Vani's Portfolio

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Vani

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Vani Bhatnagar

Product designer with the core aim of creating

user delights with logic and evidence.

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Open to work

ABOUT

I design products by designing the decisions behind them. I’m a product designer and strategist working at the intersection of behavioral science, systems thinking, and execution. My work spans 0→1 builds and large-scale systems—from shaping tools used in rural India to designing for global UN initiatives. I focus on ambiguous, high-stakes problems where product direction is unclear, constraints are real, and design is expected to lead. Based in New York City. Looking for teams that treat product design as a driver of strategy.

EXPERTISE

I operate across the full product lifecycle—problem framing, research, synthesis, interaction design, and shipping.

Product & UX Design

Design Research

0→1 Product Strategy

Storytelling

Currently thinking about

AI is changing what questions I should be asking

When a prototype takes two hours instead of two weeks, you stop asking what should we build and start asking which of these five directions is actually right. That's a different skill. That's where I want to be sharp.

01 Research

Curation as part of research

Instead of months of desk research, I feed curated UGC, reports, and domain content into NotebookLM first. It surfaces patterns and contradictions before I talk to a single user — so my interviews are sharper from day one.

02 Planning

Brainstorm to PRD in one session

I use AI to run divergent ideation and then immediately pressure-test it into a structured product requirements doc. What used to take a week of alignment meetings now takes a focused afternoon.

03 User Testing

Conducting research with prototypes

I build functional prototypes with AI Studio/Figma Make early — before the design is ready. Getting something real in front of users fast is more valuable than a polished Figma file that hasn't been tested.

04 Synthesis and Strategy

Synthesise at scale

Thematic coding, affinity mapping, insight clustering — AI compresses the mechanical parts of synthesis so the actual interpretive work gets more time. The judgment stays human. The sorting doesn't have to.

05 Prototype and Ship

Design and handoff in code

I use Claude Code to write Figma plugin code for branding and wireframe generation — bridging the gap between what I want and what takes forever to build manually.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Complexity is not an excuse for confusion

I've worked on products used by UN agencies, governments, and rural communities. If something is hard to understand, that's a design problem — not an inherent property of the domain.

The work needs a story

Design that can't be explained doesn't ship — or doesn't stick. I write, I present, and I pitch. Communication is part of the craft, not a tax on it.

Disagree, then commit

I'll push back if I think something is wrong. Once a direction is chosen, I'm all in. Teams move faster when people stop protecting their ideas and start executing together.

Evidence over instinct

I trust my gut when I have to. But I'd rather have a user interview, a test, or a behavioral insight backing the decision. Strong opinions, loosely held, tightly tested.

TEACHING

Spreading the love for design

Some of the most clarifying work I've done has been in academia. It forces you to understand something well enough to hand it to someone else. Formats vary from TA-ship to workshops.