Meet Saurabh Rathi | Multi-modal Experience Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Saurabh Rathi and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Saurabh, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
My creative journey path I believe, is a rather complex curve that has been shaped by various pivotal moments.

My journey into the creative realm stemmed from a deep-rooted passion for design that originated in my childhood fascination with cars. I spent countless hours sketching cars in my school notebooks, dreaming of turning that passion into a career. I would spend a lot of time reading automotive magazines that discussed the aesthetics as well as the engineering behind vehicles. This culminated into first moment of realization — I needed to understand how cars worked if I wanted to make good cars.

This led me to pursue a bachelors in Mechanical Engineering, where I delved into the intricacies of how vehicles functioned. As a part of the course curriculum i was able to do experience automotive engineering through a closer lens through internships in the Mercedes-Benz R&D facility as well as the manufacturing plant. Post my graduation, I worked full-time at Mercedes-Benz R&D, engineering components. While I gained valuable real-world experience for engineering vehicles, I felt a longing for the artistic aspect of design.

This realization prompted me to pursue a Master’s in Transportation Design at ArtCenter College of Design. As part of the curriculum, the program encouraged students to apply systemic thinking and holistic design principles to approach design from a human-centered lens. This was instrumental in broadening my understanding of what design is. I was able to appreciate design beyond just aesthetics and form but also as a means of problem-solving — another key moment which shaped my journey. As I went through the course, I picked up the necessary skills to design and build electrons as well as atoms, and appreciated the combination of a cohesively designed system of hardware and software components that an automobile is.

After graduating, I got a chance to work at automotive startups based out of Silicon Valley as they started to reinvent the cars for the digital age. At Lucid Motors, I worked on the human-machine-interface of the first production car — the Lucid Air sedan. I got to explore implications of novel interaction modes such as voice interfaces and its application in a car. While I had not learnt designing for voice interactions in school, i soon realized that the core design principles of simplicity, consistency, contrast, hierarchy and such were applicable here as well.

This pivotal moment led me to delve deeper into voice interfaces and pursuing a career designing multi-modal interfaces at Amazon Alexa which is where I currently am.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My work involves designing and prototyping novel interaction paradigms for emerging technologies. I have been fortunate to work on some exciting products such as the Lucid Air — longest range electric car in the world, Amazon Echo Hub — Amazon’s first smart-home forward device and Map View — a novel interaction model for monitoring and controlling your smart home.

Currently, I work within the Devices Design Group at Amazon exploring future of Alexa enabled interfaces and devices. Operating at the cutting edge of technology such as artificial intelligence often involves designing first-of-a-kind interface. That means, there aren’t as many examples or references for you to base your ideas off. In the absence of pre-existing data, design patterns and insights, as a designer you have to be creative about doing the research or design based on intuition. This can be overwhelming and scary because it forces you to apply first principles approach to design and problem solving and requires a solid understanding of design basics.

One of the biggest challenges in picking up these design chops was that at its core, engineering is deterministic while design is often stochastic. Coming from an engineering background, I had grown comfortable with the idea of applying a well defined process / formula and solving a problem. Design problems didn’t often work that way. As a designer you learn different tools for problem solving but there isn’t a singular process to apply them. You might employ a mix of them that varies depending upon scenario. This builds a bit of uncertainty in the process which was difficult to get accustomed to initially coming from an engineering background. One of the biggest lessons was that instead of trying to un-learn the stochastic mindset and learn this new approach, i started thinking of them as two different muscles to keep and flex on when required. This meant that I not only was able to come up with creative designs and ideas but using my engineering skills made sure they were implementable and thus, more holistically thought out solutions.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I thoroughly enjoy road trips and driving through the national parks. An ideal itinerary would be to drive across Yosemite into the High Sierras and further down to Death Valley national park, exploring hiking trails and small towns on the way.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The pivotal moments that shaped my career would not be possible without a lot of key mentors. First and foremost, I credit my parents for fueling the creative spark and supporting my interest in cars. Despite growing in a small town with limited access to resources, they guided me during my formative years and helped me figure out a path towards my dream of designing cars.

My teachers and cohort at ArtCenter were instrumental in ensuring I mastered the fundamentals of design. The peer critiques and feedback helped me not only in improving my skills but also building an analytical and critical eye for evaluating designs and not shying away from expressing my point-of-view, even if it may be an unpopular one. The sheer rigor and high bar for quality of work humbled me and also helped me push myself out of my comfort zone and I realized, that is when I learnt the most.

Website: https://www.saurabhrathi.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurabhvrathi/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@floydbhakt