#62 | Darshan Gajara | Driving digital design resources, education, inspiration.

“We can take a lot of inspiration from our engineering friends in this department. I think engineering is always at least a few years ahead in any company because they are usually the first people to start working at a startup”. — DARSHAN GAJARA. We are super excited to kick off 2022 with a fresh episode of Designdrives. In EP62 we had the chance to chat with Darshan Gajara Head of Design at GraphCMS a growing startup based in Berlin. He is also the creator of Product Disrupt.com which is a popular newsletter and website for design resources linked towards the best design blocks, the best podcasts, the best resources, and also a great newsletter for young designers to advance themselves as a designer. With Darshan, we jump into; What it means to join an early-stage startup as a designer as he joined GraphCMS as the founding designer. What it means to grow together with the team and the company as a designer. What kind of challenges come ahead as you work in such an environment. We also talk about why and how you can use the power of online education and inspirations to advance yourself as a designer using good resources and online programs. During the episode, he also shares his insights on: As a designer how you can find fresh materials online. What to expect and how to adapt to your job role after joining a startup. How to stay agile and structure the design projects? How to set up projects and design teams? Thanks a lot for your time and for learning Darshan! ****** The Guest Darshan Gajara is a Product Designer driven by the passion for making products and helping others do the same, or even better. He is Head of Design at GraphCMS and runs ProductDisrupt.com where he shares his insights and curated list of resources to learn product design for young designers and wannabees. The reason why he created this side-project ProductDisrupt.com is he is an internet-made designer and strongly believe in giving back to the internet. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai. Darshan experienced in delivering end-to-end product solutions for India’s top ticketing portal BookMyShow and building a crowdfunding platform for creatives – Wishberry. He also worked towards building a community of design enthusiasts for Panda Network. His key skills included business requirement mapping, product specification, user experience by user research, user interface and interaction design and studying the user feedback on an iterative basis. He has been working as an independent Product Design Consultant for 6+ years now. His clients include startups and established businesses from US, UK, UAE, Canada and India.