I design products, systems, and teams that turn complex problems into scalable experiences.
Hi — I'm Durga Venkatesh, a UX Design Manager with 8+ years of experience designing and leading digital products across EdTech, FinTech, B2B SaaS, and consumer platforms.
My journey represents a progression from individual UX execution to shaping product strategy, building scalable design systems, and eventually leading design teams. My approach is rooted in systems thinking, data-informed decision making, and translating ambiguous business problems into product experiences.
In every role the constant has been design systems — built from the ground up, then scaled across product pods, platforms, and distributed teams.
What follows is the complete journey — company by company, what the challenge was, what I decided, and what changed as a result.
Eight years, at a glance
The shape of the work: where it happened, what it covered, and how far it scaled.
Design systems, built from the ground up — in every role.
Across all six companies the through-line has been the same: establish the system before scaling the screens. Coschool, Head Digital Works, and Wizely each got their first real design system from me, and at Signzy and 1Kosmos I worked inside strict enterprise systems and extended them. Tokens, components, documentation, and adoption — not just a library, but the practice around it.
Company Chapters & Narrative
A deep dive into decisions, architectural trade-offs, and measurable outcomes.
Coschool
UX Design Manager
Feb 2025 — Present
From solving individual design problems to building teams that solve them independently.
I started my career focused on individual product problems, but my role evolved into shaping product direction and building the systems that allow a design team to operate independently. Today, I lead UX across four product platforms serving 50+ schools, 500+ teachers, and 20,000+ students. The biggest shift in my career has been learning how to create leverage.
Early on, I measured impact by the quality of my personal output. As a leader, impact is measured differently: Can the team make good decisions without me? Can the design system create enough consistency that we solve meaningful problems instead of UI problems?
Independent Designers
I coached designers from internship-level capability toward owning major product areas. We moved to a two-person peer critique model—two perspectives, two solutions, clear reasoning—allowing designers to develop their own judgment and independent product thinking.
Systems that Scale
A design system isn't successful just because of components; it succeeds when it reduces dependency while increasing quality. Our system reduced design delivery time by 40% and iteration time by 70%, allowing developers to resolve edge cases independently.
Challenging the Product Problem
With Guided Practice (Vin AI), student behavioral data (12k points) showed high misclicks and inappropriate interactions with the chat-heavy tutor. I questioned if AI should be the center of learning. We pivoted to a system-led learning model with AI intervention only when needed, achieving a 65% reduction in unproductive and inappropriate interactions—a prime example of influence without authority.
Similarly, for the Competitive Track (CCT), rather than just executing the brief, I probed the core assumptions: Would students want more tests? How should unpaid users experience this? I owned the end-to-end UX, shaping an ambiguous business opportunity into a coherent product.
Creating Motivation through EDGE
To keep diligent students engaged and help struggling ones progress, I led design on EDGE—a personalized achievement layer. It analyzes homework performance to provide targeted practice for gaps or advanced challenges for strengths. Delivered on a tight 5-day timeline, EDGE achieved a 60% completion rate vs the 55% average for regular homework.
Where I Am Today
Leading UX across this ecosystem, I focus on three pillars:
- People: Develop designers who can think, communicate, and operate independently.
- Systems: Build processes that allow the team to move quickly without sacrificing quality.
- Product: Challenge assumptions, understand users, and shape experiences that solve meaningful problems.
Independent Consulting
UX Designer (Freelance)
Jan 2024 — Jan 2025
Independent product and UX consulting across national e-commerce marketplaces and retail brands.
A year of high-leverage independent consulting — going deep on two distinct challenges: unlocking seller onboarding for India's government marketplace, and mapping the online ethnic apparel market for a new retail brand.
GeM (Government e-Marketplace)
Rebuilt the seller onboarding flow and simplified product listing for India's largest public procurement portal. Reduced friction where sellers were dropping off and accelerated repeat listings.
Silk Storee
Ran extensive user research, customer journey mapping, and competitive analysis for an emerging online retail brand. Translated findings into an actionable product brief for the founding team.
Head Digital Works (A23)
Sr. UX Designer
Dec 2022 — Sept 2023
Scaling growth, retention loops, and design systems across a 45M+ player gaming platform.
Head Digital Works runs one of India's premier real-money gaming ecosystems. My mission was to move core commercial growth numbers — retention, KYC completion, and cashout velocity — through design decisions grounded in high-frequency player telemetry.
Every change was strictly measured. The major wins came from restructuring the game lobby around table visibility, tightening the KYC flow to eliminate verification anxiety, and rebuilding a cross-platform design system that allowed our engineering team to ship with zero drift.
- Redesigned the Rummy Lobby to improve discovery of game types, contributing to a 65% improvement in user retention.
- Established a reusable design system that reduced design effort by ~60%.
- Revamped KYC and Refer & Earn — cutting KYC time by 35% and dropping abandonment by 60%.
- Optimized the Redeem instant-cashout journey, halving drop-off rates across all player tiers.
Wizely
UX Designer / Manager
May 2020 — Dec 2022
Helping an early behavioral fintech product mature into an engaging scalable platform.
Wizely started as a lean financial-wellness app for young Indian professionals. Over two and a half years I helped it mature — creating the company's first design system from scratch, migrating the entire asset library to Figma, and introducing engagement mechanics that turned first-time users into habitual daily savers.
The proprietary Wellness Score gave users a single digestible metric to optimize. Gamification, daily challenges, and viral referral loops gave them reasons to return every morning.
- Grew user retention by 200% through the Wellness Score and engagement loop redesign.
- Built the company's first Design System from the ground up and led the comprehensive migration to Figma.
- Shipped a gamified reward and referral engine that boosted referral volume by 60%.
Signzy
UI/UX Designer
March 2019 — Feb 2020
Enterprise identity and AI onboarding infrastructure deployed across India's largest tier-1 banks.
Signzy builds AI-assisted digital onboarding infrastructure for highly regulated financial sectors. I designed a field RM-assisted mobile onboarding app adopted by 4 major banks, plus back-office consoles, CRM systems, and RBI-mandated video KYC flows.
This is where I mastered end-to-end product ownership — from writing PRDs and conducting user testing with banking staff to tracking change velocity in production.
- Designed a mobile RM-assisted onboarding app — deployed and in active production at 4 major banks.
- Compressed 6 months of client customization change requests into a 2-month delivery window.
- Authored PRDs, ran user testing, and deployed A/B tests across Investor and Generic onboarding products.
1Kosmos
UX Designer
July 2018 — March 2019
The foundation — enterprise zero-trust identity products for Verizon and Jefferies.
My foundational design role. I designed native iOS and Android authentication applications for Verizon under strict global brand guidelines, and built enterprise web admin console panels for Verizon and Jefferies investment banking.
Enterprise zero-trust constraints, mission-critical security workflows, and strict accessibility standards established the uncompromising bar for polish that has guided my career ever since.
- Designed native Android and iOS biometric applications for Verizon under strict brand guidelines.
- Built zero-trust admin console control panels for Verizon and Jefferies IT administration.
Growth, Scope & Progression
How my scope expanded from individual execution to system strategy and team leadership.
UX Designer
Sr. UX Designer
UX Design Manager
Skills & Toolkit
The multidisciplinary toolkit developed across eight years of product leadership.
Design
Research
Product & Strategy
Leadership
Tools
AI
Design Philosophy
The guiding principles behind every product decision and system architecture.
Design for clarity.
Every product carries inherent complexity. The job is to give users a clear, unambiguous path through it — not by hiding difficulty, but by systematically removing friction around it.
Measure outcomes.
A shipped screen is never the end result. The metric that moves — retention, drop-off, time-to-value, heuristic score — is what proves whether design achieved its objective.
Systems over screens.
One good screen is just a moment. A robust design system compounds across pods, teams, and years. Build for the second and third year of the product's lifespan.
Build independent designers.
The goal of leadership isn't to become the person everyone depends on for answers. It's to build designers who can understand ambiguous problems, make informed decisions, communicate their reasoning, and ship with confidence.
Education & Credentials
IIT Roorkee
Rigorous engineering education providing foundational training in systems thinking, quantitative modeling, structured problem-solving, and analytical rigor.
Interaction Design Foundation
AI for Designers · Design Thinking · Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) · Design for the 21st Century (Don Norman).
Looking for a product design leader who can shape the problem, build the system, and help teams ship?
I’m open to product design leadership, design systems, and complex zero-to-one product challenges.