In an era in which work remotely has become the standard for many creative teams and AI adds more employees and iterations to the mix, the design process is increasingly being tested. Tools are abundant, but cooperation often feels more fragmented than liquid. To understand how we can build better, I spoke with Saad Rajan and Vivek Haligeri Veerana, co -founders of the Naya design platform. Their cooperation work won one of the 75 Gold Awards – the highest honor in the IF Design Award 2023, and another collaborative Naya project won an IF Design Award 2024. Their unique insights into the creative process, the importance of iteration and feedback and tips for navigating digital overloading, can be a big design.
Question: You both come from deep technical, as well as creative backgrounds. Why did you first realize that the design process was broken?
We spent years in product development – everything from adapted aircraft to architectural structures – and constantly encountered the same problem. The most innovative or creative ideas did not survive. They would get lost in folders or buried in inboxes. Some ideas slowly fade away over revision rounds. Others are reduced by ineffective workflows. That friction is composed when working between teams, tools and locations. When we arrived at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for a Master in Design Engineering, we buried even deeper. We realized that what leads to great design – citeration, cooperation and connecting the dots – is exactly where current systems are struggling, especially in remote environments.
Question: What has changed most about design work in the past five years?
Design is more distributed due to remote activities. That shift opened incredible potential – but also introduced chaos. AI adds another layer of complexity: there are more assets and stakeholders, leading to more feedback. Iteration is done on dozens of platforms. Feedback is spread over Miro boards, Google Documents, Dropbox, Slack, E -mail and text. Everyone works hard, but not necessarily together. And because external teams have less chance of sharing raw concepts, you lose those corridors where someone looks at the screen of a colleague and offers a useful editing or great addition to an existing idea. Without a shared context, people hesitate to jump in.
Question: That makes itteration and cooperation much more difficult. How do you define a great design today?
It starts with embracing the messy center. Iteration is not just about reworking – it is where creativity lives. We believe that great design comes from doing, undo and do it again. However, that only works if you can follow and celebrate progress more easily. Feedback is a large part of this process – it is in fact everything. The more votes, the better the result. That can be your engineer, your end user, someone from the marketing team or an AI agent. But to make that work, feedback must be centralized. It must also be on time and visible for everyone. Design is complex and almost always benefits from transparency and strategic cooperation.
Question: So how does Naya tackle this problem?
We have built Naya as the connective tissue of modern design. It is a digital studio that brings together more than 100 file types – including Figma files, PDFs, videos, 3D models and more – in a single, searchable space. You can see any version, comments and decision in context, so it’s easy to understand where an idea is going. We also use AI to reduce the sound. It helps to summarize feedback, propose solutions, prevent reworking and even automating part of the work that you do not want to do. But we do not replace creativity or designers – we improve it by increasing insights from your own process.
Question: How can these teams build more efficiently?
Sustainability is not just about the end product. It is also about co -creation, fairness and reducing waste – from both materials and time – completely in the way. Waste time, duplicated effort, lost knowledge and missed connections are all barriers. But if you repeat well, collect various input, keep track of your decisions and collaborate, you not only move faster. You design more solely. Work remotely does not disappear and the number of design tools multiplies. The question is whether our systems and habits are evolving to support the depth and inclusiveness that requires good design. We believe they can and must. And our users agree, from multinational companies such as Google and Adidas, to large design agencies such as Millerknoll and Ideo, in addition to boutique brands around the world.
Question: Last thought – what is the only thing you hope to take away your work at Naya?
We want people to understand that great design is possible – even with a mainly external workforce and an increase in AI tools – if we reconsider how we work and optimize for the digital age.
The future of design is not about more tools. It is a better connection.
Lisa Gralnek is the worldwide head of sustainability and impact for If Design, director of IF Design USA Inc., and Creator/Host of the Podcast, Future of XYZ
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