About
I am Preeti, a UX designer and researcher in Boston, currently exploring human perception at Bentley's Haptics Lab.
Fields I gravitate towards
- Accessibility
- Mental health
- Robotics
- Sustainability
2019 to now
Where I am today.
The designer I am today is an accumulation of different parts of my background. Everything since 2019 has been a learning experience, and most of that learning happened on the job. The courses gave me a solid foundation, but they only got me so far: the actual learning came from my consulting career, which gave me the freedom to choose my own projects and work with different teams across domains.
My master's pushed me further in that direction, with a more nuanced understanding of people and their psychology and a grounding in regulated research practice. What I enjoy most is being able to work across the whole of a field I care this much about.
Finding my niche
- B.Tech, PES University
- Coursera and IxDF
- Web design and freelancing
I finished an electronics degree with an interest in psychology and no obvious career that answered to both. Courses in design thinking and UX were where I found the overlap, and web design gave me the means to act on it. Engineering left me with the habit I still use most: ask what a thing costs before asking whether it is possible.
Running my own design practice
- First client on Upwork
- 25 products, US and India
- Sole designer, developer and owner
One project turned into a whole UX practice. I was the only designer on almost every brief, which taught me range and taught me to make my thinking legible to people who were not in the room. It also showed me what was missing: I was deciding on instinct and I wanted to be closer to the people I was designing for.
Grounding design in research
- MS, Human Factors, Bentley
- Bentley E-Hub
- InsiTune
- RightRun
- Haptics Lab
The master's sits where psychology, technology, design and business meet, which is exactly where my questions had been landing. It gave me mixed methods, experimental design and usability testing, and I have not designed without them since. Now I run perception studies at the Haptics Lab and write up what they find.
Hover a chapter to read it
The biggest thing I have learned
I do not blame the user.
When something goes wrong in a session, I want to know which part of the design caused it. Naming that part helps identify the problem that needs to be fixed.
- 01
The user could not remember how to do it again
a learnability issue
- 02
The user never found the thing that was there all along
a discoverability issue
- 03
The user read it and took away something else
a clarity issue
- 04
The user could not perceive it at all
an accessibility issue
- 05
It only ever worked for people who think like me
an inclusivity issue
And the list goes on.
Complex systems are not an excuse for confusing interfaces. Without user insight, design fills its gaps with assumption, and the person using it is the one left struggling to guess.
Off the clock
There is more to me than this page.
There is a room, and eight things in it worth asking about. Have a look around.
Open to full-time roles
Reach out for a coffee chat.
I’m looking for full-time product design and UX research roles, and I’m happy to relocate.
If you have something that needs research behind it and someone who can take it all the way to a shipped interface, I’d like to hear about it. In person over actual coffee, or virtually — whichever is easier.