Hi, I'm Kshitij.
I'm a designer and researcher in San Francisco. You're probably wondering why my website is a pond.
why the pond
Growing up, I was fascinated by aquatic life. Underwater, everything moves with intention, but rarely in a straight line. That's become my approach to design. When I'm stuck, I stop forcing the solution. I sketch, map, prototype, and let ideas drift until the right pattern emerges.
how I ended up in research
I trained as a visual communication designer, which meant I started out caring about how things looked. Graduate school in HCI changed that in the best way. I stopped being able to look at an interface without wondering why someone clicked there, hesitated here, or gave up altogether.
Since then, I've spent hundreds of hours observing people interact with emerging technologies: moderating studies with participants testing multilingual speech recognition, supporting household task studies for robot learning, and studying how maintenance teams completed work orders at a housing software startup.
The most valuable insights rarely come from participant #1—they come from participant #214 pausing for three seconds before pressing a button, or trying something no one expected. Those small moments reveal the gap between what we designed and what people actually experience. That's what keeps me coming back to research.
what shapes my taste
My taste is shaped as much by lived experiences as by design itself. I collect inspiration from old buildings with thoughtful details, gallery walls, wayfinding systems, typography on storefronts, and brands with a point of view. The common thread is clarity. Every element feels intentional, and nothing asks for attention louder than it needs to.
how I work
I live by one rule: aiming for perfection will delay the feedback. Ship the sketch. Show the ugly version. The koi on this site swam in circles for three weeks before they swam right, and every version taught me something.
currently
Running research studies in the Bay Area, refining this pond, and always up for a conversation about human-AI interaction, robots, or which fish on this page is my favorite.
I'm open to both research and design roles, especially where they overlap, research that shapes what gets built, not just evaluates it after the fact. I'm particularly drawn to AI/ML and human-centered products. I'm based in the Bay Area, but open to opportunities anywhere in the US.