About Me
Hi, I'm Meena
I grew up in Bangalore, came to the US for grad school, and have since lived in Santa Barbara, LA, and now the Bay Area. Growing up between two very different places has given me two different ways of looking at the world, and I find myself drawing on both more than I'd expect.
I'm a product designer who gravitates toward technical, complex problems. I like figuring out how something should work just as much as how it should look. If the logic isn't right, the design isn't right.
How I Work
Every element needs a reason to exist
I design with a minimalist mindset. Not minimal for the sake of it, but because clutter is usually a symptom of unclear thinking. If I can't defend why something is on the screen, it shouldn't be there.
Product strategy is where I feel most at home. I like getting into the why before touching the what. The most satisfying part of any project is getting into a room with engineers, PMs, and stakeholders and working through the problem together on a whiteboard. That messy, generative phase before anything is defined. That's where I do my best thinking.
My engineering background means I'm genuinely comfortable with technical complexity. I like deciphering systems that look intimidating on the surface, and finding the simplest possible way to represent them to a user.
Outside of Work
Cooking experiments and dog-eared books
Cooking is how I decompress. I experiment across cuisines and treat it a lot like design: follow the fundamentals, then experiment until something clicks.
I read a lot, mostly design books. The kind that make you look at a sign or a product differently the next day.
If you're curious about how I ended up in product design after years in aerospace engineering, I wrote about it.
Want to work together, or just say hi?
My inbox is always open.