Beyond the px: Markk’s Mudita Sisodia
Welcome to the #IndianDesigner conversation series for 8px magazine.
This is the fifth conversation with Pune based designer, Mudita Sisodia.
Mudita is a computer programmer turned product designer. She happens to be a strong advocate for accessibility and also made an app to help people with dyslexia.
Enjoy.
Can you explain briefly who Markk are and what they do?
So very often, one wonders what’s happening right now around them. Or at a particular place. That’s what Markk shows you. It’s a live rating app — like Yelp and Instagram Stories had a baby. Instead of lengthy text reviews, you share a photo or video from a place, and the ratings last for 24 hours only. You can unlock Guru badges, earn points for every activity, and redeem those for actual dollars. We’re currently live in LA, but are also expanding to more cities in the US slowly.
What has been your design journey up until now?
After completing school, I was confused about whether to go for Computer Science or Design. I decided to take the safer option and take up Computer Science because, in my little 17-year-old head, I could always switch from CS to design but not vice versa. In college, I first started dabbling in the hot topics — data sciences, AI, and ML, but quickly realized I found them painfully dry.
When I started going to Maker’s Asylum in my second year of college, I realized I LOVED making. I wanted to make things, be able to interact with them, and see others interact with these things that I made with my own two hands.
So with a process of steady elimination, I landed on front-end development. I loved that my code had a visual output that people could interact with. I got increasingly interested in the interaction, experience, and aesthetics of products. One day I landed on Gary Hustwit’s Objectified and was exposed to ideas about design that I had never heard of. I hadn’t been that excited in a long time. Towards the end of my final semester, I decided to switch to design and look for UX/Product/Call-it-what-you-want opportunities. I just wanted to design for tech.
I taught myself design processes and built my vocabulary by doing a couple of MOOCs and reading books. I had no work experience, so I wrote self-driven case studies to learn by doing, plus get something that could be added to a portfolio. This was the hardest part. My first case study was terrible and I knew it. I still swallowed my pride and shared it with people for feedback, knowing that I could only get better from there. I initiated conversations with people with interesting stickers on their laptops at coffee shops, reached out to people on Twitter, got some incredibly helpful feedback and guidance, and finally landed my job at Markk.
What does your typical morning look like?
I usually wake up at 7 am; 6:30 am if I’m particularly excited about the day ahead. After freshening up I go sit at my desk immediately. I like to get a bunch of things done while my mind is the clearest and distraction-free.
After an hour or two, I work out, have breakfast, chitchat with my mom, or rehearse a BLACKPINK dance routine with my two left feet. I have my morning call with the senior designer at 10:30 am, followed by a call with the entire team at 11 am.
Do you find it hard to define what you do to your friends?
My friends know that I design apps. They don’t know what it entails. I once shared one of my case studies with a friend, and she was amazed at how much thought goes into making design decisions.
Friends are still okay though, parents are the real problem. My dad thinks it’s ridiculous that I have never used Excel and that it does not affect my job in any way.
Do your career aspirations encroach your life?
My career aspirations shape my life and at this point, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel lucky to be getting paid to do something that I enjoy. Design does inform my approach towards clothing, interiors and I have become more deliberate about products that I use. I’m a sucker for thoughtful details on shoes and forever outraged about the lack of pockets in women’s jeans. Last year I pulled apart the pocket seams in my jeans and stitched extra fabric to it, simpy so I could fit my phone.
Something that particularly changed for me after I started immersing myself in more art and design-related content, was how much joy aesthetics give me. I would initially write it off as a frivolous tendency, but in the last year, I have come to accept that beautiful things make me happy, and are good for my emotional well-being. So I’ve been trying to surround myself with my art, collecting art by other people and admitting the fact that I pick restaurants by their ambiance and not food.
How do you design ‘for the future’?
When I think about the future, I worry about inclusivity and accessibility. The way tech seems to be pervading the very human condition (hello, Neuralink), I hope we’re able to even out the playing field instead of worsening the disparity. I don’t know how to design for it yet but I hope we’re able to keep advocating for our users strongly and leave no one behind.
What was it that attracted you to work at Markk?
When I heard of Markk I could immediately relate it to instances in my life where something like Markk could have made things easier.
It’s something that I would imagine my friends and me using frequently. I think content creation has now become very seamless, especially with story-like features cropping up on almost every major social media platform.
It made Markk feel very relevant and so the idea of being involved in its making was very exciting.
Can you explain the team dynamic?
We’re a team of 13 including the founders, developers, and 2 designers. I get to work with almost everyone, but regularly it’s the senior designer and founders.
Will your product exist in ten years?
Oh, yes! One of the exciting things about Markk is how quickly we iterate. I don’t even know what mobile phones would look like in 10 years but I would love to see how we integrate Markk in a metaverse, whenever that happens.
What advice would you give for those interested in kick-starting a career in designing for the market?
1. Make the most of the community, the people are shockingly nice.
2. Keep making things even if you think they’re “not-good-enough”. You’re only going to get better. If you’re not comfortable with sharing your work publicly, just share it directly with people whose feedback you’d value. But get that feedback.
3. You can learn the theory of UI design, Gestalt, etc, but if you think you’re still not able to create visually acceptable interfaces, start 👏 tracing 👏 UIs of apps that you like. You’ll learn a lot about the little details and how they all come together.
4. Apply for jobs even if you don’t feel like you fit each of their requirements. The recruiters can decide that.
I thank Mudita on behalf of the readers of 8px for being a part of this series and sharing her design journey with us. Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time 👋
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A selection of our other interviews:
About the author:
Shivam Dewan is a product designer based in New Delhi, India.
Remote worker by day, Flaneur by night. Feel free to reach out to him over Twitter @theshivamdewan
