Tuhin
Kumar

Currently at Apple

Human Interface Designer at Apple

Prior to this I was at Airbnb where I focused on interactions, design system and worked on almost all the product surfaces over my 4.5 years there. Before that I was a Founding Designer at Clara — a new way of interacting with computers and information. Long time ago I was at Facebook, building systems for the society as a product designer. I was the first full-time designer at Pulse, an Apple Design Award winning news app (now acquired by LinkedIn).

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2019

Airbnb DLS & Spatial Model

With Áthila, Yujin, Eric & many others

Over the course of 2019 we redesigned Airbnb’s entire design system (DLS) to make it more vivid, global and accessible. I was part of the small group that established a vision of the new system and later joined the DLS team to execute on that vision.

The work spanned across color, typography, interactions, components, layouts and many other facets involving multiple designers and engineers.

I led the effort to enhance fluidity of the Airbnb app - one of the key aspects of the original vision. We looked across the entire guest journey and critical moments to establish a spatial model for the entire Airbnb app — creating new modal patterns and a cohesive library of interactive view transitions.

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We defined Spatial position of each canvas as well as role for X, Y and Z axis. This allowed us to create a unified family of interactive transitions

Modal patterns that contextually grow, can be stacked, work with dynamic type and can have scroll views

Views can be dismissed by a continuous pan gesture and provides haptic feedback to aid the user

2018

Airbnb Trip Planner

With Danny & Eric

I co-led the redesign of Airbnb itinerary to move away from an itemized list of bookings to a planning surface. We wanted to mimic how people plan on paper — writing simple lists, checking things off, moving them around — for a digital medium.

We combined different ways people plan into a simple & fun interface where it was easy to switch from planning spatially to planning around free time. The result was a day by day itinerary paired with a fluid map to aid planning in the real world. Additionally each day shows recommendations from your Airbnb host as well as the larger host community to help you make the most out of your trip.

Exploring ways to make planning feel fun and lightweight

2017

Airbnb Travel Stories

With Michelle, Lisa & Stephanie

Airbnb Travel Stories was created to help people choose their next travel destination by showcasing real trips from Airbnb guests. It was designed to answer the age-old question of travel - "where should I go next" - through short video clips tagged with a location, home or activity.

My first week at Airbnb (Sep, 2016) kickstarted the project and over the course of next year we crystalized the vision, product positioning and iterated through multiple prototypes to eventually launch to a small community of creators.

Different formats exploring journaling, remembering and broadcasting

Early prototype of translating vertical video stories to web

2015-16

Clara

With Michael & Maran

Clara was a virtual assistant that scheduled your meetings. Cc Clara on any email, and it was designed to take care of the scheduling on your behalf. Clara handled this by a unique human-in-the loop system that combines the efficiency of AI with human agents who oversee the system and handle edge cases.

At Clara, I was responsible for all things design — product design, brand design, design system & marketing website for Clara’s launch. I also worked closely with engineering and machine learning team to design the agent tools that help Clara’s remote assistants in supporting its customers.

Clara was named one of the most innovative enterprise companies by Fast Company.

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Early research, moodboarding, brand assets and styleguide. Logo by Fuzzco.

Clara marketing website

A prototype of the agent tool used to oversee the algorithm’s output and handle edge cases

2014

Facebook Comments

Solo

My last phase of work at Facebook was focused on improving and inventing new ways for people to interact with stories on Facebook and enabling more conversations - liking, commenting and everything in between. Over the years some of these ideas have found their way in the core Facebook app — for better or worse.

Super Like — a very early prototype of Reactions

Quick cam to enable conversations via photos

Richer discussions on photos and videos

Messaging paradigms in comment threads

2013

Facebook Search

With Christine, Taylor & Russ

I helped shape the vision of the current Search experience on Facebook — the successor to Graph Search. Graph Search’s original experience, while powerful, was not intuitive for people. As part of rethinking the search experience, my work involved convincing and shifting the focus of the team from natural language queries to simpler keyword queries. A lot of this was made possible by Posts Search which was my first project at Facebook.

Core components of search system — typeahead and result cards

Redesigned search results to show different object types - photos, people, posts and places on one page

First version of Posts search using natural language

Explaining natural language syntax by showing relevant queries in the typeahed

2011-13

Pulse

With Akshay & Ankit

I was the first full-time designer at Pulse and was there for a little under two years. I was responsible for shaping different aspects of the Pulse experience — product strategy, interface design (for iOS, Android & Web) and brand design.

Major projects included launching a brand new catalog, redesigning the entire app, refreshing the brand identity and launching a social feed within the app.

Pulse won the Apple Design Award in 2011 and was eventually acquired by LinkedIn.