Product Designer,
from customer insight
TO PRODUCT DIRECTION
I turn customer and business questions into clear product choices, thoughtful digital experiences, and prototypes that help teams move forward.
01 WHO IS SMRITHI
BUILDER.
Thinker.
Designer.
Born in Chennai, studying at University of Southern California. Architect by training, founder by instinct, product designer by practice.
I've designed brand and customer experiences from zero, led product design for healthcare, fintech, and enterprise clients at Firebrand Labs, and shipped end-to-end digital products from research through launch. Each chapter added something new: the spatial empathy of architecture, the consumer instincts of founding, the craft and rigour of professional design practice.
I'm drawn to the intersection of deep user understanding, business context, and thoughtful design.
THE THROUGH-LINE
I like getting close to what people need, then helping shape products that work for them and also make sense for the business.
02 SELECT WORK
01
FULL CYCLE PRODUCT DESIGN
TABLE4TWO
A social dining platform that matches urban professionals through shared interests for blind-date style meals at curated restaurants.
02
CONCEPT PRODUCT
FURTASTIC
An all-in-one mobile app for pet owners combining health records, vet scheduling, GPS tracking, boarding finders, and a pet store.
03
LIVE PROJECT @ USC MARSHALL
L'OREAL DIGITAL AUTHORITY
A strategic recommendation for L'Oreal to move from a portfolio of brands to a centralised digital discovery platform, to reclaim relevance.
03 THE JOURNEY
CHAPTER 01 ARCHITECTURE
FOUR CHAPTERS.
One
DIRECTION.
I learned to design for people I'd never meet
Five years of architecture school taught me to design for people I'd never meet, work within hard constraints, and understand how every small decision shapes an entire system. That training in spatial empathy and structured problem-solving is the foundation of everything I design today.
CHAPTER 03 FIREBRAND LABS
DESIGNING PRODUCTS END TO END
Architecture. Entrepreneurship. Design. Each one built on the last, and all of it pointed here.
At Firebrand Labs, I led product design for clients across healthcare, fintech, and enterprise markets. I designed end-to-end interfaces, ran user research, shipped MVPs, built design systems, and worked directly with engineering and product teams. It was the first time all the threads came together: understanding users, designing the product, and taking it to launch
CHAPTER 02 BROWN BUTTER AND DOUGH
BUILDING SOMETHING FROM SCRATCH
I started a baking business out of genuine love for it, and ended up learning more about customers than any class could teach. Figuring out what people actually wanted, how they found me, and why they came back gave me a real education in consumer behaviour and experience design.
CHAPTER 04 USC MARSHALL MBA
SHARPENING THE LENS
The MBA has been less of a pivot and more of a sharpening. Consumer insights, pricing strategy, brand management. The coursework gives structure and language to things I had been doing by instinct