# Siya T. > Solving complex problems using research and design expertise Location: Campbell, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/siya Product designer proficient in systems thinking with a strong technical background. I have 7+ years of experience designing and researching for complex and technical B2B products. More recently at Instabase, I'm leading platform, apps, and deployments areas. It gives me immense joy knowing that my design can positively impact and improve a part of someone's life. I'm very curious about different working/learning styles and thoroughly enjoy collaborating with people on projects. I believe that the best products are built when people from different skillsets, and backgrounds come together to work on a shared goal! Feel free to reach out to learn more about my experience, or to view my Portfolio/Resume. ## Work Experience ### Interim Design Manager @ Instabase Jan 2025 – Present Managing and leading the design team, aligning and prioritizing with product and eng leaders, and designing for the new agentic workflow platform. ### Senior Product Designer @ Instabase Jan 2022 – Present Led 0>1 design definition for Instabase's new LLM powered product 'AI Hub' [data sources across product surfaces, usage, billing, handling API tokens, onboarding users, MFA authentication, community/commercial/enterprise tiers, and more]. I worked on several areas of the extraction and classification product including document management, digitization settings/preview, shared access and collaboration, in addition to turning a draft into an app to enable adoption across the organization. Currently I'm working on agentic workflows. ### User Experience Designer @ Dassault Systèmes Jan 2018 – Jan 2022 Leading the automation suite of apps which are focused on authoring, running, and monitoring different types of simulations in an engineering problem that user is trying to solve. - Led development and product teams in defining user outcomes, problems to solve, journey maps, user and task analyses, and task flows to understand current experience of users - Prioritized problems to solve and solutions in close collaboration with product owners and development lead for each release - Defined and conducted directed contextual inquiries, usability studies, surveys open and mixed card sorting, tree testing to discover problems to solve, user needs - Consulted on and led multiple projects across the organization on building the information architecture from complex, vague data to form patterns and relationships to define user flows - Led several workshops with development, product owners, quality assurance, support, customer success teams on design thinking, UX paradigms and process, and collaborating on design; this effort led to an improved understanding on UX and smooth collaboration across projects ### Information Architect Intern @ Agile Solutions Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Cambridge, Massachusetts Worked in a start up, with remote engineering and design teams. - Performed competitive analysis of medical software management flows for doctors and nurses and project management models such as kanban to view and manage the tasks and appointments - Based on previously conducted user research insights, conducted an affinity mapping exercise with leadership, product managers, development leads and finance analysts to prioritize features to build - Designed a storyboard with user flows, wireframes, and validated them with product owners and leadership ### User Experience Design Intern @ Dassault Systèmes Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Rhode Island Independently completed the project of redesigning UX guidelines for developers including UX research(interviewing developers and conducting card sorts), information organization and wireframing. Designed icons and information visualizations which were published in Simulia applications. Evaluated User Assistance examples, implemented changes by reorganizing hierarchy in information leading to new structure of user assistance format. Implemented the framework for new UX guidelines website with an easy way for designers to update guideline topics on. ### Teaching Assistant for Senior Thesis Project Class @ Massachusetts College of Art and Design Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Greater Boston Area - Participated in design critiques to ask questions and share feedback to help students iterate and improve on their design skills and projects - Helped guide and share resources with students to evolve and aid their thesis exploration - Mentored designers on finding their area of interest ### Graduate Assistant at the Admissions Office @ Massachusetts College of Art and Design Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Greater Boston Area - Coordinated and assisted the faculty in preparing for and scheduling prospective student interview sessions (in person and online) - Managed the graduate admissions official email account - Gave tours to prospective students & conducted information sharing and Q&A sessions ### Teaching Assistant for Web Design @ Massachusetts College of Art and Design Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Boston The class focuses on using HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build web experiences. I grade in-class assignments, give feedback and suggestions on the same, help students with understanding semantic concepts and coding, discussing, critiquing and UX auditing of several websites. ### Gallery Assistant @ Massachusetts College of Art and Design Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Brant Gallery Designed and printed informational and descriptive posters for art exhibitions at the Doran Gallery in The Design and Media Center. Also assisted artists with project installations and setup. ### Teaching Assistant for Visual Language, Studio Foundation @ Massachusetts College of Art and Design Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 Visual Language Class information From the complexities of art and design, Visual Language will isolate a series of topics for examination, discussion, and development. These topics are fundamental to all of the disciplines within the fields of art and design. The topics explored are: learning about terms and concepts common to all of the visual arts (for example, composition, space content, color); exploring material, media and presentation skills (traditional and digital technologies included); initiating an historical and contemporary context for art and culture (issues surrounding the history and the institutionalization of art, and issues in contemporary art making and critical thinking); and, furthering a student's own sense of direction in the arts. Through prescribed projects emphasizing two-dimensional formats, students will progressively define and articulate their subjective interests, expressive ideas, and visual affinities. ### MGH Wayfinding Project - UX Research and Design @ Massachusetts General Hospital Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 I worked closely with the MGH hospital to improve the wayfinding experience. The proposal is confidential, but I am able to share portions of it. ### Research Development Internship @ 3DPLM Software Solutions Limited Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 Received sponsorship from the Polyhedral Technologies department for my Final Year research project on "Intrinsic Symmetry Detection in 3D objects". Developed a Mesh Processing system to detect intrinsic symmetries within 3D objects using a skeleton based approach along with visualizations. ### Web Design and Development Intern @ IBM India Private Limited Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 Researched (interviews, usability tests, etc) IBM's employees to design wireframes and layouts for their HR portal website. Designed user interfaces and screens. Developed the portal website using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL. ## Education ### Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Interaction Design Massachusetts College of Art and Design ### Tangible Media Group Class in Tangible Media Interfaces Massachusetts Institute of Technology ### Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering Pune Institute of Computer Technology ### Diploma in Computer Engineering in Computer Science Sinhagad Institute's Sou Venutai Chavan Polytechnic, Pune ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/siyatakalkar --- Source: https://flows.cv/siya JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/siya/resume.json Last updated: 2026-02-23