UX Researcher · Product leader · Builder
Product manager with a research habit built in.
Fifteen years across NASA Ames, Intuit, Axway, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, SAP Ariba, Whatfix, and now Haleo. From air traffic controllers to homeowners hiring contractors, the work stays the same: watch closely, find the break, stay until it's fixed.
The long way round
A ballroom full of procurement teams. A kid learning to type on a tablet. A homeowner sizing up a contractor.
2008–2010
NASA Ames · Research and code
Modeled how much air traffic controllers can actually hold in their heads before the picture slips. First lesson: the limit is human, not technical.
2010
Intuit · Design and research
Rapid prototyping with accountants, testing every week until the direction held up.
2011–2012
Axway · Usability design engineer
Untangling enterprise software people were stuck with all day, end to end.
2012
Microsoft · Windows 8 research
Eye tracking on the tablet keyboard. People told us one thing; their eyes told us another, and the keyboard changed.
2012
Wells Fargo · Mobile and tablet
Usability and persona work behind a new platform rollout across iPad, tablet and phone.
2014–2021
SAP Ariba · Research lead, then Principal PM
Six years on one platform. The research behind Guided Buying, the accessibility program SAP called its gold standard, then owning self service for 5M users and $3.2T in managed spend.
2021–2022
Whatfix · Head of Vertical Products
First vertical product, 0 to 1, co-created with 12 of the top 25 US insurers and carried to market through Guidewire, Duck Creek and Accenture.
2022–2024
GuidR Wellness · Founder, Founder University
An AI wellness product for seniors. Nearly everything that changed came from sitting beside them while they used it.
2025–now
Haleo · Founder
Homeowners spending six figures on people they have no way to vet. I did the interviews, the UX, and most of the code. Now in pilot in San Jose.
Different rooms, same question: where does this actually hurt? And the same habit after that: sit with the person, find the break, stay until the fix ships.
- 15 years
- UX research and product, mostly enterprise
- 3M+
- Subscribers on Guided Buying within a year of launch
- ~30%
- Support cost reduction across 2,900 Tier 1 accounts
Selected work
Choose the evidence you need.
UX Research
Five studies in full: workshops, contextual inquiry, eye tracking, longitudinal comparison, accessibility. Method, artifacts, and what changed because of them.
Read the case studies 02 / BreadthProduct experience
What I've owned and shipped: 0 to 1 vertical products, self service at enterprise scale, go-to-market through partners, and an AI product I'm building now.
See the track record
Right now
Building Haleo from research through code.
Since mid-2025 I've been building Haleo, an AI product for home remodeling: the research, the UX, and most of the code. Homeowners spend six figures on decisions they cannot picture, hiring people they have no way to vet. I interviewed both sides to confirm it, then built a contractor trust index from CSLB records, permit history, and inspection outcomes. It's in pilot with San Jose homeowners and five contracting firms.
A few notes
I'm grateful to have worked with thoughtful people.
Colleagues, founders and engineers who were generous with their time and feedback. Their words mean more than any self-summary.
“Deepa worked with me as Head of Product for our Smart product series. She brought in real use cases through her extensive research and discussions with customers. Deepa has a great ability to work across teams. This was apparent not only through her cross-functional efforts within the company but also in her cross-company collaboration that she had to do for ISV integrations.”
“Deepa is an excellent, driven, results oriented product manager. She knew what needed to be done to the solution and drove the actions of others to lead to a successful product. While building Smart product Series she understood the ins and outs of what we were doing and helped to built the solution from scratch. Not just that she was the face for the ISV partnerships, customer research and the accelerators that we built as part of the solution.”
“Deepa owned the design of the complete refresh of Ariba's cloud end user and technical support portals. She balanced industry best practices, corporate frameworks and platforms, needs revealed through her detailed user studies, and team machine learning and knowledge engineering innovations to deliver a secure environment for connecting users to answers, content, and prioritized support channels. Through her detailed design methodology, she overcame very unique challenges providing a scalable experience across 32 languages and almost all countries.”
“Every time I think of Deepa, the project that comes to my mind is the Accessibility for Guided Buying. She did a terrific job in making it happen. Overall, I enjoy working with her and she will be a great advocate for user experience on any product.”
“Deepa was a creative problem solver, asked the right questions and thought out-of-the-box when developing the experimental design for the project. She was capable of not just articulating the user problem but quick in proposing design solutions to help address issues.”
“She was thorough, eager to help out, and always asking the right questions to make sure things were on track. She seemed very knowledgeable about traditional usability methods.”