Say Hello to Vivek Mayasandra, Product Designer

What do you do?

I’m a product designer on the Consumer Retention and Checkout teams, which are focused on growing our customer base. On Retention, our goal is to help people find value in our product so that they continue to shop with us. On Checkout, we’re looking to build out top-notch experiences for people to place their orders with ease and value. Both are highly data-informed teams, and we’re always running experiments and measuring what does (and doesn’t) resonate with our customers.

How did you get into design?

I’ve always considered myself something of an artist. Growing up, it was impossible for me to be bored as long as I had a writing utensil and a surface to draw on. I was surrounded by the arts and cultivated art appreciation for the arts early on. My mom is a classical Bharatanatyam (one of India’s ancient dance forms) dancer, and both my parents are trained Carnatic classical singers. School and college led me to a career in supply chain management, but I very quickly figured out that that wasn’t my jam. I started with ad hoc freelance visual and graphic design and decided to take that on full time — talk about a growth experience.

As I grew and got more design work under my belt, I met with as many people as I could to learn about user experience and product design. That led me to designing mobile gaming experiences at a startup, and eventually to Instacart.

What makes everything worth it?

I’m the kind of person who looks forward to coming in to work every single day. The complex challenges in a super dynamic space like e-commerce and groceries combined with the fact that I learn something new daily, is incredible. Additionally, my colleagues are, without exception, incredibly smart, driven, and humble. I find that an immensely privileged place to be.

What’s the greatest piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

Look for people who are a few steps ahead of where you’re at — somewhere you could see yourself. Reach out to them, make friends, take them out to coffee, learn from them.

Also, always be kind, honest, and hungry to learn. That’ll get you everywhere.

What advice would you give to a designer just starting out?
Put work out there that’s imperfect and not totally polished. Get feedback. Incorporate it. And rinse and repeat. With that process you uncover a lot about your work, your process, what you’re great at, and what you can improve on.

Where do you find inspiration?

Literally all around me. A blessing (and a curse perhaps) of being a designer is you’re always assessing experiences and processes — it’s a beautiful feeling finding a highly thoughtful design or experience.

In life, I find a lot of inspiration from immigrant narratives and how people in emerging markets embrace technology (and how technology is having an impact on their lives). They involve ingenious solutions to some very basic problems. The latter often highlights some incredible usability challenges and unearths so much cultural context.

Working on various projects at Instacart, which one was the most challenging and exciting for you?

Designing for growth on the Retention team has been a very exciting experience. I say that because growth design is often more fast-moving, data-informed, and learnings driven than traditional product design. Since growth design relies on lots of consistent experimentation, you get to see how your work lands with customers and how it affects the business very quickly. It’s been a fun challenge to design for quick learnings with the right qualitative inputs with research, maintaining design system integrity, and building strong and valuable experiences for people.

Where did you grow up and what made it special?

I grew up for most of my life Rochester Hills, Michigan. It’s a suburb of Detroit that gave you the type of Midwestern childhood that they show in the movies. Every other year, my family would also take a several-weeks-long trip to visit extended family in India. Looking back, those trips and experiences in (and traveling to) India helped shape my perspectives on people, societies, and the world.

What was the first thing you ever designed?

Something I remember designing a lot as a kid were airports. I’m a huge aviation nerd and was fascinated with the experience of international passengers (and still am). I remember constantly analyzing the layouts, maps, passenger flows, and gate structures of major international airports around the world. Singapore Changi, Hong Kong, and Frankfurt’s airports were endless sources of inspiration (Changi’s original C and D gates 😍).

What is something you’re most proud of in your life/career?

Doing a complete shift in my life and career. After college, I was in a job that wasn’t a good fit. But with a lot of introspection, learning from some great folks along the way, and straight up hustle, I made my way to doing something I love.

What’s your favorite Bay Area spot?

Esan Classic Thai restaurant in the Tenderloin. It can seem a little trendy, but the food is utterly fantastic and reminiscent of the real food you’d get in Thailand.

Come build with Vivek.

If you’re excited about defining the future of a one trillion dollar industry, building an ad-serving network for groceries, scaling the world’s most extensive grocery catalog, perfecting a real-time on-demand logistics chain, all while simultaneously designing the future of food for millions of people, you should take a look at the available opportunities or reach out to someone from the team.

Instacart

Author

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,500 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 85,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.