Manoj Venkata
Product Designer
I take complex, accessibility-critical products end-to-end — research, flows, and interfaces — backed by 11+ years of deep accessibility expertise and hands-on product delivery. Currently Product Designer at Deque.
The practitioner behind the work.
I came to product design the long way — through QA, front-end development, and project management. That path taught me to respect what happens after a Figma file is handed off, and to design for the messy reality of shipping software.
Today I focus on B2B SaaS and AI-native products, where the hardest work is rarely visual. It's making complex, novel systems feel obvious — turning model outputs into decisions users can trust, and workflows they'll actually adopt.
It's also where I share what I learn — patterns and practical tips drawn from solving real problems in real user scenarios, grounded in empathy, research, and cross-functional collaboration.
What I work on
Four overlapping practices, one integrated approach.
Product Design
End-to-end interaction and interface design for complex B2B SaaS and AI-native products.
UX Research
Contextual inquiry, usability testing, and synthesis that turns messy input into decisions teams can defend.
Accessibility & Usability
Auditing and remediation against WCAG 2.2 AA — keyboard, screen reader, color, and cognition.
Design Systems
Component libraries, tokens, and documentation that survive contact with engineering.
Where I've worked
Product Designer
- Design end-to-end for accessibility-critical products — research, flows, and interfaces — with accessibility built into every decision.
- Apply design-system thinking to keep complex products consistent and usable.
- Building AI-assisted design workflows with Claude and Cursor — custom skills and a Figma accessibility-annotation plugin.
Previously Sr SDET at Deque (2023–2025) — led QA & automation and production RCA while contributing design work.
Accessibility Specialist & Product Lead
- Led creation of an accessibility tool that automates verification of manual checks across Phenom products.
- Owned conformance reports and site-health metrics, and guided the teams responsible for fixes.
- Ran roadmaps, release plans, and feature grooming; reviewed prototypes; enabled developers and testers on accessibility.
Accessibility Consultant
- Audited websites, mobile apps, and documents against WCAG 2.0/2.1 and Section 508 for international clients across airlines, insurance, media, hospitality, banking, and ecommerce.
- Delivered audit reports, remediation guidance, and compliance statements; fixed issues with the Deque Amaze tool.
- Trained and mentored consultants and clients, and ran accessibility workshops.
- Advanced Diploma in 3D Animation & Visual Effects (AD3D Expert) — MAAC
- B.Tech — AITAM College, affiliated to JNTU Kakinada
- Employee of the Quarter — nominated to core values
- Figma accessibility-annotation plugin + custom Claude skills
- Chrome extension for accessibility issue reporting
- Hackathon — accessibility monitoring app
- SLA-breach monitoring web portal
- AI-assisted QA report reviewing & AI design desktop app