Designing with logic, led by curiosity

About me

Across startups and scaled platforms, I’ve spent my career helping teams turn complex product challenges into clear, scalable solutions. I work across strategy and execution, stepping in hands-on when needed, shaping direction when it matters, and moving ideas from concept to shipped reality.

My experience spans early-stage startups, 0→1 builds, and enterprise environments across healthcare, fintech, SaaS, and AI, including Elevance Health, Change Healthcare, Microsoft, and Tata Consultancy. Across these contexts, I’ve applied systems thinking and data-informed decision-making to reduce friction, improve adoption, and build products that hold up under real operational constraints.

Why I love what I do

As a Product Design Leader, I have always believed that design is about making sense of complex things, not just making them look good. Over time, it became the lens through which I understand people, systems, behavior, and now AI. It’s how I connect the dots between insight, execution, and impact.

Design quickly became more than a craft. It became a way of thinking, a discipline of exploring, questioning, aligning, and shaping. Not just screens, but decisions. Not just interfaces, but interactions, workflows, and outcomes.

As Tim Brown once said, “Design is a team sport.” I’ve seen that firsthand. My job isn’t just to design what people interact with; it’s to help teams see how design shapes behavior, trust, and business outcomes across the system.

A lifelong pull toward design

I didn’t discover design in design school; I discovered it with charcoal and a sketchpad. My brother noticed I had an eye for detail and challenged me to try doing the same on a screen. One painfully slow custom-built PC, an early copy of Photoshop, and too many late nights later, I was hooked. The joy of making something from nothing changed my life.

Early work in print, advertising, and interactive media taught me that design isn’t just about what you see; it’s about how it makes people feel, decide, and act. That’s when pixels turned into empathy, behavior, and intention.

Working across agencies, startups, consulting, and my own design studio eventually exposed me to enterprise-level challenges, where good design wasn’t just about craft; it was about process, coordination, and how all the moving parts connect.

That’s when I realized:
I wasn’t designing screens anymore. I was designing systems.

From making screens to modeling systems

The real shift in my career wasn’t learning design thinking; it was learning to think in systems.

Leading initiatives across healthcare, fintech, HR tech, and enterprise SaaS taught me that successful products don’t come from clever UI; they emerge when design, data, operations, AI capability, and human workflows align with purpose.

That shift didn’t take me away from the craft; it sharpened it. I stayed close to the work: mapping journeys, designing workflows, prototyping real solutions, validating them with users, and building Figma-based systems that teams could actually scale. Over time, my scope expanded from designing interfaces to shaping and shipping brand-aligned experience systems, the kind that unify product, workflow, and identity across teams, platforms, and touchpoints.

Whether collaborating with founders, product managers, researchers, engineers, data scientists, or AI teams, I’ve learned that my real value lies in designing meaningful design solutions, the kind that aligns teams, reveals blind spots, and unlocks momentum.

Where craft turns into influence

My path from designer to leader was built in the spaces where design, business, and technology had to meet and actually work together. From co-founding my design studio, XD Theory, to designing rich media experiences at Microsoft, I learned early how to wear multiple hats: designer, strategist, project lead, people leader, and partner.

That mindset carried into enterprise environments. At Change Healthcare, Elevance Health, and Gusto, I evolved from practitioner to design leader, guiding teams, aligning stakeholders, and building scalable frameworks that connected business goals, design systems, data, and experience strategy.

Leadership, for me, isn’t about hierarchy or titles; it’s about creating the conditions for momentum. That means fostering cross-functional trust, building collaborative design cultures, and aligning teams around a shared sense of purpose. When that happens, decisions get sharper, design gets more intentional, and the work starts to actually move.

Where I am now

Today, my work centers on building AI-driven SaaS products that automate complexity responsibly and hold up in real-world use. I focus on designing human-in-the-loop systems that earn trust, perform reliably, and improve over time, connecting design craft, human insight, system behavior, and data to drive adoption and measurable outcomes.

Just as important, I care deeply about how teams do the work. I invest in cross-functional trust, mentor designers and partners across disciplines, and help teams move from ambiguity to confident execution. That combination of clarity, care, and accountability is what allows products to ship well and cultures to last.

What comes next — The next chapter

I’ve always been drawn to a question:

What happens when design, technology, insight, and AI don’t just coexist, but actively inform, challenge, and elevate one another?

That’s the challenge I’m now pursuing with intent. Not just designing better interfaces or smarter automation, but mastering AI Systems Thinking: stitching together discovery, design, data, operations, and governance into one continuous learning loop. A system that doesn’t just work, it improves, listens, and delivers real value.

I’m currently open to contract, fractional, and embedded roles where I can help teams solve complex product challenges, shape and ship thoughtful solutions, and drive outcomes that matter.

If my focus and approach resonate, I’d love to connect: manishdua@outlook.com

Awards & recognition

G2 Momentum Leader – Gusto (2025)
During my tenure, I contributed to key growth initiatives, including improvements to the referral experience, tiered incentives, and in-product engagement strategies.

Gold Stevie / American Business Award – Anthem Digital Experience (2024)
Awarded for advancing digital engagement and experience innovation. My team helped shape core workflows and improve platform usability and accessibility.

Merit Digital Health Award – Healthy Blue NC Medicaid (2023)
Honored for improving Medicaid member experience through thoughtful UX and service design. I guided experience strategy and cross-functional collaboration across digital teams.

Frost & Sullivan – Customer Value Leadership Award (2021)
Awarded for platform impact and customer outcomes. Played a key role in shaping user experience strategy across teams working on the platform.

Frost & Sullivan – Enabling Technology Leadership Award (2019)
Change Healthcare was recognized for advancing digital transformation in healthcare payments. Supported the platform’s design vision, collaboration frameworks, and product experience strategy.