Designing for People, Scaling for Growth.
A seasoned design and research leader.
A product shipper. My kid's full-time chef, part-time chauffeur, and always-on Siri.
I'm Neha Karira, a Product Design Leader based in Melbourne.✨
I empower organisations to define vision, strengthen design maturity, and drive outcomes that move people and business forward. My approach delivers clarity, craft, and measurable impact, tailored to your stage, speed, and ambition. From hands-on design to enterprise leadership, here's my story. ✨
Impact at Scale
Years of Design
Deep product
design expertise,
9+ years in leadership.
Revenue Influenced
Driving digital
e-commerce impact
across global markets.
Customers Reached
Serving a global
audience through
impactful digital products.
Operational Uplift
Achieved through strategic AI integration
and DesignOps.
Recent Experience
Bunnings
2021 - 2025
Design & Research Head (Senior Manager, Product Design)
Core Portfolio
Bunnings Website
Trade Website
Bunnings App
PowerPass App
The Beginning
The Background
My journey at Bunnings was grounded in empathy, structure, and evidence. I built and scaled a design team that brought digital thinking and agile practice into a brick-and-mortar business, delivering real products across four websites and three apps that drove revenue and meaningful transformation.
The Stakes
Bunnings wasn’t just a design challenge; it was a complex ecosystem. As Australia’s #1 online retailer and most trusted brand in 2021, expectations were high; and during COVID, with click-and-collect as the only service channel, the digital bar became non-negotiable.
The Goal
To uplift accessibility, design systems, and customer insight maturity while shaping the 2030 experience strategy. This involved proving the value of design, embedding evidence into every decision, and partnering with Product, Engineering, and Delivery to steer strategy.
2021 Stats
Annual Visitors
Retail website and Bunnings App traffic annually.
Trade Visitors
Trade website and PowerPass App annual reach.
Weekly Revenue
Generated through all digital channels weekly.
Online Retailer 2021
Most trusted retail brand for 5 consecutive years.
The Design Team
The Initial Problems
Teams faced too many WIPs, constant context switching and no shared definition of “Discovery.” Work labelled simply as “in design” blurred ownership and progress, and Discovery tasks didn't fit delivery workflows, making tracking and reporting difficult.
Inconsistent Experiences
Disconnected workflows across web & app platforms led to duplicated effort and misaligned user experiences.
Limited Visibility
Discovery activities were undervalued with poor stakeholder alignment, resulting in missed deadlines and duplicated effort.
Unclear Ownership
Absence of clear RACI or accountability structures meant teams operated in silos without a shared understanding of responsibilities.
Accessibility Gaps
With no special team or dedicated headcount, and limited organisational readiness and capability, the foundational value of accessibility needed to be proven.
What I Led, Focused On, and Delivered
Design Leadership
Product & CX strategy
UX audits & experience benchmarking
Web & app delivery
AI-assisted workflows
Insights Management
Product Strategy
Product Discovery
CRO strategy
C-suite reporting
OKR planning
Agile roadmaps
Connected Retail (Web, App, Stores)
Scaling & Operations
Design System Governance
Accessibility standards
Tooling partnerships
Tech alignment
Guilds & Community of Practice
People Leadership
Career Frameworks
Competencies & Capability Building
Performance Plans
Design Reviews
Recruitment & Retention
Uplifted Craft
Improved quality across UI, UX, and end-to-end experiences.
Strengthened Thinking
Tied design decisions directly to customer and commercial outcomes.
Matured Operations
Advanced frameworks, tooling, governance, and optimised budgets.
Four Years. 3× Revenue. 2.5× Sessions. Corporate website of the year for accessibility.
Led digital initiatives that tripled revenue, grew known customers, and doubled sessions through strategic product delivery and continuous optimisation. Grew team from 5 to 20.
2025 Stats
Annual Visitors
Retail website and Bunnings App traffic annually.
Trade Visitors
Trade website and PowerPass App annual reach.
Weekly Revenue
Generated through all digital channels weekly.
CSAT in Web & App
From 3.0 to above 8.0, customer satisfaction rose significantly.
How I led and got things done
(Key Highlights)
1. Values & Leadership Principles
These principles have guided every decision, from hiring and feedback to how success is celebrated. I lead through transparency, trust, and a steady hand, giving teams the autonomy and confidence they need to move fast and do meaningful work.
Clarity & Structure
Transform chaos into clarity through robust frameworks, governance, and transparent decision-making that empowers teams to achieve their best work.
Autonomy & Trust
Cultivate psychologically safe environments where teams take ownership, embrace accountability, and innovate with unwavering confidence.
Compassion & Fairness
Lead with empathy, celebrate every success (big or small), actively solicit feedback, and ensure recognition flows consistently throughout the team.
Customer-First Quality
Prioritise customer needs while strategically aligning with business outcomes because quality and craftsmanship are never optional.
2. Staying Connected: Leadership Rituals
Leadership & Coaching
Fortnightly design & research all hands, 1:1s with direct report for projects, blockers, and feedback. Quarterly skip-levels to identify emerging leaders. Regular coaching. Sessions focusing on inspiration and connection. A sacred space for psychological safety.
Digital Leadership Group
In the DLG, I helped define digital norms across OKRs, portfolios, roadmaps, agile practice, estimations, digital operations, people planning, hiring strategy, and org design, and led town halls and showcases to keep teams aligned, informed, and moving.
Design LT
The Design LT — my design and research leadership group, aligned on project health, capacity, culture, and operations, and worked together to continually raise the bar across the practice.
Design Reviews
An asynchronous channel for continuous critique, supplemented by fortnightly design sparring and accessibility sessions.
Quarterly Planning
Projection and estimation to align on priorities and capacity with Product and Engineering.
Goals/Performance Check-in
Dedicated quarterly check-ins for growth, feedback, and development.
3. People & Performance
I built comprehensive skills matrices, competency frameworks, and performance review systems. I created clear career pathways from Product Designer to Design Lead, with defined expectations and growth opportunities at every level. Similar model was replicated for the Design Research Team.
4. The vision that we co-created as one design team
5. Our Design Principles
6. Frameworks Deployed
7. OKRs for Accessibility
8. Design System in Action
Without a dedicated team or additional headcount, progressing the Design System was a significant challenge. But despite these limitations, we identified core issues, established an accessibility guild, set up governance, and achieved a 30% reduction in duplicate design effort through shared libraries and templates, accelerating delivery of consistent, accessible components.
9. Figma Structure
10. Accessibility: From Zero to AA
Without a dedicated accessibility team, we distributed governance, capability, and measurable ownership across the Digital division. We created the Digital A11Y North Star, influenced OKRs, and instilled accountability across Product, Engineering, Design, and QA. Ensured 100% of new features met WCAG AA standards, resulting in an org-wide maturity uplift and the embedding of Accessibility Champions in every squad.
11. Research Playbook for Insights Management
12. Monthly Insights Roundup and Action Plan
13. FY22-FY26 Portfolio Planning and Connected Digital Strategy
Hands-on Portfolio Planning & Product Strategy Workshops
14. JIRAfaction of Product Discovery based on an original framework
The team struggled with too many WIPs, unclear Discovery practices and a catch-all “in design” status, leaving 35–40% of work stalled or unclear. I introduced a unified Discovery framework, clearer status definitions and an integrated workflow with Product and Engineering. Within two quarters, blocked work dropped by 53% and cycle-time clarity improved across all squads.
Clear Visibility
Ensured transparent discovery activities across all teams and stakeholders.
Better Planning
Improved cross-team alignment and enhanced expectation management.
Actionable Insights
Tracked how ideas progress seamlessly from Discovery to Delivery.
15. AI Adoption
- Led an AI readiness and attitudinal study across Digital (500+ people surveyed + follow-up interviews) to understand capabilities, confidence levels, and practical needs in 2023. This work informed training pathways, guardrails, and our partnership approach with Microsoft Copilot in 2024.
- Created structured comparison prompts and analysis workflows to surface market patterns faster, helping Product teams make clearer positioning and prioritisation decisions without increasing research load.
- Built a lightweight insight-clustering workflow that synthesised interviews, reviews, and surveys into themes. This improved clarity and reduced time spent in manual analysis while keeping interpretation and judgment human-led.
- Introduced prompt-based exploration for naming systems, variation testing, and early pattern direction, not to replace craft, but to accelerate initial thinking and free more time for depth and refinement.
16. Design CoP
Co-established and led the cross-organisation Design Community of Practice spanning Digital, Technology, the Innovation Lab, and Store Design. This is where we brought together 40+ designers and researchers to align standards, share knowledge, and uplift craft and capability.
Programs Shipped
1. Redesigned two major websites (Retail & Trade) with over 50 features launched
Jul 2021
Nov 2025
2. Uplifted Bunnings App & PowerPass App including ecommerce capability
3. Multi-division programs under Wesfarmers launched
Implemented OnePass and Flybuys
Launched Bunnings eGift Cards
4. CRO: Tripled conversion through enhanced Product & Search experience
Led CRO strategy, search optimisation, dynamic filtering, and continuous PDP experimentation to increase product-page conversion.
5. Introduced Marketplace
Enabled strong revenue growth by launching Marketplace and improving core buyer and seller journeys end-to-end.
6. Cart & Checkout Improvements
Delivered 3× revenue growth by enhancing cart and checkout flows and launching multiple payment gateways.
7. Skyrocketed CSAT across all Digital channels
Digital Feedback Integration and CSAT Uplift that grew CSAT from 3 to 8 across web and app.
8. Launched AI Chatbot - From Pilot to Scale
We shaped the design and delivery of Bunnings' 1st AI-powered chatbot, launched as a pilot for logged-in customers to provide DIY advice and product support. The chatbot evolved to include stock availability checks, order tracking, and live chat handoff, creating a more seamless, conversational customer experience. It boasted a 67% engagement rate during the pilot phase, establishing a unified cross-platform experience and a strong foundation for the conversational commerce roadmap.
Other Work (Previous Experience)
Next
(Reece Group's Innovation Lab)
2020 - 2021
Design & Research Lead
Project: SafeR App
An ML-driven telematics app that helps drivers stay safe on the road.
Disciplines: Product Strategy · UX/UI · ML Experience Design · Research · Prototyping
Duration: 5 months
Project
SafeR
An ML-driven telematics app that helps drivers stay safe on the road
Disciplines: Product Strategy · UX/UI · ML Experience Design · Research · Prototyping
Duration: 5 months
3. What We Built
SafeR — a proactive safety system for drivers and fleets
- ML-powered risk predictions
- Fatigue detection
- Real-time driving behaviour feedback
- Collision-risk awareness
- Dark, distraction-free on-road UI
- Fleet dashboards with risk trends & coaching insights
4. Design Principles
Intervene only when necessary
Reduce cognitive load, especially at night
Predict — don't just report
Build trust, not fear
Make the invisible (risk) visible
Promote safety, not surveillance
5. Research Approach
We conducted deep contextual inquiry with:
- Long-haul drivers (6–8 hr stretches)
- Metro stop-and-go delivery drivers
- Fleet managers monitoring 20–200+ drivers
Patterns uncovered:
- Drivers routinely “feel fine” when telemetry shows fatigue.
- Safety alerts must be minimal and respectful.
- Managers need clarity, not surveillance.
6. Turning Telematics Into Human Signals
Raw inputs → Human-understandable insights
Each signal was paired with a UI behaviour tuned with engineers.
7. ML Response Scenarios
We prototyped how ML responds in real time:
- Harsh braking event → “Recap” card
- Fatigue detection → “Consider taking a break”
- Overspeed pattern → Subtle coaching
- Collision risk → Immediate high-signal alert
Impact (Pilot Insights)
YIncrease
in driver awareness
Reduction
In risky driving events
High driver acceptance
of alert logic
Successfully Pitched
at first-round VC funding (although didn't secure)
What made this meaningful
This was one of the most human projects I’ve designed. I wasn’t designing a flashy app. I was designing a companion for a driver at 2am on a highway, someone who thinks they’re fine but whose risk signals are quietly rising. SafeR mattered because it blended emerging tech with genuine care and responsibility.
Speaking / Panel / Thought Leadership
1. Make Yourself Redundant
At Product Outlook 2025, I shared my leadership approach, which is grounded in clarity, autonomy, and empowerment. The goal is to design myself out of day-to-day dependency by building a team that thinks and leads independently.
2. Table Host : Humans in Accessibility
Recently, I had the privilege of facilitating a table at the Humans in Accessibility Think Tank. Over 30 design leaders came together in Melbourne to connect, share, and debate the future of digital accessibility. The level of engagement reminded me why this work matters.
3. DesignOps and ResearchOps Leadership Roundtable
In Oct 2025, I had the privilege of being a panelist at the inaugural DesignOps Leadership Roundtable, joining leaders from Australia’s most progressive design organisations to discuss the evolving role of Ops in modern product teams. We explored how DesignOps drives influence without authority, educates stakeholders, sets healthy operating boundaries, and scales design through systems—not projects. The conversation spanned AI-driven operational efficiency, the rise of ContentOps, and the shifting definitions of Ops in complex organisations. It was an honest, energising exchange about the real challenges and future opportunities shaping the next era of DesignOps.
In Oct 2025, I had the privilege of being a panelist at the inaugural DesignOps Leadership Roundtable, joining leaders from Australia’s most progressive design organisations to discuss the evolving role of Ops in modern product teams. We explored how DesignOps drives influence without authority, educates stakeholders, sets healthy operating boundaries, and scales design through systems—not projects. The conversation spanned AI-driven operational efficiency, the rise of ContentOps, and the shifting definitions of Ops in complex organisations. It was an honest, energising exchange about the real challenges and future opportunities shaping the next era of DesignOps.
As a leader,
no two days are the same.
Some days you win,
some days you just swim.
