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What it takes to design, build, and ship consumer hardware in India.
What it takes to design, build, and ship consumer hardware in India.
I'm Amit Das. SVP of Native, R&D & Design at Urban Company. I put water purifiers and smart door locks into Indian homes for a living and write down what the work actually looks like: the physics, the factories, the trade-offs, the teams. The rest of the time I sketch, garden, and play music. Whatever lets me build something that isn't on a screen.
Special Edition: Design Engineering x AI
From manual, to AI-assisted, to AI-native, to agentic.
Hardware design & other things - #10
Naoto Fukasawa wins a German aesign award and a refreshing retro-pastel kitchen appliance.
Hardware design & other things - #9
Back to electric toothbrush, bad ceiling fan UX design, and humanoids.
Hardware design & other things - #8
Nail design, memo-holder, and premium looks
Special Edition: Design Engineering x AI
From manual, to AI-assisted, to AI-native, to agentic.
Hardware design & other things - #10
Naoto Fukasawa wins a German aesign award and a refreshing retro-pastel kitchen appliance.
Hardware design & other things - #9
Back to electric toothbrush, bad ceiling fan UX design, and humanoids.
Hardware design & other things - #8
Nail design, memo-holder, and premium looks
Special Edition: Design Engineering x AI
From manual, to AI-assisted, to AI-native, to agentic.
Hardware design & other things - #10
Naoto Fukasawa wins a German aesign award and a refreshing retro-pastel kitchen appliance.
Hardware design & other things - #9
Back to electric toothbrush, bad ceiling fan UX design, and humanoids.
Hardware design & other things - #8
Nail design, memo-holder, and premium looks
Special Edition: Design Engineering x AI
From manual, to AI-assisted, to AI-native, to agentic.
Why the air cooler beats the AC in half of India
The physics, the electricity bill, and the power grid.
Why cheap looks cheap before you've touched it
The eye reads quality in milliseconds but most of the tells cost nothing to remove.
Picture the product in your head first
How to design a product in your head before picking up the pencil to draw
Special Edition: Design Engineering x AI
From manual, to AI-assisted, to AI-native, to agentic.
Why the air cooler beats the AC in half of India
The physics, the electricity bill, and the power grid.
Why cheap looks cheap before you've touched it
The eye reads quality in milliseconds but most of the tells cost nothing to remove.
Picture the product in your head first
How to design a product in your head before picking up the pencil to draw
Special Edition: Design Engineering x AI
From manual, to AI-assisted, to AI-native, to agentic.
Why the air cooler beats the AC in half of India
The physics, the electricity bill, and the power grid.
Why cheap looks cheap before you've touched it
The eye reads quality in milliseconds but most of the tells cost nothing to remove.
Picture the product in your head first
How to design a product in your head before picking up the pencil to draw
The tells of a good toolmaker
What premium actually means
Washing machine: The hope purchase
A single-brain operation
South Korea: What they wrote on the wall
The feeling a product gives before you touch it
The real problem with 'simple' hardware
CMF is hardware UX too!
The CMF field guide (Part 2)
The CMF field guide (Part 1)
The tells of a good toolmaker
What premium actually means
Washing machine: The hope purchase
A single-brain operation
South Korea: What they wrote on the wall
The feeling a product gives before you touch it
The real problem with 'simple' hardware
CMF is hardware UX too!
The CMF field guide (Part 2)
The CMF field guide (Part 1)
The second brain is a graveyard
Everything's news now
Input / output
The psychology of the feed
You are a book of stories
South Korea: What they wrote on the wall
What if we just built all of these?
18 random reflections on writing and thinking on the page
Hobbies & boredom
One Muji Passport notebook to think clearer
The second brain is a graveyard
Everything's news now
Input / output
The psychology of the feed
You are a book of stories
South Korea: What they wrote on the wall
What if we just built all of these?
18 random reflections on writing and thinking on the page
Hobbies & boredom
One Muji Passport notebook to think clearer
You're talking to too many people
What happens when you run a rotation of mentors, why it feels like progress while it isn't, and how to pick the one person worth following.
Seat at the table
Designers got seat at the table... and blew it!
Learnings at 37
A list of internal shifts in my personal life.
How to come up with ideas for anything
8 dead simple practices I’ve repeated for years to reduce mental clutter, spot patterns, and connect thoughts into something new.
You're talking to too many people
What happens when you run a rotation of mentors, why it feels like progress while it isn't, and how to pick the one person worth following.
Seat at the table
Designers got seat at the table... and blew it!
Learnings at 37
A list of internal shifts in my personal life.
How to come up with ideas for anything
8 dead simple practices I’ve repeated for years to reduce mental clutter, spot patterns, and connect thoughts into something new.
You're talking to too many people
What happens when you run a rotation of mentors, why it feels like progress while it isn't, and how to pick the one person worth following.
Seat at the table
Designers got seat at the table... and blew it!
Learnings at 37
A list of internal shifts in my personal life.
How to come up with ideas for anything
8 dead simple practices I’ve repeated for years to reduce mental clutter, spot patterns, and connect thoughts into something new.
The right kind of help in your design career
Not everyone will get it
Time — My most valuable reflection in 2024
Expose yourself
Your biggest advantage? Not knowing how.
First job vs. now
Get work feedback in unusual ways
Designers, becoming the generic PM isn’t the goal.
I wish people would do these two things
Do a lot of work
The right kind of help in your design career
Not everyone will get it
Time — My most valuable reflection in 2024
Expose yourself
Your biggest advantage? Not knowing how.
First job vs. now
Get work feedback in unusual ways
Designers, becoming the generic PM isn’t the goal.
I wish people would do these two things
Do a lot of work
Why cheap looks cheap before you've touched it
The eye reads quality in milliseconds but most of the tells cost nothing to remove.
Picture the product in your head first
How to design a product in your head before picking up the pencil to draw
Seat at the table
Designers got seat at the table... and blew it!
User research is overrated
Research isn’t the problem. Relying on it is.
Why cheap looks cheap before you've touched it
The eye reads quality in milliseconds but most of the tells cost nothing to remove.
Picture the product in your head first
How to design a product in your head before picking up the pencil to draw
Seat at the table
Designers got seat at the table... and blew it!
User research is overrated
Research isn’t the problem. Relying on it is.
Why cheap looks cheap before you've touched it
The eye reads quality in milliseconds but most of the tells cost nothing to remove.
Picture the product in your head first
How to design a product in your head before picking up the pencil to draw
Seat at the table
Designers got seat at the table... and blew it!
User research is overrated
Research isn’t the problem. Relying on it is.
The real problem with 'simple' hardware
CMF is hardware UX too!
The CMF field guide (Part 2)
The CMF field guide (Part 1)
Taste is not a mood board
Taste is a skill. Here's how to train it.
What if you break all 10 principles of Dieter Rams?
Rethinking Indian hardware
Better than inspiration? Deconstruct the classics
My hardware design reading list
The real problem with 'simple' hardware
CMF is hardware UX too!
The CMF field guide (Part 2)
The CMF field guide (Part 1)
Taste is not a mood board
Taste is a skill. Here's how to train it.
What if you break all 10 principles of Dieter Rams?
Rethinking Indian hardware
Better than inspiration? Deconstruct the classics
My hardware design reading list
50+ things worth knowing
70 things I learned making hardware in India
What designers, founders, and PMs making physical products in India need to know before the mould is cut
The biryani pot at Home Centre
When someone else's moment became mine
Study product like a builder (Part 1): Form, surface, interface
How to study products from the outside before ever opening them
50+ things worth knowing
70 things I learned making hardware in India
What designers, founders, and PMs making physical products in India need to know before the mould is cut
The biryani pot at Home Centre
When someone else's moment became mine
Study product like a builder (Part 1): Form, surface, interface
How to study products from the outside before ever opening them
50+ things worth knowing
70 things I learned making hardware in India
What designers, founders, and PMs making physical products in India need to know before the mould is cut
The biryani pot at Home Centre
When someone else's moment became mine
Study product like a builder (Part 1): Form, surface, interface
How to study products from the outside before ever opening them
The tells of a good toolmaker
Input / output
Apple Reminders & Notes
Study product like a builder (Part 4): Assembly, service, and factory lens
Study product like a builder (Part 3): Internals & electronics
Study product like a builder (Part 2): Mechanisms & structure
Why some cars look fast even when parked?
What if… you apply game theory in kitchen appliances?
Don’t limit offline studies to just your competitors for insights — study unrelated industries
QnA: Research, design-led projects, documenting design decisions.
The tells of a good toolmaker
Input / output
Apple Reminders & Notes
Study product like a builder (Part 4): Assembly, service, and factory lens
Study product like a builder (Part 3): Internals & electronics
Study product like a builder (Part 2): Mechanisms & structure
Why some cars look fast even when parked?
What if… you apply game theory in kitchen appliances?
Don’t limit offline studies to just your competitors for insights — study unrelated industries
QnA: Research, design-led projects, documenting design decisions.
Designing Native (Part 4): What's ahead
Designing Native (Part 3): Now it needed a team
The machine was born and needed a team to raise it.
Designing Native (Part 2): Sketches to launch
How we went from sketches to foam boards to shipping our first batch of RO purifiers.
Designing Native (Part 1): Problem to product
Why we built it, how Native was born, how RO purifiers actually work, how we started building hardware that was different.
Designing Native (Part 4): What's ahead
Designing Native (Part 3): Now it needed a team
The machine was born and needed a team to raise it.
Designing Native (Part 2): Sketches to launch
How we went from sketches to foam boards to shipping our first batch of RO purifiers.
Designing Native (Part 1): Problem to product
Why we built it, how Native was born, how RO purifiers actually work, how we started building hardware that was different.
Designing Native (Part 4): What's ahead
Designing Native (Part 3): Now it needed a team
The machine was born and needed a team to raise it.
Designing Native (Part 2): Sketches to launch
How we went from sketches to foam boards to shipping our first batch of RO purifiers.
Designing Native (Part 1): Problem to product
Why we built it, how Native was born, how RO purifiers actually work, how we started building hardware that was different.
No items
No items
The hero of the quarter
A productivity tracker ranks the best engineer last.
How to create a demo culture by building things you can show.
What Apple’s demo culture taught me about judgment, iteration, and how taste actually scales.
Motivational speeches vs. grunt work
Don't hype your team but make progress visible.
The meeting you don't have
The hero of the quarter
A productivity tracker ranks the best engineer last.
How to create a demo culture by building things you can show.
What Apple’s demo culture taught me about judgment, iteration, and how taste actually scales.
Motivational speeches vs. grunt work
Don't hype your team but make progress visible.
The meeting you don't have
The hero of the quarter
A productivity tracker ranks the best engineer last.
How to create a demo culture by building things you can show.
What Apple’s demo culture taught me about judgment, iteration, and how taste actually scales.
Motivational speeches vs. grunt work
Don't hype your team but make progress visible.
The meeting you don't have
To the team making it happen
You need less meetings, more work!
Get work feedback in unusual ways
Simple exercise #4 for managers for 25 weeks
Simple exercise #3 for managers for 25 weeks
Simple exercise #2 for managers for 25 weeks
Simple exercise #1 for managers for 25 weeks
Excitement & hiring
I'm hiring a stellar infographics designer
Book notes: The making of a manager
To the team making it happen
You need less meetings, more work!
Get work feedback in unusual ways
Simple exercise #4 for managers for 25 weeks
Simple exercise #3 for managers for 25 weeks
Simple exercise #2 for managers for 25 weeks
Simple exercise #1 for managers for 25 weeks
Excitement & hiring
I'm hiring a stellar infographics designer
Book notes: The making of a manager