India

Graphic Design

UX Design

UI/ Visual Design

Branding and Identity Design

Product Design

Copywriting

UX Research

Content Strategy

Certification course

BA Graphic Design

Diploma in Graphic design & Advertising

Menaka Chandrasekhar

UXfolio

Head of Design

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Critical-thinking

Figma

Adobe Creative Suite

Jan 2024 onwards
- Led the design initiatives for enhancing the property agent search experience.
- Collaborated closely with product, marketing, data, and engineering stakeholders to conceptualize and execute a targeted campaign aimed at property sellers in Singapore.
- Redesigned the agent search and profile experiences to elevate agents' credibility and trustworthiness among potential sellers, buyers, or renters connecting with them through PropertyGuru.

Apr 2021 - Dec 2023 
- Led a team of 4 designers in shaping product strategy and implementing core property-seeker experiences across web and app platforms across 4 markets (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia), including home search, listing pages, user profile and activity dashboard, articles, guides, and user-generated content forums.
- Established design rituals and critiques to review user flows and visual design regularly, ensuring coherence and quality.
- Partnered with product managers and engineering leads to prioritize projects across multiple squads every quarter, coordinating resource allocation and task breakdowns into bi-weekly sprint cycles for timely delivery.
- Conducted user surveys/ interviews, moderated usability tests, and workshops partnering with the research team to identify challenges and opportunities for product improvement.
- Collaborated with the design systems team to set up our foundational Figma library and UI component kit in Storybook for consumer-facing design components.

https://adplist.org/mentors/menaka-chandrasekhar

As a founding designer at PropertyGuru Finance (PGF), my responsibilities included:
- Establishing new design direction and user experience strategy for PGF's home finance offerings, in collaboration with brand and product teams. This involved creating a distinctive sub-brand integrating key PropertyGuru elements while introducing home finance experiences.
- Designing key user acquisition features such as home loan search, affordability calculator, and mortgage repayment calculators.
- Partnering with product managers and user researchers to define user personas and map their journeys for home financing, enhancing our understanding of users for future product strategy.
- Contributing to product growth marketing; designed transactional and targeted email campaigns, and managed freelance graphic designers in creating assets for social media campaigns.

- Collaborated closely with the brand team to establish a new look for the consumer-facing home page in line with a re-branding exercise for digital and offline touchpoints.

- Led the redesign of the search listing cards, enhancing information hierarchy and visual design on the consumer-facing front while enabling more effective monetization opportunities with property agents.

Client: Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse sought to solidify its position as a leading digital bank, aligning with evolving customer expectations and proactively addressing emerging fintech disruption. The Huge design team was tasked to design the Digital Private Banking (DPB) platform across the web and apps. My responsibilities on this project included:
- Translating business requirements and user needs into innovative and valuable design features. I designed experiences for the DPB Dashboard, Credit Suisse Invest, and client onboarding tool for the bank’s internal users.

- Partnered with the design lead to identify the MVP product features, craft responsive designs, and deliver detailed HTML prototypes on Axure for client presentations and user-testing studies.
- Co-developed user research plans, facilitated workshops and conducted user interviews with our client partners.
- Meticulously documented CSS style guidelines and interaction specifications. This was coupled with a visual design pattern library for a seamless handoff to the client-side engineering team.

Client: SKII x Proctor & Gamble
P&G wanted to appeal to young professional women who care about their skin but are also intrigued by how technology can help make their lives better. They reimagined various products, business approaches, and services in a strategic shift to revolutionize customer engagement. 

One notable innovation was their digital skincare concierge app, tailored for Microsoft Surface tablet devices used by SK-II's beauty consultants. This intuitive tool streamlines skin counseling and appointment bookings for customers at storefronts, enhancing service delivery.

- Enhanced the calendar appointment booking and cancellation flows on the skin concierge app, ensuring alignment with established design guidelines.
- Documented designs for handoff to the client’s engineering teams in Japan and China.

Was part of the experience design team, that provided software consulting and development services on client projects with JTC Corporation, GIC & Resorts World Sentosa.

- Liaised with client stakeholders and internal teams to fully understand the business goals, requirements, and scope of work.
- Managed the design and delivery of assets to the offshore development teams. Design deliverables included high-fidelity wireframes, visual designs, HTML prototypes, and conducting usability tests & debugging during the development phase.
- Collaborated closely with solution architects to craft design proposals for client projects and new business pitches, ensuring alignment with project objectives.
- Worked closely with project managers, development teams, and junior designers to ensure the timely delivery of projects.

I consulted with a US-based Human Resources consultancy to overhaul their business website, focusing on enhancing user experience and content relevance.

- Conducted remote stakeholder interviews to understand the requirements for the redesign.
- Conducted a comprehensive heuristic evaluation of the existing website and content, pinpointing areas for improvement.
- Developed user personas and crafted a light content strategy for the website, informed by research insights.
- Created clickable prototypes to showcase the envisioned flow of new web pages and content, aligning with the updated site architecture.

Worked on an array of digital projects for SapientNitro’s regional clients in APAC while part of the design studio team based out of Singapore. Some noteworthy projects:

Client: Unilever - House of Lux
Created responsive web designs for ‘House of Lux’, a social platform for the brand’s fans to discover and share 'fabulously feminine' things. It featured a digital house for users to learn more about the brand's Skin Treats fragrances and explore customized content based on the usage and feelings that each of the fragrances evoked.

Client: Unilever - Paddlepop
Responsible for art direction and visual designs for ‘Paddlepop Adventures’ in 2014 & 2015. This entertainment portal was targeted at 8-10-year-olds to watch episodes of the characters and play games.
I also worked on marketing material for the portal including banners, wallpapers, game logos, YouTube channel art, and game icons for their mobile app.

Clients: Lane Crawford & Moet Hennessey
Designed user interface elements and interactions for their responsive e-commerce websites.

Big Bad Office Quiz
Designed an interactive online quiz - as part of SapientNitro’s Christmas greetings to their clients and employees. The ‘Big Bad Office Quiz’ featured 6 quirky personas that you may run into at an office party. Apart from the quiz website, I also designed and animated the quiz characters.

Worked closely with product leadership and development teams on redesigning the ShopGuru mobile app experience for shopper rewards.

Highlights
- Designed a landing page for the ShopGuru app, making it easy for users to discover key features and download the app.
- Audited existing screens & suggested UX improvements.
- Introduced a new user onboarding tutorial with custom illustrations.
- Created handoff-ready assets for iOS app development.

- Designed UI and marketing material for the ‘Bubbly’ app, a social voice service that worked across feature phones and smartphones in southeast Asia for Android and iOS.

- Designed custom icons and voice filter experience that allowed users to apply their recorded voice messages.

Designed interfaces for Replaid’s apps and their client projects across iOS and Android platforms.

Worked on visual designs for local and global SME clients. Designed corporate identities, publications (books, magazines, and annual reports), packaging for food products, marketing collaterals (posters, brochures) & simple HTML newsletters.

Created visual designs for corporate identity, packaging, marketing collateral (brochures / flyers etc.) and Illustrations for printed products (bags / t-shirts).

Previous clients include:
Jhola Co. (Mumbai), The Bflat Bar (Bangalore), Woofilicious (Bangalore), Rentoys (Bangalore), HIA Technologies (Bangalore), Krishna 13 Ristorante (Rome), Rungarung (Bangalore), Bangalore Kidney Foundation (Bangalore), Subjiwala (Bangalore), Coffee Day Xpress (Bangalore).

Menaka Chandrasekhar🇮🇳