Off Duty
Army brat. Cricket tragic. Fiction writer under a pen name. Occasionally found on podcasts talking about research, design, and mental models.
I grew up in army cantonments across India — Uri, Jorhat, Delhi, Bangalore. My father was an officer, which meant moving every few years and learning to make friends fast. It also meant Doordarshan, VHS tapes of Mr. India on repeat, and a deep-seated belief that Ajit Agarkar is the greatest cricketer of all time.
I wrote fiction for over a decade under the pen name Athul DeMarco — short stories, screenplays, a serialized noir thriller set in Bangalore, and one published book (An.Al - The Origins). The archive on this site has all of it.
When I'm not working, I'm usually watching cricket, arguing about cinema, reading spy novels, or building things with AI that probably don't need to exist but are fun to make. Un-Dios started that way.
Podcasts & Talks
Darshan's Diary
Prioritize Mental Models Over Words
On why the language users use matters less than the mental models they carry. How to listen past words to understand what people actually mean — and how to design for that.
UXArmy
Communicating ROI of UX Research
The perennial research problem — how do you prove the value of research to stakeholders who want numbers? On framing research impact in terms that business leaders actually care about.
More of me in other corners of the internet.