Is Manthan right for you?

Navigation

</aside>

At Manthan, I don’t offer one-size-fits-all solutions. I meet teams where they are, whether that means building customer discovery systems, solving for challenges to make space for a learning and curious org, or upskilling teams with the foundational research and design strategy skills. My services are shaped by real conversations, thoughtful design, and a deep respect for culture and context.

UX Research Strategy 1.png

As your 1st or pivotal UX partner, I help you answer the big questions fast. My role is to nudge the team away from risky assumptions to real insights for stronger hypotheses.

Partnership Opportunities: Research and Design hiring, leadership advising, UX roadmaps and strategies, strategic workshop facilitation, insights knowledge management, product discovery, long shelf life user insights, UX metrics…

Is Manthan for you? Bring me in, if you are unsure of your target customer, paying customer, Product Market Fit, or lost/unorganised/unusable user feedback.

Through 1-1 coaching, I help shape your personal brand using your cultural diversity as a strength for your career goals.

I've walked that path navigating transitions from one culture to another, unlearning past habits, and embracing new patterns. It's a journey that blends the best of different worlds, allowing me to hold both myself and my professional environment accountable.

Is working with Soma right for you: Set concrete goals to navigate workplace challenges, improve storytelling and negotiations, visualise career trajectory, and explore the intersectionality of your identity with lived experiences.

From team workshops to conference keynotes, I deliver engaging learning experiences that demystify research and spark conversations. Topics range from design fundamentals, responsible AI in UX, to building inclusive design cultures.

Partnership Opportunities: Online/Onsite human centered design workshops, UXR trainings, Speaking engagements, research strategies and roadmaps facilitation, functional group coaching

Is Manthan for you? Bring me in to address wasted efforts and resources in research theater, empower research teams with tools that help them succeed in the org cultural context, and produce outcomes that are inclusive and diverse.

When an established team needs additional heads for a meaty challenge or faces a pivot, I get into the weeds as a player-coach… as a researcher, product strategist, and service designer.

Some of the outcomes I produced look like setting up knowledge systems to capture and reuse user signals, (in)validate your big ticket assumptions, set up foundational systems that connect digital+offline experiences, and guide teams on work that actually moves the needle.

Is Manthan for you? Bring me in, if you face misalignment, prioritisation challenges, and ongoing customer dissatisfaction leading to financial and opportunity costs.

Testimonials

I worked with Soma closely as a part of MobileFirst design team at IBM Design. Soma is a great UX designer who understands how to effectively communicate design to different stakeholders. Although we were under various resource constraints, she always got the team's back and helped us prioritize based on potential impact to the product. Soma found different ways to collaborate with our team who located at different parts of the world. She focuses on outcome and always has a near term and long term plan. It was such a pleasure to work with her. I believe she will be a strong contributor to any design team!

Soma is an outstanding user experience professional who can set up research teams from scratch and guide them towards producing actionable insights. Her vision and craft in setting up research metrics and psycho-behavioural segmentation studies were precious to our product organisation. In addition, Soma is also skilled at coaching product managers and designers to better collaborate with the research team. Soma is also an expert in systems thinking. She worked with executive stakeholders to set a measurable UX vision and has a knack for seeing the big picture for user-centred outcomes, e.g. setting up an impactful research ops practice to scale continuous discovery.

I would work with Soma again in a hear beat and recommend her to anyone needing a seasons research leader.

I worked with Soma during our onboarding to Dovetail at bol, and I’m really glad we did hire her help and expertise. Soma was an incredibly valuable sparring partner: she does not only knows the ins and outs of insights management, but also takes the time to understand the (complex) context she's working in.

She quickly got a feel for our research practice, our organizational dynamics at bol, and the maturity of our (UX) research practice, and she brought thoughtful perspectives on everything from information architecture for our taxonomy, to workflows and governance. What stood out most to me was her ability to balance strategic thinking with practical solutions, and her instinct for what would resonate with our stakeholders. Moreover, I really enjoyed our conversations on a variety of research topics, also outside of insights management.

I am looking forward to collaborating again with Soma in the future, should the opportunity arise.

I don’t rush into solutions. I begin with conversation.

If that resonates, Let’s connect.

[email protected]

</aside>

@somaray

</aside>