Episode #52: Sandesh Shinde, Design Lead at SAP

Sandesh is a highly skilled and passionate design leader at SAP, with a strong focus on developing ERP products that exceed customer expectations. With extensive experience in UX design spanning over 15 years across North America, Europe, and South Asia, Sandesh brings a wealth of knowledge to lead and execute end-to-end UX design projects. As a results-oriented design lead, he takes responsibility for defining UX strategies, conducting user research, creating design systems, and developing product roadmaps in close collaboration with business stakeholders. Sandesh is committed to institutionalizing design thinking within the organization and regularly facilitates collaborative design workshops to foster this approach. Through his customer-centric approach, he has driven business success and helped organizations transform their products and services.
Background

A Deep Dive into Sandesh's Journey

In today's fast-paced world, the need to experiment with products has become increasingly important to stay ahead of the competition. One person who understands this concept exceptionally well is Sandesh, a design leader at SAP. With over 15 years of experience in UX design, Sandesh has been instrumental in driving product experimentation that has transformed organizations' products and services.

Defining Product Experimentation

Product experimentation is the process of testing new ideas, features, and functionalities to gather data and insights that can help improve products and services. It's a crucial aspect of product development that enables teams to identify user pain points, preferences, and behaviors to create better products that meet customers' needs.

Sandesh's Approach to Product Experimentation

Sandesh's focus on product experimentation stems from his customer-centric approach. He understands that to create products that exceed customers' expectations, gathering their feedback and insights throughout the product development lifecycle is essential. Sandesh takes a collaborative approach to product experimentation, working closely with business stakeholders, developers, and designers to create a culture of experimentation within organizations.

Sandesh's product experimentation approach involves the following steps:

  1. Identifying User Needs: Sandesh begins by identifying user needs through user research, surveys, and user feedback. He uses this data to gain a deep understanding of user pain points, preferences, and behaviors.

  2. Defining Hypotheses: Based on user research, Sandesh defines hypotheses that he believes will improve the product. These hypotheses form the basis for his experiments.

  3. Designing Experiments: Sandesh designs experiments to test his hypotheses. These experiments can take various forms, such as A/B testing, usability testing, and surveys.

  4. Conducting Experiments: Sandesh conducts experiments to gather data and insights that can help validate or invalidate his hypotheses.

  5. Analyzing Results: After conducting experiments, Sandesh analyzes the results to gain insights that can help improve the product. He uses data to make informed decisions and guide product development.

By adopting a customer-centric approach and a culture of experimentation within organizations, he has created products that meet customers' needs and exceed their expectations.

Institutionalizing Design Thinking

Another aspect of Sandesh's approach to product experimentation is his commitment to institutionalizing design thinking within organizations. Sandesh regularly facilitates collaborative design workshops to foster a design-thinking approach. This approach involves empathizing with users, defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing. 

Driving Business Success

Sandesh's focus on product experimentation has driven business success. By creating products that meet customers' needs and exceed their expectations, he has helped organizations increase user engagement, retention, and revenue. Sandesh's approach has also enabled organizations to innovate and stay ahead of the competition.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Sandesh's focus on product experimentation is a testament to his customer-centric approach to UX design. By adopting a culture of experimentation and institutionalizing design thinking within organizations, Sandesh has created products that meet customers' needs and exceed their expectations. 

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