Ashish Goel
d.school Teaching Fellow 2014-2015
Ashish’s early foray into ‘design’ was photoshopping his friends’ faces for comic relief while he was an undergraduate student at IIT Delhi. When he started his company, his co-founders decided that since he wasn’t good at much else, this skill would come in handy and therefore ‘design’ is what he would be doing. Forever hoping that his company would grow large enough to hire a real designer, eventually he realized that this was no accident and design was exactly what he was supposed to be doing. He also learnt that design was a lot more than pushing pixels in Photoshop, though he admits that that is still an endeavour he occasionally enjoys.
He left his company, worked at a start-up incubator, worked at another start-up, came back to sell his company and then found his way to the Stanford Graduate Design Program, and now feels less awkward about calling himself a designer.
Ashish believes that real user-centered design is not just about designing better products, services and experiences, but about designing better users.
Having lived most of his life in India, Ashish found it both disturbing and empowering to realize that he harbors deep patriotic feelings toward his country, and is excited about the possibilities of what design can do for India.
In his spare time, Ashish can be found on a dance floor attempting a wicked cross body lead. He is also a die-hard Bollywood fan, but hasn’t found willing co-conspirators who will take the trip to Fremont to watch a Hindi movie with him. He’ll drive.
