EPC Design Dialogues: On Design as a Practice
Takeaways from EPC Design Dialogues’ round tables on leadership, critique, AI, B2B delight, behaviour, coaching, and the shift from design as output to design as responsible judgment.
On 28th March 2026, we met at BLR Brewery Marathahalli in Bangalore for a morning designed to stretch a designer's thinking and sharpen their craft.
Design Leaders who joined us
1. Sandeep Karmarkar - Design leader at UBER
2. Shantanu Kulkarni - Design leader at Google
3. Abhay Vyas - Director of UX at Salesforce
4. Shreeya Malpani - Head of Design at Cure Fit
5. Satish Patil - Director of Design at Samsung Research India
6. Utkarsh Biradar - Chief Designer at Tata Elxsi
The following are a few notes from multiple round tables that opened focused conversations on the realities of design practice and leadership.
Each table took on a different theme, allowing participants to move beyond broad opinions and examine the everyday decisions, tensions, and responsibilities that shape design inside organisations. This blog brings together a few sharp nuggets from those round-table conversations.
Great leadership is ownership without control
One of the conversations in the round tables was around design leadership, especially the difference between giving people freedom and leaving them without direction.
A leader should be a compass, not a map.
A map tells people every turn to take. A compass provides direction, helps with orientation, and helps make decisions when the route is not obvious.
The discussion pointed to a more mature model of leadership: one in which leaders do not control every move but create the conditions for better decisions across the team. That means setting direction, defining boundaries, clarifying outcomes, creating governance, and then allowing people enough room to think, act, and own the work.
A strong distinction was made between autonomy and independence.
Autonomy does not mean everyone works in isolation or does whatever they want. It means designers have the freedom to make decisions within a shared frame. There is clarity on standards, principles, expectations, and outcomes.
Independence, without that shared frame, can easily become fragmentation. Everyone may be moving, but not necessarily in the same direction.
Mature teams do not need less structure. They need a better structure.
For senior designers, it is important not to become the person who has all the answers, reviews every detail, or protects quality through control. They should build enough clarity, trust, and decision hygiene that quality can scale beyond one person.
Great design leadership creates freedom without chaos. It gives people ownership without abandoning them. It holds the direction firmly, without prescribing every step.
