Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

In the leadup to Product://remote we’re putting the spotlight on the 2 dozen fantastic sessions we have lined up for attendees.

Perception, Behavior, or Both

By Randy Hunt & Preeti Kotamarthi

Design is a learning practice. We learn by designing. We design to learn. What are we trying to learn, though? What is the output of design? We design to learn if our decisions are capable of shaping human behaviour and shaping perception the way we intend to. Or are they shaping it in unintended ways?

About Randy Hunt & Preeti Kotamarthi

Randy J. Hunt is Head of Design at Grab, where he leads a team of designers, writers, and
researchers who create Southeast Asia’s Super App. Through Grab’s broad design practice
which includes service design, product design, UX research, design operations, design
systems, illustration and more, the team strives to use Design, to understand and to serve the
needs of our customers, while lifting them up.

He has served as Head of Design at Artsy and VP of Design at Etsy. In 2014, Etsy was honored
with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Corporate & Institutional Achievement. Randy
is the author of Product Design for the Web, which explores the evolving discipline of product
design for today’s connected world. He also co-founded Supermarket, a curated design
marketplace, founded Citizen Scholar Inc. and worked at Milton Glaser Inc. He is an active
writer, lecturer, critic, and visiting designer at many colleges and universities.

Randy was born and raised in Orlando, FL and spent 15 years living and working in NYC before
moving to Singapore in Jan 2019. He co-founded a record label, ran a design firm in Brooklyn,
and co-founded an e-commerce marketplace. He spent nearly 8 years leading design at Etsy,
where he learned most of what he knows about scaling a business and leading large teams.

Together with his awesome wife/partner in life, they have got two rescue dogs – Fish and
Twiggy. And Randy finds his deepest joy in helping people help other people.

Preeti Kotamarthi is the Behavioural Science Lead at Grab, the leading ride-hailing and mobile payments app in South East Asia. She has set up the behavioural science practice at the company, helping product and design teams understand customer behaviour and build better products. She completed her Masters in Behavioural Science from the London School of Economics and her MBA in Marketing from FMS Delhi.

With more than 7 years of experience in the consumer products space, she has worked in a range of functions, from strategy and marketing to consulting for startups, including co-founding a startup in the rural space in India. Her main interest lies in popularising behavioural design and making it a part of the product conceptualisation process.