Open to work

Hey, I'm Harsha

a UX Designer building products that actually ship.

Identifying the real break, not the surface bug.

Exploring:

Recent:

Reading:

Meet Me

About

I don't just design screens. I design decisions.

Harsha in St. Louis
//HIRE ME

↑ that guy right there

I'm a UX Designer based in Reno, Nevada. I finished my MS in Information Systems at Saint Louis University in December 2025, and I'm currently on OPT looking for my next role.

My path went from building client products at a startup I co-founded in India, through graduate systems work at SLU, to UX design at a nonprofit. Across all of it, the pattern was the same: find where the experience actually breaks, define the problem clearly, design a solution, ship it, keep going.

Right now I'm the UI/UX Designer at Community Dreams Foundation. Alongside that, I ship self-initiated product work: Starbucks Mobile Order, LifeOS, and Resume Tailor.

Design doesn't ship perfect. It ships, gets used, reveals what's wrong, and improves.

Ask my portfolio

Or just ask.

This site is trained on every project, every role, and every design decision I could remember. Ask it anything.

Case Studies

Making hidden friction visible.

Real shipped work first. Concepts second. Every card built to read without a click.

BuiltinTech Client Delivery System
BuiltinTech

10+ client products, 4 verticals, one delivery pattern.

Cofounded BuiltinTech in 2023. Drove 80% of client acquisition. Built a repeatable intake to ship pipeline across construction, minerals, fitness, and infrastructure clients.

NRI Wellbeing Services
NRI Wellbeing

Services above the fold. Company story below.

ISO certified services company with 10+ categories. First time visitors needed to find the right service in 30 seconds without reading company history first. Live at nriwellbeing.com since 2022.

Resume Tailor
Resume Tailor

A tool for people who write their own resumes.

AI resume tools lose credibility when they over flatter or fabricate. This product makes the gap visible before it rewrites anything. Honest scoring, real ATS checks, files never leave the browser.

harshaasapu.com
harshaasapu.com

A portfolio treated as a product, not a static page.

Recruiters scan fast. The site has to prove role, judgment, shipped work, and credibility before asking anyone to dig deeper. Grounded RAG assistant, restrained motion, shipped proof.

Starbucks Mobile Order Redesign
Starbucks

One reusable state card, four downstream surfaces.

The wait was not the real problem. The anxiety came from not knowing whether the drink was queued, being made, ready, or forgotten. A single reusable state card absorbed all four surfaces. CEO independently named mobile pickup a priority in the Oct 2024 earnings call.

LifeOS
LifeOS

One dashboard scales 1 to 30 habits, no UI re architecture.

Most tools punish people when plans break. LifeOS assumes the week will change and turns that gap into feedback instead of failure. The interaction pattern absorbs volume without new components.

SLU Alumni Connect
SLU Alumni Connect

Four user roles, one platform, no confusion.

Students, alumni, mentors, and admins needed different answers from the same system. The design challenge was clarity by role. FERPA compliant scope, role based dashboards.

Motion

Motion Design

Short-form motion pieces — type, brand, and concept work where timing earns its place.

Explore all motion work
01 / 03

Ted Drewes Frozen Custard · 2025

Ted Drewes — Concrete in Motion

A short-form motion piece celebrating St. Louis' summer ritual — the upside-down concrete.

Motion DesignBrandAfter Effects

EXPERIENCE

Professional Experience

From healthcare product work at Phoenix AI to co-founding a startup, client delivery, and production websites — a timeline of real work, shipped systems, and hands-on UX practice.

Current role
Previous role

UI/UX Designer · Volunteer

Phoenix AI · Community Dreams Foundation

Feb 2026 – Present

Remote, USA

Active
  • Designing UI/UX across three healthcare products under Community Dreams Foundation, with Phoenix AI as the lead platform.
  • Phoenix AI brings wearable, sleep, activity, step, and lab-report data into one healthcare tracking experience that turns raw inputs into actionable insights.
  • Improving the existing platform and mobile app with a final polish layer — clearer screens, more cohesive flows, stronger state visibility, and product-quality UI before launch.
  • Building brand cohesion across the platform, mobile app, website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other digital surfaces so the product feels like one trusted healthcare system.
  • Creating low- and high-fidelity Figma flows, prototypes, UI direction, motion/interaction ideas, and async design reviews through Slack with the team.

Co-Founder, UI/UX Designer

BuiltinTech

Jan 2023 – Dec 2023

India

  • Co-founded an IT services startup and owned end-to-end design for 10+ paid client web products — discovery, wireframes, responsive UI, implementation, deployment, and post-launch iteration.
  • Translated unstructured client briefs into practical user flows, page hierarchies, and component-driven interfaces that could actually be built and shipped.
  • Personally handled the design-to-build bridge on client projects, which meant balancing UX clarity, client expectations, technical constraints, and delivery timelines.
  • Drove a large part of client acquisition through direct outreach, scoping conversations, and trust-building before the design work even started.
  • Recruited and guided KL University interns through live project workflows, giving them real delivery responsibilities instead of simulated tasks.

UI Designer & Frontend Developer

Areksoft Technologies

Aug 2022 – Dec 2022

India

  • Designed and built responsive web interfaces in a production environment, gaining early exposure to how engineering teams turn requirements into working screens.
  • Worked with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, and Flask while learning how frontend decisions connect with backend request-response flows.
  • Supported brand and digital campaign work through Figma, Canva, and social asset design, giving me a stronger understanding of visual consistency beyond the product screen.
  • Learned how client requests, business expectations, feasibility, and delivery pressure shape the final user experience.

UI/UX Designer & Frontend Developer Intern

NRI Wellbeing Services

Jan 2022 – Jul 2022

India

  • Designed and shipped nriwellbeing.com end-to-end for an ISO-certified services company, taking the project from zero-to-one across design, structure, and frontend implementation.
  • Owned information architecture across 10+ service categories including property, healthcare, logistics, financial, and NRI support services.
  • Created a service-first homepage hierarchy so first-time visitors could quickly understand what the company offered and find the right service without prior context.
  • Learned that good UX is not just visual polish — it is the clarity that helps people understand a business, trust it, and take the next step.

The Stack

How I Work

Research to reality no handoff gap.

Research feeds design. Design feeds build. Build feeds ship. Every step visible, every handoff owned.

Research & synthesis

Talk to users. Analyze data. Find the real problem, not the surface bug.

01
02

Prioritize with stakeholders

Align business and user needs. Decide what to build first and why.

Design & prototype

End to end flows. Then a functional prototype in code, not just Figma. Validate ideas fast.

03
04

Test & iterate

Validate with real users and stakeholders. Iterate until the solution is right.

Ship & measure

Dev collab or own the build. Track adoption, task completion, NPS delta. Close the loop.

05

Writing

Notes on design, mostly on Bootcamp.

All posts on Medium

Let's Talk

Let's ship something worth using.

Open to Product Design and UX roles. Also happy to talk freelance, collabs, or just design.

Reach me directly — I typically respond within 24 hours.

sriharshaasapu48@gmail.comEmail Me
HA

Harsha Asapu