//PROBLEM
While major features kept shipping, smaller but high-impact improvements kept getting deprioritized increasing the product debt.
//FYI
Scope grew beyond 100 items mid-sprint yet delivered in time.
Lead Contributor
Role
9 months
Duration
//GOAL
Resolve systemic user friction at scale; 100+ high-impact improvements, shipped fast, without sacrificing quality.
//TEAM
PM: Martin, Dhaval
Design: Prashant, Raviraj, Muskan
Dev: Manish, Sinal, Abhijit, Vinayak, Akash
Opportunity
Codename 'Anand'; Hindi for 'Joy'
Every time I demo it, I have to dance around all those inefficiencies.
"
Feedback Quotes
There are so many traps and small, awkward things that make it look unfinished.
"
//MAKING A STATEMENT
The goal wasn't just fixing bugs, it was rebuilding user trust & proving the product cared about daily workflows, not just roadmap headlines.
//ACTION
100+ items listed & prioritized
//MEANWHILE
Customers had learned to live with hundreds of small but painful gaps; workarounds in demos, missing edge cases, friction baked into daily workflows.
//FEEDBACK
Millions of customer users.
Internal users; loudest voice
Making most of it
How i worked
Adapt, unlearn & Overcome:
That's how I 'unfollowed' the usual design process.
#1
Rigorously shipped & adaptively paced.
ST100 demanded a different design cadence than traditional feature work. The process had to compress without cutting corners.
Proactive communication:
That's how I understood every problem.
#2
Requirements triage.
Synced directly with the PM on acceptance criteria, senior leads for context, and developers for technical constraints before touching Figma. Proactively flagged tasks with unclear criteria & initiated conversations.
Elimination is progress:
That's how I ruled out ideas to move fast.
#3
Multi-approach alignment.
For ambiguous problems, I designed 2–3 distinct approaches with explicit trade-offs not just visual variations. This moved the conversations from "do you like it?" to "which direction is right?"
Easy for all:
That's how I conducted the design handoffs.
#4
Figma as the source of truth.
All work lived in one shared Sprint-to-100 file. Clean naming, structured sections, annotated handoff notes combined with spotlights. Stakeholders were never handed screens without context.
Job not done yet:
That's how I made post-production review a team habit, not a personal checklist.
#5
Post-dev design review.
Conducted Pre & post-release reviews to verify implementation fidelity. Established a formal review process (documented in Shared docs) to make this systematic across the team.
Results
Work
//Quality of Life [S,M]
Various improvements and enhancements for existing workflows. Also introduced some new actions and patterns to align with user behavior and needs.
//highlights
Copy, paste & duplicate for modular blocks
Entry outline improvements
Nesting global fields
//Updated/New Workflows [L,XL]
Worked on various pain points faced by our users to implement new workflows & update the existing ones in some cases.
//highlights
Variants management
New Versions Experience
Spearheaded the design effort of Sprint to 100 with owning over 60% of Contentstack's most impactful product-debt initiative. 100+ platform wide improvements, 50+ days ahead of schedule.
Impact
Kaustubh as Product Designer
Recognized with the 'Above & Beyond' award for taking ownership & accountability while driving Contentstack's most impactful product-debt initiative; Sprint to 100.
Bonus