01About
I am Manik Madaan, a product design leader based in Delhi NCR. For more than a decade, I have worked across freelance practice, design studios, agencies, startups, consulting, digital products, and design leadership.
I have lived, studied, and worked in India and Italy, and spent time studying in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Working across countries, cultures, and disciplines changed more than my understanding of design. It changed the number of perspectives I could imagine.
Today I am most useful when a problem is complicated, the system is difficult to see, and another feature is unlikely to fix it. I ask questions, look for the problem beneath the request, and try to make the complexity understandable enough for a team to act.
The tools keep changing. Photoshop became After Effects. Static screens became prototypes. Prototypes became systems. AI is now helping me move from an interface to a functioning product. The tools matter, but they are still tools. What has stayed with me is the ability to notice, question, connect, simplify, and make.
02How I work
Design began for me as something visual. I cared about balance, typography, colour, and the strange satisfaction of moving something by a few pixels until it finally felt right.
I was arranging pixels. I had never asked who they were for.
Design was also how something worked, whom it worked for, what it asked of them, what it made easier, and what it quietly made difficult. That discovery changed the direction of my life.
A brief names a request. People give it context.
Consider
Design is not neutral. Every decision makes something easier to see and something else easier to ignore.
Words matter. First impressions matter. A beautiful interface can create trust, but appearance cannot rescue a product that misunderstands its user. Before solving the brief, I ask what the brief has already decided for us, who benefits from that framing, and what has been left outside it.
Empathize
Users reveal needs, frustrations, habits, and context. They should not have to prescribe the product.
The user comes first, but empathy is not a feature poll. My responsibility is to understand someone’s reality closely, then step back far enough to avoid confusing my first idea with their best outcome.
Finding the problem takes more than counting what happened.
Define
Before adding something, I ask whether we are solving the right problem at the right level.
Is the failure inside the interface, the process, the organization, or the system connecting them? Sometimes the most valuable design work is not producing an answer. It is making the situation clear enough for the right answer to emerge.
The OMS case studyResearch
Data can show what happened. It does not always explain what the experience meant.
William Bruce Cameron wrote that not everything that counts can be counted. Data can reveal where people stop, return, convert, or fail. It may not fully explain hesitation, trust, embarrassment, emotional effort, or the moment someone decides a product is not meant for them. I use data, research, conversations, observation, context, and experience together. None deserves to become the whole truth by itself.
Craft and release need room in the same decision.
Design
Simplicity does not mean pretending the underlying complexity has disappeared.
I introduce complexity only when it is necessary and accept that some complexity cannot be removed. Sometimes friction protects people. Sometimes “less” becomes empty. A complicated system may need an honest interface rather than the illusion that it is simple.
The Placement Hub case studyValidate
Done is better than perfect when done means ready to learn.
I care about details because they influence comprehension, confidence, and behaviour. I also know that perfection can become another way of avoiding release. A released product can meet reality, be misunderstood, and improve. An unreleased perfect product can only remain an idea.
A brief names a request. People give it context.
01 / 03
Consider
Design is not neutral. Every decision makes something easier to see and something else easier to ignore.
Empathize
Users reveal needs, frustrations, habits, and context. They should not have to prescribe the product.
Swipe the card away, or tap to turn it over.
The six-part structure and the principle titles are drawn from Irene Pereyra’s Universal Principles of UX. The interpretations and applications are my own.
03Leadership
How hard can you push before you take the joy out?
I have high standards for myself and for the designers I lead. I also know that improvement achieved through emotional exhaustion is not good leadership. People do their best creative work when they feel challenged, trusted, supported, and able to enjoy making.
I can be demanding. That makes it my responsibility to notice when the next improvement leaves too little room for appreciation.
Testimonial slot
A short, specific answer from someone who worked with you, for example a designer you led.
04Experience
My career has crossed studios, agencies, startups, education, manufacturing and independent practice, in India and in Italy. It was never a neat climb from one title to the next. Each room widened what I thought design could influence.
05Education
Design is how things look.Dropped outafter 2 years
The NorthCap UniversityWhat I believed before design school. Two years of mechanical engineering. Manufacturing processes were the only classes that felt alive, and I dropped out because design held my attention in a way engineering did not.
06SabbaticalAug 2024 – Dec 2025
After Novatr, I took a sabbatical. I had spent years building a career, and from the outside it looked like it was working. The work paid well, and I kept finishing products, but I had stopped feeling that I was adding value. The joy that made me choose design had worn thin, and I did not want to carry that exhaustion into another company. So I did not go looking for the next job. I let the break be a real one.
What trading taught me
A sound process can still lose.
The risk, set before the trade
During the break I traded futures and options, with real money, and I made and lost it. It taught me to think differently about probability, risk and emotional judgment: to set the risk before the trade, to judge a decision apart from its outcome, and to notice how quickly ego turns one loss into a bigger one. It is not design work, but it changed how I decide.
What the time held
More recently, AI gave me a familiar kind of excitement. I could move beyond the interface and build more of a working product myself. It felt less like returning to an old practice, and more like finding another boundary I could now cross.
Illustrations generated with AI, inspired by the work of Muhammad Sajid on Dribbble (opens in a new tab)
A note before you go
A title. A timeline. A few principles. The accepted ingredients for knowing a person on the internet. Everything above is true. None of it is the whole story.
But do you really want to get to know me?
