Abhishek Sharma — Design Strategist

About

Design that thinks strategically

I'm a Product Designer and Design Strategist with over a decade of experience turning enterprise complexity into clarity. I specialize in making dense, technical systems feel intuitive — whether that's an AI assistant for network engineers or a parliamentary app used by MPs across India.

My work spans Agentic AI, ERP/SAP platforms, banking workflows, government mobile apps, and industrial sensor dashboards — always grounded in rigorous user research, behavioral design thinking, and clear business strategy.

At Thoughtworks, I'm a Lead Experience Designer supporting AI-enabled developers, product managers, and project teams — using tools like Figma Make and Claude alongside the broader AI stack to turn user and business needs into working design. Previously, at Vodafone VOIS, I led design for Agentic AI and SAP-based enterprise applications, including NOVA — an internal Gen AI knowledge portal and virtual assistant built for global network logistics teams.

Beyond the day job, I write about Service Design and Gamification on Medium, and actively mentor emerging designers on ADPList — accumulating over 1,000 mentorship minutes and earning a Certificate of Appreciation for the community.

Get in touch

View full profile on LinkedIn →

Abhishek Sharma · Design Strategist · Vodafone VOIS · Pune

🏆

1000+ Mentorship Minutes — ADPList.orgCertificate of Appreciation for mentoring designers in UX Strategy, Enterprise Design, and career growth.

🎨

Adobe Creative Jam ParticipantCompeted in Adobe's Design Hackathon — a multi-team sprint under real-world design constraints.

🎮

People's Choice Award — NASSCOM Gaming 2016Indie Game Development, Pune. Applied gamification and behavioral design to interactive experience design.

✍️

Published Author on MediumWriting on Service Design, the UX–Service Design overlap, and Gamification for user retention and engagement.

Skills & Tools

FigmaFigma MakeUX ResearchEnterprise UX Design SystemsAgentic AI UXProduct Design GamificationAxure RPAdobe XD Design OpsDesign StrategyHeuristic Eval IA & WireframingUsability TestingSAP UX Agile UXService DesignBehavioral Design

Experience

10 years across six companies

Jun 2026 – Present

Thoughtworks

Pune, MH

Lead Experience Designer

Supporting AI-enabled developers, product managers, and project teams in translating user and business needs into working design, using Figma Make, Claude, and other AI tools throughout the design process.

AI-Enabled DeliveryFigma MakeClaudeDesign Strategy

Oct 2023 – June 2026

Vodafone
VOIS

Pune, MH

Deputy Manager, Design Studio

Core member of Vodafone's ERP Design Team, leading design decisions for Agentic AI and SAP-based enterprise applications. Spearheading NOVA — an in-house Gen AI knowledge portal and analytics assistant for network logistics operations. Built the design system that governs all internal VOIS applications.

Agentic AISAP UXDesign SystemsEnterprise ERPGen AI

Jul 2021 – Sep 2023

Deloitte

Gurugram

Senior Consultant — Design

Delivered UX for diverse enterprise and government clients. Designed the Digital Sansad app for NIC (Government of India) — leading IA, wireframes, visual design, and the mobile team over 6 months. Developed PoCs for retail e-commerce, and streamlined UPI reconciliation through rigorous user interviews.

Mobile UXGov of IndiaFinTechUPIUser Research

May 2020 – Jun 2021

HDFC Bank

Mumbai

Design Manager

Led UX for internal loan processes, recovery workflows, and self-service pages in a high-stakes regulated environment. Engaged directly with business and technical stakeholders to align banking processes with functional and user requirements.

Banking UXInternal ToolsLoansStakeholder Mgmt

Dec 2018 – May 2020

Capgemini

Mumbai

Senior UX Designer

Designed dashboards and workflows for an ocean engineering client, translating complex sensor telemetry from oil rigs into operator-friendly interfaces. Moderated design thinking workshops and participated in Adobe Creative Jam.

Industrial UXData VizDashboardsDesign Thinking

Aug 2015 – Dec 2018

Techved &
Capgemini

Mumbai / Pune

UX & UI Designer

Started at Capgemini designing UI for a medical device company and a laptop manufacturer under Microsoft Design Language guidelines. Moved to Techved Consulting collaborating with FinTech giants on Loans, Insurance, and Banking user journeys.

FinTechMedical DevicesMicrosoft DesignUI Design

Selected Work

Projects that moved the needle

✦

AI · Sales Enablement · Singapore

Mindreader AI

Redesigned a sales communication AI from "horoscope-like" to credible professional tool. Full strategy: heuristic eval, competitive analysis, persona definition, IA redesign, complete UI system, and dev-ready "Design at a Glance" documentation.

View in action

✦

Mobile · Government of India · New Delhi

Digital Sansad App

Led end-to-end design for NIC/Deloitte's parliamentary app — IA, wireframes, visual design, and mobile team management over 6 months. Used by Members of Parliament across India.

View in action

✦

Enterprise · Gen AI · Vodafone Internal

NOVA — Agentic AI

Designed Vodafone's internal Gen AI virtual assistant for network logistics. Combines a knowledge portal, analytics dashboard, and agentic AI — enabling thousands of engineers to get instant operational insights.

Design Showcase

Real screens, real work

Retail · Kiosk UX · Self-Checkout

Supermarket Self-Checkout Kiosk

Designed a complete self-checkout kiosk experience for a supermarket chain — from idle/attract screens with promotional content to the full purchase flow. Included a COVID-era innovation: real-time temperature and mask detection before store entry, routing flagged customers to a click-and-collect option.

Kiosk UXRetailHardware UICOVID Safety UX

Social · Gamification · Hospitality

BFLY — Bartender Social Platform

A dark-themed social and gamification platform for bartenders and hospitality professionals. Features include "One Touch" shift broadcasting, a social feed for venues, leaderboards with point tracking, and a partner network dashboard. Applied Octalysis gamification framework to drive engagement and retention.

GamificationSocial UXDark ModeMobile App

E-Commerce · Reselling · Mobile

BIZnuke — India's Reselling Community

End-to-end UX for a fashion reselling platform targeting India's D2C market. Designed the full seller onboarding flow (product listing, image upload, categorization), buyer discovery feed, supplier pages, and the dual-mode experience for customers vs. suppliers/dealers.

E-CommerceOnboarding UXMobileMarketplace

IoT · Smart Home · Mobile App

Dobby — Smart Home Automation

Designed the UX for a smart home automation app allowing users to manage appliances across multiple spaces (rooms), set schedules, create automation routines, and manage multi-user access. Clean, minimal UI built around the idea of a personal home assistant — "Dobby brings you a fantasy home."

IoT UXSmart HomeMulti-userAutomation

Deep Dive

Mindreader AI — Case Study

01 — Discover

Heuristics + Competitive Analysis

Conducted heuristic evaluation, expert review, UX interviews with sales professionals, and competitive analysis. Core finding: unclear messaging caused trust breakdown and immediate drop-off — users saw the tool as "horoscope-like" rather than professional.

02 — Define

Persona, Pain/Gain & IA

Defined the core persona: sales professionals in insurance and investment. Mapped pain/gain framework revealing the gap between perceived and actual utility. Redesigned IA around a dashboard-centric model with clear journeys from signup through analysis results.

03 — Design

Trust-First Onboarding + Dashboard

Implemented trust-building onboarding before exposing analysis features. Redesigned analysis flow supporting multiple input methods: text, images, quizzes, or direct client-facing quiz links. Built a complete UI library and visual design system.

04 — Deliver

Dev Handoff + Validation

Created "Design at a Glance" component docs for the dev team — specifying dos and don'ts for headers, cards, CTAs, and more. Ran user testing to validate improved clarity, trust, and task completion.

Key Insights

Users couldn't identify the tool's value in the first session — leading to abandonment before any analysis was attempted.
Multi-step analysis with ambiguous upload instructions was a critical learnability barrier. Users explicitly asked for "three simple steps."
AI skepticism required trust-building UX strategy — not just cleaner UI. "Can this really predict from one photo?" was a recurring objection.
Navigation inconsistencies, missing links, and confusing CTAs damaged memorability and slowed returning users.
Results page had no "what next" — users completed analysis but had no clear next action, creating a journey dead-end.

Outcome

Transformed Mindreader from a confusing AI experiment into a structured professional sales tool — with a clearer value proposition on first load, a streamlined 3-step analysis flow, trust-first onboarding, and a unified design system enabling consistent implementation.

2015–2017 · Capgemini

PC Management App

Client: Computer Manufacturer Giant — Requirement Gathering, Expert Review, IA, Hi-fi Wireframes (Balsamiq). Solved high drop-off during sign-up through Hub & Spoke IA model.

Mobile UXHeuristic EvalIAWireframes

2018–2020 · Capgemini

NTR Web App

Client: Network Steering Management Company — Redesigned a complex telecom web portal. Persona research (5 employee interviews), IA restructure, Axure RP wireframes for Roaming CEM Dashboard.

Enterprise WebTelecomAxure RPPersona

2018–2019 · Techved

Sevarat — Senior Care

Client: Senior Care Services — Full UX for a senior care platform covering service booking, associate tracking, and e-commerce. Competitive analysis of 3 major players, 3 personas (target: 28–40 yrs), full IA for both customer and associate apps.

Mobile AppHealthTechCompetitive AnalysisE-Commerce

2017 · Capgemini

Admin Console

Client: IT Service Provider (Internal) — Converted provided wireframes into full visual design for an enterprise IT administration console with status summaries, ETI dashboards, and data source configuration.

Enterprise UIDashboardVisual Design

2019 · Techved

myBooks — Accounting App

Client: Zetran Technologies — Web and mobile accounting app design. Dashboard with cash flow charts, expense tracking, revenue overview, and business KPIs. Consistent cross-platform design system.

FinTechWeb + MobileDashboardData Viz

2019 · Techved

bitWiser.io

Client: BitWiser (Android & iOS) — Redesign of existing mobile quiz/learning app with Gamification integration following the Octalysis Framework. New UI with leaderboards, multiplayer mode, and reward mechanics.

GamificationMobile RedesignOctalysisEdTech

2016 · Capgemini

Procurement App

Client: Public Electricity Provider (Internal) — Internal procurement tool UI design for a public sector energy client.

Internal ToolPublic SectorUI Design

2019 · Freelance

BFLY — Leaderboard & Venues

Client: BFLY (getbfly.com) — Extended BFLY visual design to include the full leaderboard (Top 10, Prizes, Store, Profile tabs), venue partner pages, and Octalysis gamification layer across the full app.

GamificationSocialOctalysisiOS & Android

Recommendations

What colleagues say

Abhishek is great at UX and UI. He has a great sense of understanding towards human centric designs. Whether it be ideation, brainstorming, creation or evaluation he always tries to bring out his best. I really enjoyed working with him — he is a great team player. Keep rocking!

Naveen Pal

Product Designer, UX/UI Consultant · Deloitte Digital India

Worked on the same team

Abhishek in a nutshell is a complete designer. He is always learning, experimenting and implementing the very right approach to his tasks. He poses a good understanding of User experience design — may it be ideation, brainstorming, creation or evaluation. I wish him all the best and would love to work with him again.

Sarang Pitale

Deputy General Manager · Design | UX Architect | HFI–CUA™

Worked on the same team

Abhishek is a very skilled employee who is pleasant and easy to work with. He played a key role as a UX Designer — in charge of creating visual designs based on client requirements that permitted developers to get a clear picture of the final objective. Every stakeholder greatly appreciated his work and I strongly recommend him.

Benoit Barge

Corporate & Growth Strategy · Value Creation · MBA, MSc

Senior to Abhishek

Great to work with and very responsive. My previous designer disappeared and Abhishek stepped right in and did an even better job. What's more is that I actually hired him to help with a mobile app gamification effort. His UX/UI work was just the icing on the cake.

Dean Matthews

MSEE, MS CySE, PMP, QTE, CSM, CSPO · IT Executive

Abhishek's client

I always noticed Abhishek being a good team player. His understanding about UX as a subject, user psyche and technology trends is much appreciable. More to that, his ability to implement this knowledge to reach simple yet user-centric solutions is what makes him a good design professional. All the best for your future endeavors.

Ganesh Kamble

Industrial Design

Senior to Abhishek

Abhishek is a great designer who was able to transform our ideas into UX slides. He works well and responds to feedback easily. Thanks for helping with our designs.

Tim Moylan

Fractional CTO · Co-Founder · Builder with AI

Abhishek's client

Abhishek is one of the best designers I've met and one of the smartest user experience design persons I've ever worked with. His workaround time is amazing. He is a humanistic person who thinks in multiple dimensions — very professional, innovative, customer focused, highly productive, absolutely time-sensitive, diligent, very positive in spirit and very creative.

Sreeni Balaji

Co-Founder · Limeset · Mortgage Lending

Worked on the same team

Exceptionally passionate and self-motivated about his work. Abhishek will go the extra mile to execute projects with perfection and on schedule. He has strong UX skills and does not shy away from challenging the obvious to ensure all perspectives are fully examined. He also collaborates well with peers and senior management, providing effective feedback with impeccable timing. Looking forward to working with him in future!

Sushil Gokule

Design Thinker · UX Strategist · Customer Experience Architect

Managed Abhishek directly

Bookshelf

Books that sharpen my practice

History · Systems

Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari

Human history as a lens on behavior, bias, and cooperation — informs how I map mental models, defaults, and incentives into product ecosystems.

Affordances · Feedback

The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman

Affordances, constraints, and error prevention — foundational when crafting flows that make the right action obvious and safe.

Design Thinking

Change by Design — Tim Brown

IDEO’s design thinking playbook — keeps me anchored on reframing problems, prototyping early, and co-creating with stakeholders.

Mindset · Courage

Creative Confidence — Tom Kelley, David Kelley

Builds muscle for rapid experiments, storytelling, and getting teams comfortable with ambiguity.

Heuristics · QA

Usability Engineering — Jakob Nielsen

Evaluation methods, severity ratings, and iterative fixes — a toolkit I apply to triage issues before they reach users.

Culture · Philosophy

My Gita — Devdutt Pattanaik

Interprets the Gita through contemporary dilemmas — a reminder to align intent, action, and clarity when making product choices.

Strategy · Statecraft

Chanakya Neeti — Radhakrishnan Pillai

Pragmatic tactics on power and incentives — useful when navigating stakeholder dynamics and org design.

Duty · Ethics

Bhagavad Gita

Frames action, duty, and detachment — a lens for making clear decisions under pressure.

Mythology · Narratives

Shiva Puranas

Mythic storytelling about creation and destruction — sparks narrative thinking for product arcs and lifecycle design.

Emotions · Relationships

Relationships and Emotions — Sadhguru

Perspectives on emotional clarity and empathy — valuable when designing collaborative tools and support journeys.

Any many more

Abhishek
Sharma

Design that thinks strategically

10 years across six companies

Projects that moved the needle

Real screens, real work

Mindreader AI — Case Study

Life in design — moments that matter

What colleagues say

Writing on design thinking

Books that sharpen my practice

Let's make
something
great.

AbhishekSharma

Design that thinks strategically

10 years across six companies

Projects that moved the needle

Real screens, real work

Mindreader AI — Case Study

Life in design — moments that matter

What colleagues say

Writing on design thinking

Books that sharpen my practice

Let's makesomethinggreat.

Abhishek
Sharma

Let's make
something
great.