Rachana Mandal.
I design productsthat have to handlereal-world complexity.
The real problem usually isn't the interface — it's getting a room full of smart people to agree on what the problem actually is. I help with that.
Work
01
Redesigning the bulk SIM activation experience from a manual process to an automated one.
Thousands of SIM activations, processed manually. One invalid record was enough to restart the entire process.
02
Bringing Clarity to Warehouse Operations Across Distributed Teams
Different versions of data existed across teams in the same system. They required a single source of truth and share it across teams — without losing hours to status coordination.
03
Accelerating Disaster Recovery Response Through Automation
Hurricane season hits, and entire neighbourhoods are devastated. Our client on the front lines of disaster recovery faced their biggest roadblock: legacy tools — fragmented, error-prone, and slow when every hour counted.
Writing
Thinking in public. Notes, essays, observations.
Type — Essay · Long read
The quiet devaluation of effort
How effort is made to look wasteful. On sitting with problems when tools are fast enough to make that feel inefficient — and what gets lost when we skip the work.
Type — Finance · Observational note
Entry & Exit in Digital Lending
Instant approval on the way in; opaque failures on the way out. When onboarding is built for speed and exit is shaped by risk, users meet an informational asymmetry.
Type — Education · Long read
The System Behind “Gate-kept” Degrees
The economy built the gate — not designers. On scarcity, credentials, and why the debate about design school often misses who actually holds the keys.
About me
The approach
- DiscoverWhere is the real problem?
- SynthesiseWhat does it mean?
- FrameWhat is the right question?
- DesignWhat creates clarity?
- PrototypeDoes it hold up?
- ShipThen learn again.
I got into design because I couldn't stop asking why things work the way they do. Turns out that question is harder to answer than it looks — and a lot more fun.
THE WORK
My work so far has been across B2B, SaaS and enterprise platforms — in the form of internal tools and operational workflows where the system works at a slightly more complex level.
I love this kind of complexity. The job is to make it legible — to hold the messy parts long enough that the team can find the right tradeoffs together. Walls, boards, hard questions, lots of post-its. Figma comes later.
HOW I THINK
I tend to pay attention to rooms — not whether an idea landed, but how people are processing it. What helps a stakeholder genuinely engage with something versus politely nod past it.
I learn a lot from the people I work with — engineers, PMs, ops folks who know the system in ways I don't. The design usually gets stronger once I understand what the room is actually thinking.
Outside of work I illustrate, make paintings and write essays. I take utmost delight in learning new things that add more perspective to the way I look at the world.
BACKGROUND
HCI at masters level, computer science before that. Behavioural science has been a running interest ever since — it shapes how I frame problems more than any tool does.
M.Des · HCI / B.E · Computer Science / Behavioural Science
AVAILABILITY
Open to opportunities