Hi, I'm Saania.

I started out as an architect. I liked the idea of building things that actually had to work, not just look right on paper. A staircase either holds weight or it doesn't. A room either flows or it doesn't.

Somewhere along the way I found product design, and it turned out to scratch the same itch, faster. You get to build something functional, put it in front of real people, and watch whether it actually works within days instead of years. That immediacy is what pulled me over, and I never looked back.

What I actually love is building things from scratch, watching someone use what I made, and then going back and forth with a team to fix what's broken. There's a specific kind of satisfaction in taking a mess of requirements and constraints and making them click into place.

It's probably why I've always loved to read, especially the Agatha Christie type books. Good mysteries and good product design solve the same problem: a pile of scattered, seemingly unrelated pieces that need to fit together into something that makes complete sense. Founders at day zero hand me exactly that kind of puzzle. Nothing exists yet, everything's a clue, and my job is to find the shape hiding underneath it.

I'm based in Bangalore. If you ask anyone I've worked with, they'll tell you I document obsessively and like things organized, especially for the teams I work with. Spending two extra days setting up a proper system now saves you weeks of untangling a mess later. A stitch in time saves nine. It's a good way to live, and it's an even better way to run a design process.

One disclosure before you go: I have cats, and they occasionally attend my meetings uninvited. They've sat in on calls with nearly every team I've ever worked with, which means they technically know everyone's company secrets. NDAs don't cover cats. I've checked.