Nithya Suri

Summary

Ten years in product design, the last three spent building and repairing design systems for products that were already in front of customers. Three systems since 2024, each one measured on adoption rather than on component count: a re-skin of a live analytics product without a rewrite, a library taken from twelve percent engineering adoption to eighty five, and a token set generated from source with a contrast gate in the build. Most of the work is dense professional software, where the user is at work and the screen is the job.

Design systems

1. Michelangelo

   Tellius, 2026

   A token layer over an unchanged React library. 116 semantic tokens, 226 stroke values collapsed to three roles, 338 inline styles removed, 30 chart types restyled. Grid and spacing held fixed; only type and colour moved.

2. Meridian

   Zinnov, 2026

   A system built from scratch and generated from a token source. 382 variables, ten ramps of eleven steps solved to contrast targets in OKLCH, dark mode as a tier two override. Zero AA failures across 180 measured pairs.

3. Proton

   Dr. Reddy's, 2024 to 2025

   An inherited library of 200 components, 90 percent unused, taken to 100 that are all in use. Engineering adoption 12 to 85 percent in three months, handoff two weeks to two days, design to production consistency 60 to 95 percent.

Experience

1. Nov 2023 to present

   Bengaluru, remote

   Swiggles Design

   Principal product designer, self-employed

   I started Swiggles to work on design problems that actually matter, the kind where craft, strategy and real business outcomes are all in the same room. I partner with founders and enterprise teams across FMCG, hospitality and B2B, and every engagement runs end to end: discovery, research, interaction design, UI and delivery, with no handoffs and no middlemen.

   • Built Michelangelo for Tellius: a semantic token layer that re-skinned Vizpads, Kaiya and Missions while the product kept shipping, with the constraint that geometry could not move.
   • Built Meridian for Zinnov: a generated design system with a contrast gate in the build, and the executive brief, timeline, decision queue and evidence surfaces on top of it.
   • Design systems and product for Bambino, Duskmiller and Celebrity Resorts, from brief to shipped.
   • I use AI tools as part of the day to day work: Claude for research synthesis, Figma AI for fast iteration, Cursor for taking designs into code. It means I can move faster than a traditional consultancy without losing the thinking.

2. Apr 2024 to May 2025

   Remote, New Jersey team

   Dr. Reddy's Laboratories

   Lead product designer, contract

   Led design for Panorama 360, an AI portfolio intelligence platform for 100 or more pharmaceutical product managers, and repaired the Proton design system while building on it.

   • Took Proton from 200 or more inconsistent components to 100 in a four phase cleanup: audit by instantiation, consolidate, document when to use and when not to, then rebuild twenty core components with engineering so Figma matched code.
   • Moved engineering adoption from 12 to 85 percent through documentation and governance, and cut design to development handoff time by 40 percent.
   • Established Friday Fundamentals, a weekly slot for coaching, critique and component governance across a three designer team split between India and the USA, and distributed ownership by area.
   • Turned a quarterly reporting dashboard into a daily tool, from once a month to five times a week, with an 87 percent acceptance rate on AI recommendations because every one showed its reasoning.
   • Mentored two mid level designers to demonstrable advancement and 95 percent design consistency.

3. Feb 2023 to Oct 2023

   Dubai, on site

   Talabat, Delivery Hero

   Product designer II, full-time

   Subscription growth for the Pro membership, and a mobile component contribution to the design system.

   • Redesigned the Pro subscription experience around personal value: MRR conversion from 4 to 7 percent, Pro order share from 11 to 16 percent in one quarter, trial sign ups up 10 percent.
   • Specified the free delivery progress bar for the basket down to anatomy, spacing tokens, motion as a rate, acceptance criteria for every state, and an Arabic mirror drawn beside the English.
   • Created the Marshmallow pattern library, enabling 40 percent faster development across fintech features.
   • Led research from 30 or more interviews through A/B, guerrilla and Optimizely testing.

4. Jan 2022 to Jan 2023

   Remote

   Dr. Reddy's Laboratories

   Senior product designer, contract

   First engagement with the pharmaceutical portfolio team, ahead of the Panorama 360 rebuild.

   • B2B product design for internal portfolio and planning tools, which became the brief for the later lead role.

5. Sep 2020 to Dec 2021

   Remote, Seattle team

   Zenoti

   Senior user experience designer

   Removed the onboarding bottleneck that kept small businesses off an enterprise beauty and wellness platform.

   • Onboarding from one week to 18 minutes and adoption from three to four weeks to two days, with a 78 percent completion rate against a 45 percent target.
   • 60 percent increase in small business self service adoption and a 20 percent drop in support cost.
   • Rebuilt twenty core components with an engineering team of twelve for a tablet first experience, and set up a component ownership model across the distributed design team.

Earlier

1. Sep 2019 to Aug 2020

   Belong.co · Manager, user experience design, full-time · Bengaluru, on site

   Ran design for a hiring platform, having grown into the role from the consultancy below.

2. Jan 2019 to Aug 2019

   Belong.co · UX design consultant, contract · Bengaluru

   Full time design consultant across UI and UX, pitch decks and social collateral. The work translated into the design manager role.

3. Mar 2019

   Woxsen School of Arts and Design · Guest lecturer, contract · Hyderabad

   Taught History of Design for one module to twenty students, and turned a workshop module into a History of Design exhibit.

4. Aug 2016 to Apr 2018

   Tata Elxsi · Visual designer, UI · Bengaluru

   Interface design in a large engineering services studio. The start of ten years in product.

5. Apr 2015 to Jul 2016

   Whimaway · Creative team lead · Hyderabad

6. Sep 2014 to Apr 2015

   Idiom Design and Consulting · Designer · Bengaluru

Skills

Design systems

Token architecture in primitive, semantic and component tiers · Figma variables and modes · component sets with variant properties · when to use and when not to documentation · contrast and accessibility gating · governance rituals and adoption measurement · deprecation with a date

Tools

Figma, advanced · Storybook review · Cursor · Rive · Figma Make · Claude · Miro · Adobe Creative Cloud · HTML and CSS · React components · design system code documentation

Research

Jobs to be done · contextual inquiry · diary studies · A/B and guerrilla testing · Mixpanel, Amplitude, Hotjar, Optimizely, Maze, UserTesting

Languages

English and Hindi, fluent · Telugu, native · Kannada and Tamil, conversational