The two halves of my range

Consumer work taught me momentum. Government work taught me inclusion. Most careers teach one.

By Akash Kumar, product designer

An AI voice reading my words.

In short

A super app and a national public service teach opposite lessons, and each keeps the other from going too far. Doing both is how I learned to decide on purpose who a product is for.

One phone split down the middle; a young hand holds the half full of app tiles, an older hand the worn half with one plain field and an orange button.

From 2020 to 2025 I designed Tata Neu, one of India's largest super apps. Now I design public services that have to work for everyone in the country. The two jobs teach opposite lessons.

The super app

On the super app, the job is momentum. You are organising dozens of services into one screen and keeping people moving through it. Every extra tap is a person who drifts away. Every confusing moment is a sale that does not happen. You learn to make an experience habit-forming and profitable, because if you fail, the business quietly loses money.

The design system behind the relaunch

The clearest version of that job was the design system (opens in new tab). Tata Neu had started on one built by an outside agency, and it could not keep up with where the product was going. I built the in-house token system (opens in new tab) that replaced it, where one value defined once flows into every screen. I led that system behind the 2023 relaunch, the same relaunch that saw the Google Play rating climb from 3.8 to 4.2. That relaunch bundled performance fixes with the new system, so I will not claim the system alone moved the number.

One orange dot on the left, with thin orange lines branching into a fan of phone and tablet screens, each carrying the same orange accent.

The public service

On a national public service, the job is the opposite. It is inclusion. You are building for someone on an old phone with a weak signal, using the internet for the first time in their life. You learn to make a system foolproof and fair, because if you fail, a citizen does not lose money. They lose access to something they are owed.

That is why I start with the error state. Everyone designs the happy path, and on the super app I designed the happy flow myself. Now I open a project on the screen that appears when something breaks on a slow connection, because on a public service that is the moment a citizen decides whether to trust it or walk away.

Why each half needs the other

Put plainly: consumer work teaches you to make something delightful. Government work teaches you to make something that works. Very few designers have done both, and the two skills correct each other.

A form that needs perfect conditions has not been simplified.

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The super app kept me honest about speed and desire. It is easy to over-design for inclusion until the thing is slow and joyless, and nobody wants to use it. The government work kept me honest about who counts. It is easy to over-design for delight until the thing only works for people who already have fast phones and good English, which is a quiet way of deciding that everyone else does not matter.

That is the real reason I care about the range. A form that needs perfect conditions has not been simplified. It has just pushed its difficulty onto the user, and chosen which users to keep. The interface decides who a product is actually for. Doing both jobs is how I learned to make that decision on purpose.