Aashish Kumar
Design Engineer
I design and build complex products that feel effortless. 7+ years in product design, now shipping full products solo with code, most recently Ditther, an image-editing platform I built end to end. I ship real code with Cursor and Claude Code, with deep expertise in UI animation and interaction design.
// at a glance
- 7+ years of designing experience
- Designed a crypto trading protocol (5B+ Volume)
- Built a image editing tool (1000+ users)
// what i do
- Product Design
- Design Systems
- Frontend/Design Engineering
- Interaction Design
- Motion Design
// stack
// experience
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Ditther.com Founder & Developer · Bangalore, India May 2026 — PresentSolo-built a creative editing platform from design to deployment, shipping 50+ features and growing to 100+ daily active users with 25+ paying customers.
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Polynomial Protocol Founding Designer · Dubai, UAE Apr 2022 — Jan 2026Led product design for perpetuals, options, staking, and wallets—simplifying complex trading workflows at protocol scale ($5B+ volume).
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JustWatch Senior Product Designer · Berlin Jan 2020 — Mar 2022Designed web, mobile, and TV experiences, including a login redesign that increased power-user retention by 113%.
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Byjus, Cowrks, Snapdeal Product Designer · Bangalore May 2015 — Dec 2019Early career building consumer products across edtech, e-commerce, and coworking—improving conversion, retention, and creative experiences.
// featured products
Products I've designed, engineered, and shipped.
Product strategy, design, frontend engineering, authentication, payments, and deployment—all shipped solo.
// contact
Building something? Let's talk.
Open to founding design / design engineering roles and interesting freelance builds.
// case study
How I accidentally built an image editor.
What started as a one-evening experiment slowly became a browser-based creative tool with paying customers. This isn't the highlight reel—it's the decisions, mistakes, and product lessons that shaped Ditther.
50+
Features shipped
100+
Daily active users
25+
Paying customers
Solo
Designed & built
// chapter 01
It started with one question.
Can one click turn an ordinary photo into something that feels more like art?
The first version had one dither effect. No export. No presets. No real interface. I just wanted to know whether the effect was worth building.
// chapter 02
I thought editing was the product. It wasn't.
Watching people use Ditther completely changed the roadmap.
Nobody started by tweaking sliders. They kept pressing Remix until something surprised them.
That single observation changed the entire experience. Exploration became more important than precision.
// chapter 03
Shipping fast doesn't mean settling.
One thing always bothered me. The LEGO effect technically worked. But it never actually looked like LEGO bricks.
I rebuilt it from scratch. Rounded studs. Better lighting. Better proportions. It finally felt believable.
// chapter 04
Users wanted exploration, not configuration.
Every release taught me something.
Presets became more important than sliders. Backgrounds became more important than filters. Live preview became more important than settings.
The roadmap slowly stopped being my ideas and became a reflection of how people actually created images.
// how the product evolved
Prototype
One dither filter. Nothing else.
Week 2
Compare slider, exports, drag & drop.
v1
Remix mode, creative presets, better rendering.
v2
300+ backgrounds, video support, pixel effects, saved presets.
// product decisions
Remix
Users explored first. So discovery became the primary workflow.
Live Preview
Creative tools should feel immediate. Waiting breaks experimentation.
Presets
Starting from something good is easier than starting from nothing.
Browser-first
No installs. No downloads. Open a tab and start creating.
// results
3
Major releases
50+
Features shipped
100+
Daily active users
25+
Paying customers
// what i learned
Building Ditther completely changed how I think about product design.
I started by designing controls. I ended up designing exploration.
Every major feature—Remix, Presets, Backgrounds, Live Preview—came from watching people create instead of following an initial roadmap.
The biggest lesson wasn't how to build an image editor. It was learning that the fastest way to improve a product is to ship, observe real behaviour, and let users rewrite your assumptions.
// recent designs
Recent Designs
Landing pages, concept work, and visual explorations from the last few months.
// motion
Motion
Motion details, hover states, and interaction moments from recent builds.