radhika sawhney.
building and scaling design teams
About Me
Design leader with a track record of building and scaling high-impact product design teams at Cisco, ThousandEyes (acq. Cisco), Quid, and the National Robotics Engineering Center (CMU).
I bring a user-centered, research-driven approach grounded in deep expertise in data visualization and complex B2B systems. At ThousandEyes, I led design through its acquisition by Cisco, scaled the team from the ground up, and helped evolve the design org into a strategic partner.
Since leaving ThousandEyes, I took a year-long parental sabbatical (2023-24). Over the last year, I have been exploring business ideas, prototyping AI-native products (HappyPath AI, Splice AI, Dolce.health) and advising early-stage founders on design team formation, agentic UX, and building with emerging AI capabilities.
Case Studies
HappyPath AI
Conceptualized and built a product guidance agent for B2B SaaS
Splice AI
Built a Data Analytics platform with Multi Agent System.
Past Projects
Design Leadership at Cisco ThousandEyes
Scaling Design through hypergrowth and a $1B Acquisition
ThousandEyes App Insights
Launched a new product line to detect application outages.
Quid Apps
Launched a new 'lite version' of Quid based on highly repeatable use cases.
Quid Natural Language Search
Enabling users to search in natural language pre-GPT era.
Quid Faceted Search
Redesigning the Search experience for users users to find relevant documents.
Quid Persona Deep Dive
A deep dive into the marketing ecosystem to identify and understand the various facets of users.
Drawing with Data
A visualization of a week's worth of travel data to spot patterns.
Grocery Shopping Innovation
A system to simplify the grocery shopping experience and connect it with planning and cooking meals at home.
Design Thinking for K12
A handbook for teaching Human Centered Design and its application to creative problem solving in K-12 curriculum.
Nightowl: Preventing Date Rape
A mobile application that provides users with a safe and anonymous way to report potentially dangerous situations at social events.
Sustainable Water Purification
Industrial Design and Ethnographic Studies
Professional Journey
Founder
Exploring business ideas, incubating AI-first products across digital adoption (HappyPath AI), managed data stacks (Splice AI), and digital health (Dolce.Health). Ran 80 + discovery sessions, shipped multiple POCs, and secured early design-partner traction.
UX Advisor
Setting up first design practice for an early stage SRE agent startup based in SF. Defined hiring roadmap, lean UX processes, and v1 product flows. Coaching team on continuous research and usability testing.
Director, Head of Design ThousandEyes
Scaled design org from 2 to 12, formalized design function, and elevated UX to a strategic partner. Post-acquisition, introduced PLG motion that lifted trial-to-paid conversion, unified design system with Cisco portfolio. Previous positions: Senior Design Manager, Principal Product Designer
Head of Design
Led a team of 5 designers & researchers to articulate the product vision and ship data-vis heavy workflows for enterprise analytics. Built scalable design system, integrated new graph visualizations, and launched new product lines, along with structuring the design org. Previous positions: UX Designer, UX Design Manager.
Design Strategist
Applied Human-Centered Design to robotics projects: mapped stakeholder needs, ran ethnographic studies, and prototyped novel HRI interfaces adopted in two DARPA-funded projects. Previous positions: Design Intern