About Me - Harsh Design

HARSH

Who is Harsh Kumar?

I am an interdisciplinary designer currently based in the US. I began my design career teaching myself graphic design, 3D modelling and animation in grade school, and earned a dual diploma in Architecture. From there I continued my professional education and practice at Savannah, GA for my BFA in Industrial Design and Royal College of Art in London, UK to study Service Design at a post-graduate level. Currently I am a Senior UX/UI Consultant and UX Design/Research Lab Coordinator at Fiserv.

Vision as a Designer

I believe design is something that affects all of us no matter who or where we are in this world. Everything we encounter is designed – whether it is designed well is a problem we are all too familiar with. As a designer my goal is to develop concepts which improve efficiency in systems and use; as well as making the quality of life for all people better. My passion for developing new concepts and understanding complex systems has led me to be interested from all fields relating commercial, educational, medical, transportation and more. My focus is electronic devices such as mobile, virtual reality and concepts industrial application. I’m very interested in big data, software compatibility, privacy, IOT, and immersive technologies. I believe these field have the biggest potential to reach a vast majority of people and inspire positive change in their lives.

Journey as a Designer

2021-Pres

VR/AR

New technologies have always fascinated me - and nothing interested me more than when I was able to get my hands on an Oculus DK2 in 2014. I immediately realized all of my skills and passions aligned into one industry.

During COVID-19 lockdowns I spent my time taking Unity courses and teaching myself C# as well as the end to end pipeline for VR/AR/Game development. Combining my existing knowledge of 3D modelling and animation, I was able to put together prototypes and proof of concepts as well as land a small contract job to build a VR Art Gallery to showcase an artists work virtually in a real world location.

2019-Pres

Fiserv

Sr. UX Design Consultant

Fiserv is an international fortune 500 fintech company which provides services including payments, processing, risk and compliance and channel management. As a Senior UX/UI Design Consultant, I've worked across the entire design/development pipeline from: UX/Service design research, user research, performing heuristic and ADA audits, creating new proof of concepts, developing wireframes, managing and delivering assets to development teams, working with product owners, managers and customers, security and quality assurance testing, pitching concepts to customers and senior leadership and launching products to scale which reach up to 90 million monthly hits. During me tenure at Fiserv I owned the designs of several products such as Client Central, Accurate, and iLendX as well as advising and consulting for products such as Clover, Zelle, OnDot and ATM services.

2018-2019

Bitguard

Design Consulting

Bitguard is a secure crypto wallet start up company. I have several responsibilities ranging from graphic design, branding, web and mobile wireframing, final prototyping, developing quick clickable walkthroughs, delivering assets such as icons, logos, images and dimensions of app screens, communicating and working directly with engineers, sketching, 3D modelling, 3D printing, manufacturing as well as user testing and marketing. I utilized a variety of software and tools to complete my tasks such as photoshop, illustrator, Figma, Solidworks, key shot as well as wireframing, storyboarding, customer journey mapping and a/b user testing.

2018-2019

Blockwala

Product/Service Designer

Blockwala is a start up company which works on a variety of projects using blockchain technologies. I work on overall design, package concepts, deliver presentations as well as being responsible for branding, graphic design, web design, wireframing and app design. One of the most important contributions I made was developing a unified company vision and design language. I helped the team understand what they are doing, what goals they hope to accomplish and what methods, philosophy’s and frameworks we all believe will help us accomplish our goals. This really improved the team’s productivity and communication by giving each member the freedom to work on their own terms as well as understanding what the other coworkers are doing to help quickly build and test our concepts.

2017-2018

Babbles

UX Designer

Babbles is a location-based messaging app developed by Aureans based in London, UK. I was responsible for redesigning the existing app to help engage and retain new users. My responsibilities included user and market research, wireframing, developing clickable walkthroughs, developing a unified vision with the whole team, delivering assets directly to engineers for application development and conducting user testing and iterations. My experience on this project gave me great insight on how to work with international teams to develop quick and functional prototypes to test in multiple countries with different cultural values.

2016-2018

Royal College of Art

MFA Service Design

Service design is a field that came very natural to me since the thought process comes from design for sustainability which stems from industrial design. I took a few service courses in my undergrad which really inspired me to not only focus on products and designing physical objects but to expand my design reach into developing full services and even UX/UI and wire framing apps to develop complete concepts. In my time at Royal College of Art (RCA) studying service design, I had more opportunities to work on projects with several industry professionals and companies alike which gave me a solid understanding on how to convert concepts into implementable realities.

2011-2016

Savannah College of Art and Design

BFA Industrial Design

When I attended Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) I was really able to expand my knowledge of product design, design for sustainability, service design and UX/UI design. My product design courses and projects covered everything from contextual research methods, idea visualization, 3D modeling for manufacturing, materials and manufacturing techniques, presentation and pitch delivery and more. As my minor I studied Design for Sustainability which focused on designing products with sustainable materials, manufacturing and sourcing as well as research and presentation. In my time studying it became very clear to me that sustainable products, services and more importantly companies will not only be the ones to succeed in the future, but survive in the volatile landscape we have ahead of us.

2004-2011

Self Learning

From a young age I was always curious about how things worked and how people made things. At the age of 10, before YouTube was popular, my friends and I would watch funny stick figure animations which inspired me to learn and teach myself 2D animation. Soon after I started teaching myself 3D modelling softwares such as Maya and Inventor and around the age of 14 I started modelling my own cars, buildings, and everyday objects to populate scenes. At the time it was just for fun but as I got older I found that creating things was my passion.

Inspirations and Interests

In my personal life I am very active and enjoy doing different things which in turn inspire me as a designer. At home I enjoy watching movies and TV shows as well as playing video games (PC gamer). I am very into music anything from jazz, funk, hip-hop, metal, punk, electronica and many more. I have been playing guitar and bass since I was 10 and still enjoy jamming with friends from time to time. One of my biggest passions aside from design is riding motorcycles. If the weather is right, I will most likely be in the mountains on my sports bike cruising corners with my friends. Travelling has one of the biggest impacts on me and I do so any chance I get. I love exploring different cultures, meeting different people and getting a chance to explore different perspectives and thought process of how other people view themselves and the world around them.