Harshit Rao

UX Architect and Design Practice Lead with 15+ years designing and governing large-scale digital systems across government, automotive, and enterprise ecosystems. Proposed and won a 2Cr+ engagement expansion for iGOT Karmayogi (15M+ users, 4,000+ courses, 60M+ completions), where currently leading UX architecture and heading Tarento's Design Centre of Excellence. Built HMHT, an AI-first design method now adopted across 7+ engagements, including Hector Rail, where it compressed a multi-month delivery timeline into weeks.

Associate UX Architect & Practice Lead (Design CoE) at Tarento Group (2024-11 – Present)

• Proposed and won the iGOT 3.0 revamp, a 2Cr+, 1–2 year extension staffed with a 5-person team; sole design decision-maker across 100+ workflows on a Material Design 3-based platform serving 15M+ users, 4,000+ courses, and 60M+ completions, and standardised its typography and iconography for legibility at scale
• Lead Tarento's Design Centre of Excellence, directing a mid-to-senior design team and setting design standards, career frameworks, and design training; run a biweekly social media series and the internship program end to end, from onboarding through project placement, with several interns converting to full-time hires
• Built HMHT (How Might Human Think), an AI-first design method for early SDLC stages when real user research is constrained, adopted across 7+ engagements; led it requirements-through-frontend on Hector Rail's platform revamp, compressing a multi-month timeline into weeks, proof AI-first delivery is repeatable, not a one-off
• Led product thinking and design for CARA, Stellantis's in-car conversational assistant; shipped publicly with Citroën's Basalt X range in India, September 2025
• Built the Design Excellence Checklist, a six-phase quality-gate process for design deliverables, currently being rolled out across the design team's projects
• Independently designed Project Goodwill, a full civic service blueprint and stakeholder journey map end to end, using HMHT's five-phase process, now being prepared as a formal proposal at Tarento

Principal Designer at Tarento Group (2021-12 – 2024-11)

• Structured complex problem spaces into scalable UX solutions for iGOT Karmayogi, spanning 50+ workflows, alongside numerous other projects ranging from large-scale platforms to smaller, quick-turnaround engagements
• Led full product ideation and design for Ashok Leyland's Engage intranet application; delivered in 6 months, leading Ashok Leyland to commission a second, AI-first refresh phase
• Established foundational design patterns and components that later evolved into Tarento's org-wide design system, white-labeled to power multiple client POCs and projects in significantly compressed delivery timeframes, while reducing day-to-day design effort for teams building on it

Senior Interaction Designer at Tarento Group (2018-12 – 2021-12)

• Conducted UX research across iGOT's user base, sampling across grade levels among its lakhs of learners, to diagnose mismatches between the platform's original Sunbird DPG architecture and users' mental models; findings directly shaped the iGOT 2.0 transformation
• Designed end-to-end service experiences across Aadhaar Seva Kendra (78 districts nationwide), mAadhaar, and Project Anuvaad, later deployed as SUVAS for the Supreme Court of India and adopted by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh as Amar Vasha
• Facilitated recurring stakeholder workshops, roughly quarterly per project, to define problem spaces and align stakeholders; still standard practice on iGOT today, from its earliest phase to the present
• Created detailed design specifications for ASK, Anuvaad, and mAadhaar to ensure consistency and scalability across implementations

Senior Interaction Designer at Position² Inc. (2016-07 – 2018-11)

• Led a team of designers to deliver end-to-end UX solutions across web and mobile platforms
• Established design guidelines and reusable patterns adopted across multiple project teams

Senior Designer at Tarento Technologies (2015-01 – 2016-12)

• Designed mobile applications and kiosk-based systems, including a large-scale digital wayfinding program
• Designed the consumer and driver-facing apps for Lithium Urban Technologies, India's first all-electric corporate transport fleet, full ownership from co-ideation through field testing of the driver app deployed on in-vehicle tablets, designed for legibility and safe glanceability across day and night driving conditions
• Led UX for real-world interactive kiosk and mobile systems, mentored junior designers on the team, an early start to a practice I now lead formally, and contributed to Tarento's organisational branding and visual identity work

Design Engineer at Tarento Technologies (2010-01 – 2015-12)

User Experience Design, User Research Methods – Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF)

AAASP (Specialisation Program) – Arena Multimedia, Bengaluru (2007-01 – 2010-12)