In an age the place distant work has change into the default for a lot of inventive groups and AI is including extra collaborators and iterations into the combination, the design course of is more and more being examined. Instruments are considerable, but collaboration usually feels extra fragmented than fluid. To know how we will construct higher, collectively, I talked with Saad Rajan and Vivek Haligeri Veerana, cofounders of the design platform Naya. Their collaborative work gained considered one of 75 Gold Awards—the best honor within the iF DESIGN AWARD 2023, and one other collaborative Naya challenge gained an iF DESIGN AWARD 2024. Their distinctive insights into the inventive course of, the significance of iteration and suggestions, and suggestions for the best way to navigate digital overload whereas pursuing nice design can profit us all.
Q: You each come from deeply technical, in addition to inventive backgrounds. What first made you understand the design course of was damaged?
We spent years in product improvement—every thing from customized plane to architectural buildings—and continually bumped into the identical concern. Essentially the most modern or inventive concepts weren’t surviving. They’d get misplaced in folders or buried in inboxes. Some concepts slowly fade away over rounds of revisions. Others get diminished by means of ineffective workflows. That friction compounded when working throughout groups, instruments, and areas. Once we acquired to Harvard’s Graduate Faculty of Design for a Grasp’s in Design Engineering, we dug in even deeper. We realized that what results in nice design—iteration, collaboration, and connecting the dots—is strictly the place present programs wrestle, particularly in distant environments.
Q: What’s modified most about design work prior to now 5 years?
Design has change into extra distributed because of distant work. That shift opened up unimaginable potential—but additionally launched chaos. AI provides in yet one more layer of complexity: There are extra belongings and stakeholders, which results in extra suggestions. Iteration occurs throughout dozens of platforms. Suggestions is scattered throughout Miro boards, Google Docs, Dropbox, Slack, e-mail, and textual content. Everybody’s working arduous, however not essentially collectively. And since distant groups are much less more likely to share tough drafts, you lose these hallway conversations the place somebody glances at a colleague’s display and presents a helpful edit or welcome boost to an present concept. With out shared context, folks hesitate to leap in.
Q: That makes iteration and collaboration a lot more durable. How do you outline nice design right now?
It begins with embracing the messy center. Iteration isn’t nearly rework—it’s the place creativity lives. We consider nice design comes from doing, undoing, and redoing. Nevertheless, that solely works in the event you can extra simply monitor and have a good time progress. Suggestions is a big a part of this course of—actually, it’s every thing. The extra voices, the higher the result. That could possibly be your engineer, your finish person, somebody from the advertising and marketing crew, or an AI agent. However for that to work, suggestions have to be centralized. It additionally must be well timed and visual to everybody. Design is advanced, and it practically all the time advantages from transparency and strategic collaboration.
Q: So how does Naya tackle this downside?
We constructed Naya to be the connective tissue of contemporary design. It’s a digital studio that brings collectively over 100 file sorts—together with Figma information, PDFs, movies, 3D fashions, and extra—right into a single, searchable area. You may see each model, remark, and choice in context, so it’s straightforward to grasp the place an concept is heading. We additionally use AI to cut back the noise. It helps summarize suggestions, counsel options, stop rework, and even automate among the work you don’t need to do. However we’re not changing creativity or designers—we’re enhancing it by surfacing insights from your individual course of.
Q: How does this assist groups construct extra effectively?
Sustainability isn’t simply concerning the finish product. It’s additionally about cocreation, fairness, and lowering wastes—of each supplies and time—alongside the best way. Wasted time, duplicated effort, misplaced data, and missed connections are all boundaries. However once you iterate properly, collect various enter, maintain monitor of your choices, and work collaboratively, you’re not simply transferring sooner. You’re designing extra thoughtfully. Distant work isn’t going away, and the variety of design instruments are multiplying. The query is whether or not our programs and habits are evolving to assist the depth and inclusivity that good design requires. We consider they will—and should. And our customers agree, from multinational firms like Google and Adidas, to giant design corporations like MillerKnoll and IDEO, alongside boutique manufacturers around the globe.
Q: Remaining thought—what’s the one factor you hope groups take away out of your work at Naya?
We wish folks to grasp that nice design is feasible—even with a primarily distant workforce and improve of AI instruments—if we rethink how we work collectively and optimize for the digital age.
The way forward for design isn’t about extra instruments. It’s about higher connection.
Lisa Gralnek is world head of sustainability and affect for iF Design, managing director of iF Design USA Inc., and creator/host of the podcast, FUTURE OF XYZ
