciary responsibilities. So to access anything, even FB & Instagram, you may have to provide your Aadhar card or other identity proof. Medianama organised a round table on exploring the user verification mandate,…
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Thoughtful Policy
My Takeaways: Interesting Links: Technology and Competition: Why would we need non-standard tools for future policymaking? Draft e-commerce policy – missing principles of Sound Public Policy Future for Sustainable Regulations and Policies For the right policies to be made, the end outcome should be imagined. The ideal world will determine the governance of the utopia.…
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Sienna’s Charter – Who’s Data Sovereign? It can only be me!
The Sienna Framework > Framework Applications Medical | Professional | Education | Location | Financial Surveillance | Online Browsing Behavior | Online Content Preface to Consumption Data Disclaimer: I’m writing this from a data owner’s point of view – Me and as far as I can see, from my very limited but human centered understanding…
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2030: Sienna Tales – Ashes to Gases, Dust to Gust
In a world where humans can turn to gasses at the flip of a button and where invisibility cloaks exist, Sienna tries to find the truth about her father. Falling in love with a con man, getting deep into the underground of the future, and coming to a shaky truce with Dadu on the way.…
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2030: Sienna Tales – Mirror Mirror on the Wall
How do people date in 2030? It also gives insight on how the patient experience in hospitals will change both clinically and experientially. A new fashion paradigm, shopping and manufacturing both are greatly changed by the advent of 3D printing. Sienna’s journey continues across the landscape of the future. episode 1 | episode 2 | …
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2030 – Sienna Tales – Saved by CASPR
Sienna tales give you futuristic insight on how things pan out for us in 2030. Can the TV filter out ads and personalize them for your context? Can the fridge tell you whether you have what you need to address a hangover? Read on to find out the answers… episode 1 | episode 2 | episode 3 | …
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The Personal Data Protection Bill – PDP & what it means for designers, developers, architects and managers
The personal data protection passed by the president on August 11 has placed designers, developers, architects and managers squarely in the driving seat. If it is to be, it is up to us. Find out how. Reasons to love the bill: ❤️ – the pronouns “her” and “she” have been used for an individual, irrespective of…
Writer
Sienna Tales: A series of stories on a young woman’s life in 2030. What we bring alive everyday stokes my imagination to speculate on what it will look like in the future with all the things we’re making today. Here’s to living forever by design.
I live sustainably because I care about the future I leave behind
Ekta Rohra Jafri 