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Design Work That Lives Outside The Frame
Stories that rarely make it into portfolios...
User experience doesn’t start on the screen. It starts in the structure.
When I began freelancing, I had a picture in mind about my first real project. I imagined a few app features, wireframes, maybe a website section or some design work that involved components, screens and user flows that I could point at and say, ‘I designed this!' Instead, my first project introduced me to the reality of design work.
That came through my first long-term client, The Carpet Cellar, an Indian carpet house with an extraordinary collection of hand-knotted rugs and decades of craft embedded in each piece. What they needed from me at that point wasn’t an interface. They needed structure, the kind that shapes internal processes and determines how customers eventually experience a brand.
At the time, I didn't think of this as design work in the conventional sense. Yet, being new to the field, trying to gain experience and build momentum, I wanted to say yes to every opportunity that came my way. So, I took this project up, thinking of it as a general step to begin earning as a freelancer.
What I didn’t realise then was how deeply this project would reshape the way I now think about UX, systems, and the responsibility that comes with designing experiences long before anything reaches a screen!
We need an organised roll out, don't we?
Where the work began
My role began with catalogue design. Each catalogue had to be created for a specific client brief, and involved selecting the carpets, arranging them into thoughtful sequences, and presenting them in a way that felt consistent with the brand’s identity. Here, design decisions weren't just about decoration; they were also about harmony, curation, and clarity. To do that well, I had to understand the brand beyond visuals. The history, the seriousness of craft, the value each product carried, all of it subtly shaped how the catalogues took form.
Soon after, the work expanded into something less visible. The company was preparing to migrate its entire inventory to a new website that was being developed by an external agency. To move forward, everything had to be reorganised at the foundation. This meant,
> Creating unique names for each carpet.
> Assigning accurate sizes, materials, collections and discoverable SEO-based tags.
> Standardising colours so the filters could function as useful tools for customers.
> Writing descriptions that explained the product without overselling it.
> Resizing and renaming every image for seamless display on the new website.
> Delivering and maintaining all the data on collaborative spreadsheets for seamless updation and access by the internal teams and the website developers.
I along with the brand's product managament team worked on all these and some more! The work wasn't a glamourous screen design but involved hundreds of decisions that eventually shaped the customers' experience, decided how someone searched, filtered, compared, and understood these products.
This was indeed user experience design, just without the comfort of calling it so.
Stepping closer
As the website took shape, my involvement expanded beyond data structuring. I shared layout suggestions for product pages, content sections, service pages, and blogs. I helped think through a questionnaire designed to guide customers toward the right rug for their space. I worked closely on reorganising the product filters as well, especially colour, converting a scattered palette into something intuitive and visually pleasing.
I also tested the website repeatedly during development, reviewing it not just as a designer, but as a customer, pointing out areas where navigation felt unclear, content felt overwhelming, or information was hard to find.
This was the point where I began to understand the design field differently...
Nothing about this work resulted in polished UI mockups for my portfolio. But every part of it shaped the experience that finally went live. I looked at UX not as something limited to flows and screens, but as the outcome of thousands of small structural decisions.
Over time, the work evolved further and I started designing for their social media, print ads, Google ads, and short-form content. However, behind the scenes, as new products continued to arrive, I stayed involved in structuring and integrating them.
At the same time, I was also standardising the brand's visual vibe by establishing their design system. By designing multiple sample catalogues with creative layouts, hierarchy, typography, introductions and navigations that could be used for all, I created scalable designs that made each new catalogue feel familiar yet tailored. To make the catalogues more user-friendly, I introduced interactive elements like clickable menus and contact information which made the experience lively.
What began as mere 'catalogue design' slowly became long-term stewardship of how the brand organised, presented, and maintained itself across touchpoints.
Why I chose to stay?
This isn’t the kind of work I imagined doing when I set out to be a product designer. Yet, I chose to continue. Partly because it taught me something essential: how much design exists outside interfaces. I learned that being organised is not just administrative, but also empathetic, clarity and structure though needed for functionality, aids aethetics. I realised that thoughtful systems build trust long before visuals attempting to persuade.
But just as importantly, I stayed because of the relationship itself.
The collaboration was respectful, open, and genuine. I wasn't treated as an output machine or an interchangeable vendor, but as someone whose thinking mattered. Pace was fair. Conversations were honest. Decisions were shared. The environment allowed good work to happen naturally.
This project taught me
Working with The Carpet Cellar reshaped my understanding of design. It showed me that user experience doesn’t begin with interfaces. It begins with how information is shaped and decisions are supported as companies scale up. It taught me patience, precision, and responsibility, the kind that doesn’t seek visibility, but earns it slowly.
Most importantly, it reminded me that meaningful design work isn’t always the kind that fits neatly into portfolios. Sometimes, it lives in spreadsheets, catalogues, databases, and long-term relationships that teach you how design actually sustains itself.
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