Kanika Kalra
Design Researcher
I am a designer with 5 years of experience in product management, UI/UX, and communication design. I scaled an early-stage tech startup to 7M+ users as part of the founding team.
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Recently upskilled myself at University of the Arts London to be a research-driven design leader.
I have the Right to Work in the UK
London
Work Experience
Jan - Jul 2023
Jan 2020 - Sep 2022
Dec 2018 - Apr 2019
Jun 2019 - Dec 2021
London College of Communication, UAL
London, UK
Learning Design Researcher | Student-Staff Partnership
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Examined challenges of online teaching & learning through interviews with 7 educators & focus group with 6 students
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Amplified student voices through videos to help 2k educators improve online class engagement for 21k UAL students
Lokal
Bangalore, India
Y Combinator & Tencent-backed startup offering a one-stop hyperlocal content platform for non-English speaking new internet users of tier 2&3 Indian towns.
Product Manager - Growth & Content
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Formulated operations & product playbook to launch app in 5 more Indian states, reaching 2M vernacular users
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Automated translation flows to streamline localisation process, reducing new language launch time from 5 to 1 week
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Introduced in-app incentive tracking & payout flows for content creators, increasing content density by 1.5x in remote areas
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Collaborated with ops & content teams to optimize CMS tool, reducing news submission processing time from 150 to 30 min
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Prioritizing amongst ambiguous scalability & virality problems, defined quarterly OKRs and roadmaps for a lean agile team of 3 software engineers, 1 product analyst and 1 operations lead; orchestrating daily scrums and weekly sprints using JIRA
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Synthesizing complex, interdependent & often competing stakeholder needs, wrote 50+ product requirement documents
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Led 30+ android app releases; wrote test cases & manually tested apks with devs; monitored post-release via Mixpanel
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Interviewed 25+ PM and Associate PM candidates; onboarded & managed 1 product analyst intern & 2 APMs over 1 year
Lead Product Designer
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Overhauled IA & navigation for Digital Confidence (Google, 2020), doubling app engagement time & Jobs product traffic
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Applied Atomic Design method (Frost, 2013) to build and organize the redesigned android app’s design system on Figma
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Mobilized cross-functional team of 5 for field study, running interviews & usability tests with 21 users (2 languages, 3 towns)
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Transformed onboarding flow UI & A/B tested messaging with marketing team, reducing new-user drop-off from 25% to 11%
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Founded product design team; interviewed 40+ candidates over 2 years; hired, onboarded & mentored 4 product designers
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Crafted & operationalised UX research & usability testing process guide, boosting user research skills of product team of 15
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Delivered user interview training workshops for content team of 100+, impacting 500+ user interviews over 2 years
Design Factory India
Noida, India
Design studio creating experiences and spaces for public and private sector clients across India.
Communication Design Trainee (Exhibition & Publication)
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In a team of 4 designers, created 100+ life-size print graphics for 2 museums at Red Fort, New Delhi (annual footfall ~1M)
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Led a ‘shadow sculpture’ installation at JUH Museum, Delhi, including design, material sourcing & vendor management
Education
Oct 2022 - Jan 2024
Jun 2015 - May 2019
University of the Arts London
London, UK
MA Design Management
Grade: A+ (Distinction)
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Cultivated understanding of social & cultural design, futures thinking, design research & leadership in industry 4.0 through application of primary research methods, collaborative communication/ service design projects & reflective practice
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Authored and designed 12k-word report; awarded £500 research grant
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Investigated street animal welfare problems in India; co-designed future visions & interventions with local community
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Using Disruptive Design framework (Acaroglu, 2017), reviewed literature (40+ academic sources), interviewed 12 animal rescuers & made 4 ethnographic field visits to shelters & vets, mining insights to map systems at grassroots-level
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Designed tools to facilitate knowledge-exchange amongst the street animal welfare community: planned & successfully piloted a webinar (21 pan-India attendees); prototyped & tested a digital information repository & toolkit
National Institute of Fashion Technology
Mumbai, India
B.Des. Communication Design
Grade: 8.9 / 10​
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Best graduation project award (May 2019)
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Through rigorous applied projects, gained proficiency in user experience, branding & marketing, graphic design, spatial design, behavioral psychology, art history, photography & styling; honed 2d, 3d & motion design software skills
Miscellaneous
VOLUNTEERING
Jan-Oct 2021
Bangalore Cat Squad
Cat Rescuer & Adoption Coordinator
Fostered 11 kittens & facilitated 5 adoptions
FREELANCE
Nov 2017 - Mar 2018
360 Infra Solutions
Brand Design Consultant
Jul - Oct 2017
Nokdin Solutions
INTERNSHIPS
Jun - Jul 2017
DDB Mudra
Creative Summer Intern
Packaging & store graphics design for fashion retail brand
UI Designer
Oct 2016 - Mar 2017
ED Times
Student Blogger
40+ generalist blogs published at edtimes.in/author/kanika-kalra/