# Manohar Achar > Product Designer | Human-AI Interaction & Design Systems | 0-to-1 builds, research-driven UX, scalable UI | Figma, analytics, documentation Location: Detroit Metropolitan Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/manoharachar Product Designer with 6+ years of experience shipping interfaces across embedded industrial platforms, web applications, and 0-to-1 products. I started in mechanical engineering, moved into UX for industrial controllers at Ingersoll Rand, and now focus on design systems, scalable UI, and accessibility. What I bring to a team: • End-to-end product design — from discovery and research through high-fidelity UI and engineering handoff • Design systems thinking — tokens, component libraries, documentation, and governance that keep teams consistent and fast • Research-backed decisions — usability testing, surveys, and data instrumentation with real outcomes (task success up 20 pts, time-on-task cut in half) • Engineering fluency — I write specs that developers can build from, and I’ve partnered with cross-functional teams across Agile sprints, SRS documentation, and implementation QA Recent work includes building a CEU credentialing platform from scratch (Sparks Behavioral Services), supporting ADAS research at the University of Michigan, and designing the UI system for Ingersoll Rand’s industrial controller platform across 15+ machine configurations and 3 display sizes. Portfolio: manoharachar.design Open to: Product Designer, Design Systems Designer, UX Designer ## Work Experience ### Graduate Research Assistant, UX Design @ University of Michigan-Dearborn Jan 2025 – Present | Dearborn, Michigan, United States Supporting faculty-led research on mode awareness, boundary awareness, and human-AI teaming for partially automated driving and AI-assisted learning systems. • Translated complex technical domains (ADAS automation transitions, AI-assisted learning) into structured UX research materials by synthesizing 20+ source references into scenario definitions, edge-case taxonomies, and stimulus parameters, enabling executable study design within 3 weeks per project. • Designed a randomized Qualtrics study on L2-to-L3 mode awareness using video scenarios (N=192; 81% completion; N=167 valid) and synthesized findings into decision-ready insights. • Delivered 8 UX and HMI recommendations and improved mode-identification accuracy from 69% to 82% after iteration. • Built scenario-level parameter checklists for ADAS research, ensuring stimulus consistency and variable control across conditions, reducing pilot study revision cycles from 3 rounds to 1. ### President @ Design Club at UMich Jan 2025 – Present | Dearborn, Michigan, United States Leading a student design community through workshops, design challenges, and critique sessions focused on practical product design skills. • Grew participation 70% and delivered 12+ design assets for campus partners. • Mentored peers on portfolio storytelling, case study structure, and presentation quality. • Organized events and coordinated with faculty and industry guests to drive engagement and learning outcomes. ### Student at University of Michigan-Dearborn @ University of Michigan Jan 2024 – Present | Dearborn, Michigan, United States Master’s student in Human-Centered Design & Engineering (User Experience Design concentration) at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Training across human factors and ergonomics, HCI, and research methods, with coursework spanning customer understanding, advanced digital design, and human-centered AI/human–AI teaming. Focused on translating research insights into clear interaction models, usable interfaces, and measurable product improvements through iterative design and evaluation. ### Product Designer @ SPARKS BEHAVIORAL SERVICES LLC Jan 2025 – Jan 2026 | Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, United States Led the 0-to-1 product design of Co-operant Learning, a CEU credentialing platform converting behavioral health podcast episodes into quiz-based learning experiences for BCBAs and RBTs, from concept through launch. • Defined the end-to-end user journey across content discovery, registration, quiz completion, and CEU certificate delivery, reducing ambiguity for a 3-person team and enabling launch in under 4 months. • Designed a cross-plugin product architecture that unified membership, commerce, content management, and transactional email into a single coherent experience, resolving 10+ slug conflicts and system page routing issues that would have broken registration, login, and account recovery flows at launch. • Structured the content model to support scalable, non-hardcoded episode-to-quiz relationships, enabling the team to independently add new podcast episodes and CEU quizzes without requiring design or development support for each addition. • Instrumented and launched a 2-week pilot (250 learners): 95 visits, 12 CTA clicks, 3 purchases, 2 completions; built an event taxonomy and KPI dashboard to pinpoint drop-offs. • Raised task success from 60% to 80% and reduced time to certificate from 2:05 to 0:58 through usability testing and iteration. ### Senior Product Design Engineer @ Ingersoll Rand Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Internal transition from New Product Development into a UX-focused role owning the design system and product experience for Ingersoll Rand’s XS Series industrial controller platform. • Established and maintained a scalable design system for the XS Series controller, standardizing UI components (numeric keypads, drop-downs, navigation patterns, icon libraries, status bars) across all display sizes for both Ingersoll Rand and Gardner Denver branded product lines. • Led UX strategy for multi-brand platform support, adapting the controller interface to accommodate brand-specific variations while enabling a single codebase to serve multiple brands without fragmenting the user experience. • Facilitated Agile product development ceremonies with a cross-functional software engineering team, defining sprint priorities, managing the feature backlog, and making scope trade-off decisions on requirements phasing. • Generated detailed software requirements and UX specifications for IoT/iConn connectivity, OPC-UA integration, and Modbus communication features, aligning the platform roadmap with Industry 4.0 initiatives. • Defined and documented security UX flows including login screens, password management, screen lock, and session management for the web interface, balancing usability with access control for safety-critical environments. • Mentored junior designers and engineers on translating complex electro-mechanical system behaviors into intuitive digital interfaces. ### Junior Product Design Engineer @ Ingersoll Rand Jan 2019 – Jan 2023 | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Owned the UI specification and product design for Ingersoll Rand’s XS Series embedded controller platform, serving as the primary bridge between mechanical engineering and software development. • Designed UI specifications across 3 display sizes (4.3”, 7”, 10”), defining layout frameworks for home page tiles, alarm pages, diagnostics, settings, and trend views serving 15+ machine configurations and multiple product families (R-Series, RS-Series, E-Series, T-Series). • Led interaction design for a role-based access control system across 4 user classes (User, Maintenance, Service Technician, Factory Personnel), defining which settings, alarms, and diagnostics each role could view or modify. • Authored and maintained UI requirements within the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document (170+ pages, 44 revisions), translating 200+ functional requirements into implementable screen layouts, widget behaviors, and navigation flows. • Designed the web-based remote monitoring interface mirroring the embedded controller dashboard, enabling technicians and plant managers to access real-time compressor data from any browser. • Created responsive design specifications adapting tile layouts, navigation menus, and data-dense screens across resolutions from 480×270 to 1024×600, ensuring usability regardless of hardware. • Bridged mechanical engineering and software teams by translating physical system behaviors (sensor calibration, VSD diagnostics, alarm thresholds) into clear UI specifications, cutting design-to-development handoff iterations by an estimated 30%. ### Graduate Engineering Trainee @ Ingersoll Rand Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Subramanya Arcade, Bannerghatta Road Started as a mechanical engineering intern and transitioned into a graduate trainee role, contributing to both hardware engineering and the early foundations of the XS Series controller UI. • Mapped the end-to-end information architecture of the XS Series embedded controller displays (4.3”, 7”, 10”), documenting how physical sensor data translated into on-screen tile views, list views, and schematic views for operators — work that became the foundation for cross-functional alignment between mechanical and software teams. • Identified a gap in how compressor trip states, oil change intervals, and maintenance countdowns were surfaced to end users, initiating a self-directed study of the HMI software layer and proposing hierarchy improvements later adopted in the home page framework. • Supported senior engineers across 4+ concurrent machine application projects by preparing component drawings, BOM updates, and test documentation. ## Education ### Master’s degree in Human-Centered Design and Engineering University of Michigan-Dearborn ### Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering Nagarjuna College Of Engineering and Technology ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/manohar-achar - Portfolio: https://manoharachar.design --- Source: https://flows.cv/manoharachar JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/manoharachar/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-16