Rahul Sharma

Head of Design for banking, insurance and capability centres. Research-led CX, human-AI experience, and design systems at national scale.

I turn human behaviour into products that people trust.

Scientist first. 16 years of research in cognitive science and HCI to understand how people think, decide and trust.
Designer by craft. UX, CX and Human-AI Experience for BFSI, Global Capability Centres and Tech across India, the Middle East and the US.
Storyteller by nature. I turn research into narratives that move users, teams and boardrooms, the reason work gets funded and shipped.
Empathetic leader. Fluent in Tech, Product and Business, so design becomes the bridge between them and the people it serves.
Systems at scale. UX4G and shadcn/studio, two of the world’s most adopted open-source design systems, reaching a billion users.

See the work LinkedIn

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Leadership decks

Design as the bridge between tech, product, business and customers.

Product Design & CX are the Bridge

Tech Product Business Marketing Users UX

Way of working · three playbooksHow the team plans, runs and talks: written down, live and yours to read.

Playbook 01STAKEHOLDER WORKSHOPSWorkshop Planning with StakeholdersPlan · Run · Analyse · Close · Follow-up, with a meeting-vs-workshop decider.Plan a workshop Playbook 02TEAM COLLABORATIONDesign × Research, the collaboration playbookOne UX team, five crafts, one backlog. And the rituals that kept it talking.See the rituals Playbook 03MY WAY OF WORKINGWay of WorkingStakeholder research, end to end: mapping, interviews, thematic analysis and reporting.How I work

Page · Design organisation

01 / 03

Design Organisation

How a horizontal Digital Customer Experience practice was built: five practices, one intake, one score, 25+ people. Plus a recommender for your own team structure.

Org designCareer laddersOperating model

Open the deck

Workshop · Experience analytics

02 / 03

DCX 101: the workshop

The DCX onboarding workshop for business and product teams: definitions, first principles, five practices and four hands-on experience-analytics exercises that show a fix shipping in three days.

Experience analyticsHands-on exercises3-day fixes

Open the workshop

Deck · Customer experience

03 / 03

CX Playbook

The customer experience playbook developed to standardise best practices, embed customer-centricity and guide teams through end-to-end CX initiatives.

Best practicesCustomer-centricityEnd-to-end CX

Open the playbook

Tools & methods

Figma

Sketch CcAdobe Creative Cloud Adobe Target Lovable

Claude MMedallia

Hotjar Power BI

React

Node.js XMicrosoft Excel PPowerPoint Agile / Lean UX

Scrum

Certifications

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt · Skillsoft, 2025 Generative AI for Project Managers · PMI, 2025 Agile PLM 9 Certified Implementation Specialist · 2022 All-Source Analysis Level 2 (ASA-2) · Palo Alto Networks, 2020 Certified User Experience Analyst (CXA) · 2021 Certified User Experience Specialist (CUSX) · Pelican.ai, 2021 Board Certified Specialist, Behavioral & Cognitive Psychology · 2012

Teaching

Employability.life, a Federation University Australia company

Guest facultyFederation University Australia and its India wing, Employability.life, teaching design, research and human-AI experience to the next generation.

Selected work

Twelve products and a group rebrand, across India and the GCC.

IIFL · 5Paisa Capital · 2025 – now

5paisa 2.0: a trading ecosystem rebuilt from the ground up

Stocks, F&O, mutual funds and IPOs redesigned across Android, iOS and Web on one design system, with a 25+ member design organisation built to run it.

3 platforms25+ design orgHAX pattern library

Google Play → · Figma case study →

Bajaj Finserv · National Lead · 2023 – 2025

Bajaj Finserv app: CX for 31.2 million monthly users

Real-time journey dashboards, an ML personalisation engine and the 2023–25 Product Vision that unlocked ₹750 Cr for AI-enabled transformation.

−40% friction+28% cross-sell+60.7% MAU

Google Play →

Bajaj Finserv · BFL 3.0 · 2024 – 2025

fin.AI: designing the experience layer of the first Finance + AI company

Conversational, agentic, vision, content and data AI woven into lending and payments journeys, with human-in-the-loop patterns, explainability and consent, so 31 million customers can trust what the AI does for them.

Conversational AIAgentic AIHuman-in-the-loop

BFL 3.0, a fin.AI company →

Bajaj Finserv ecosystem · 2023 – 2025

Bajaj Broking: demat and trading for first-time investors

Paperless account opening, stocks, F&O, SIPs and IPOs on the same design system as the super-app, so lending, payments and investing read as one brand.

7 entities, one systemResearch-led onboarding

Google Play →

RAKBANK · Design system · 2018

RAKBANK: one design system and brand guideline behind 170+ digital services

A bilingual EN/AR component library, type and colour system and brand rules that carry retail and Islamic banking in one app, from onboarding to Ask Rai.

EN / AR mirroredRetail + IslamicBrand guidelines

Google Play →

Critical River · Dubai · 2020 – 2023

Nakheel: a property portfolio managed from one app

Owner and tenant journeys (payments, documents, modification requests, amenities, move-in and move-out) mapped into one coherent product for Dubai’s master developer.

Service design−70% status meetings

Google Play →

Critical River · Tradetron · 2020 – 2023

Tradetron: no-code algo trading for retail investors

Strategy builder, backtesting and a marketplace of ready algos, deployable to 35 brokers across 8 exchanges: complex multi-leg logic made legible for traders who don’t write code.

No-code builder35 brokers · 8 exchanges1.5M trades / month

Google Play → · tradetron.tech →

Yachtingverse · Marine services · GCC

Yachtingverse: yacht management for crew and boat owners

Two audiences, one app: owners manage vessels, suppliers and planning; crew find jobs and build careers, with live weather woven into every decision at sea.

Crew + owner rolesMarketplaceWeather-aware

Google Play →

InCred Money · Consulting · Mumbai

InCred Money: a new logo and design system for a wealth-tech group

Brand identity and a shared design system spanning the InCred Money app, stocks, F&O, IPOs, ETFs and digital gold, and InCred Unlisted, the pre-IPO platform trusted by 1.5 lakh investors.

New logoDesign systemApp + web

Google Play → · incredunlisted.com →

Majid Al Futtaim · Carrefour · GCC

MAF Carrefour: a digital illustration library for the region’s largest retailer

One illustration system for the online-shopping app and web: empty states, onboarding, categories and campaigns, built on usability research and the Conversational AI Playbook that shapes how the brand talks to shoppers.

Illustration libraryUsability researchEN / AR

Google Play →

Majid Al Futtaim · HyperMax · Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait

HyperMax: a new hypermarket brand, live in-app from day one

When MAF replaced Carrefour in four markets, shoppers had to switch without losing anything: groceries, electronics and fashion, 60-minute Express delivery, nutrition facts on every food item and HyMax loyalty, carried over intact.

Brand transition60-min ExpressHyMax loyalty

Google Play →

Emirates · Aviation · Dubai

The Emirates App: booking to boarding pass for 150+ destinations

Usability and competitive-benchmarking research across the travel journey (search and book, manage trip, digital boarding pass, real-time gate and baggage updates, Skywards) for one of the world’s most-used airline apps.

Usability researchCompetitive benchmarkEnd-to-end journey

Google Play →

Featured · Bajaj Finserv · Brand identity · Launched FY2026

One Bajaj : The refreshed group logo and an identity system for eleven financial brands

Under the renewed Bajaj brand architecture, the Bajaj Finserv logo was reimagined: familiar yet fresh, anchored in trust. Every subsidiary, from Finance and Housing Finance to Life, General Insurance, Health, Broking, Asset Management, Markets, Alts, Ventures and Tech.AI, received a distinct mark that still reads as one group. It replaces the earlier agency-built identity.

12 marks, one architecture11 subsidiariesGroup-wide rollout

Refreshed identity. Annual Report FY26 → · Previous identity →

Systems & platforms

An AI-native operating system and two open-source design systems used at national scale.

Descrial · Live for TresVista · 2025 – now

Descrial OS: an AI-native workflow operating system for financial services

Intake, routing, review and reporting on one platform, carrying India’s first HAX framework: conversational, predictive, explainable and agentic AI under human-in-the-loop governance.

HAX design systemAgentic AILive deployment

tresvista.descrial.com → · Prototype → · Figma →

Government of India · NeGD / MeitY

UX4G Design System 3.0: designed for a billion citizens

Used across Government of India and Indian-subcontinent government services: a fully tokenised foundation, dark theme, 36 service patterns and 20+ new components for web and Flutter, with accessibility, consent and service-level accountability built in.

50+ components36 patternsGIGW 3.0

ux4g.gov.in →

Open source · Design system leadership

shadcn/studio: an open-source design system, led end to end

The open-source system Fortune 500 design systems build on: component and animated variants, blocks and 25+ templates on shadcn/ui, with a theme generator, Figma UI kit, drag-and-drop builder and MCP server.

Open source25+ templatesFigma ↔ code

shadcnstudio.com → · GitHub →

UX ROI calculator

What does a design team pay back?

Eight sliders, one live P&L graph. Put in your people, your product and your team, and watch the business case for design draw itself, month by month.

Open the calculator

Time better UX gives back

ADX Lab · runs on your device

Patent pending

Drop in any screen. Get its score, its problems and the fix.

ADX folds three lenses into one number: the behaviour a screen will trigger, where attention actually lands, and the ten usability heuristics. Screens, recordings, banners, print and product photos, analysed entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Open ADX Lab

About

Research-led. AI-enabled. Built to scale.

Research-led

Enterprise Research Operations, Voice of Customer and mixed-methods research feeding real-time journey dashboards and A/B experimentation.

Human-AI Experience (HAX)

Conversational, predictive, explainable and agentic AI with human-in-the-loop governance: interaction patterns, confidence indicators, transparency and consent controls.

Organisation & systems builder

Two design & research functions founded and scaled (25+ and 30+ people); design systems at national scale. UX4G 3.0 for the Government of India and the open-source shadcn/studio.

Education

A Master of Design from IIT Bombay (2012), one of India’s most selective design schools, built on a B.Tech. in Computer Science. The combination is the point: I read a system architecture and a user interview with equal fluency, so design decisions land in code exactly as intended.

Head of Design – Trading App & Digital Products

IIFL Securities & 5Paisa Capital · Bengaluru

Ground-up redesign of 5paisa 2.0; India’s first HAX framework for BFSI; 25+ member design organisation.

National Lead – Digital CX, UX & Product Design

Bajaj Finserv · Pune

31.2M-MAU ecosystem; friction −40% QoQ; MAU +60.7%; ₹750 Cr AI vision approved; 30+ member team.

Head of Product Design & UX

Critical River · Dubai, UAE

US$6.8M consulting revenue; RAKBANK, Nakheel, Jordan Kuwait Bank, Uber Finance, Infineon.

Head of UX Research

WayCool Foods · Chennai

Vernacular-first agri-tech for 150,000+ farmers; adoption +42%; voice experiences in 12 Indian languages.

UX Design Researcher

Augray · Milwaukee, USA

Research for Emirates, Emaar, HERE Maps, Souq.com; authored the Conversational AI Playbook.

Recommendations

What leaders and teams say.

“ Recommendations from the leaders, clients and teams I have worked with, in their own words, on LinkedIn. Read the recommendations →

Let’s talk

Open to Head of Design, VP Design and Chief Experience roles.

BFSI, GCC and tech. Based in Bengaluru, open to relocating.

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