Sarika

design @ ford 🚙
yyz - sfo 📍

[Sarika @sarikago]

Last year I spoke to 1,400 designers about the topic that has most fundamentally changed how I think about design.

Designing for high-stakes scenarios at Ford like collisions, break-ins, stolen vehicles, and child safety forced me to rethink responsibility, clarity, and what it means to support someone under real stress.

I felt compelled to share what I was learning with the design community, which led to a talk called “Designing for the Worst Day of Your Customer’s Life.”

This is a snippet of that talk, from the DesignUp conference. It distills real case studies from my work at Ford into a framework I created called the Crisis Readiness Equation — a way for any designer, in any industry, to understand how their customers will think and act in a crisis so they can proactively support them.

Because a payment that can’t be reversed, a prescription that isn’t clearly written, a text that can’t be unsent - these may not be life-critical scenarios, but they CAN become someone’s worst day. And our responsibility as designers is to not let those moments become afterthoughts.

The full talk is now available on YouTube (linked in comments), I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Sarika @sarikago]

@steven_yuen Why am I visualizing dumbledore drinking his way to the horcrux 😩

[Sarika @sarikago]

@mrinalikamath I think companies will just do anything to get YOU in-house 🙂‍↕️

[Sarika @sarikago]

I absolutely love that this demo had me revisiting my high school physics notes to see if the laws had changed in the past decade

Kudos to the team for this marvel of engineering

[Tesla @Tesla]

Holy smokes

[Sarika @sarikago]

@marlouiise Loveeee this! 🚴🏽‍♀️

[Sarika @sarikago]

@willdjthrill @tryramp Congrats Will!

[Sarika @sarikago]

@tokifyi @lilyyang169 🇨🇦 in sf!!

[Sarika @sarikago]

@vishlbhardwaj Love and hate this but only hate it because I love it

[Sarika @sarikago]

why is it only the girlies in matching sets wiping gym equipment down and not the men leaving behind butt sweat prints

[Sarika @sarikago]

@mrinalikamath @valiocon Best dressed always

[Sarika @sarikago]

@tinathetechie @browserbase @valiocon Bucket hats lookin fresh 👀

[Sarika @sarikago]

@floguo @gianna_auer_ @tryramp Congrats! Have the best time 💚

[Sarika @sarikago]

@aalicbarker Icon

[Linda Dong 🍉 @lindadong]

🤲 Designing for iPhone Duo? 🤲

Everything *hinges* on you watching this video by @malonso and @vincelane from the Apple Design Team.

https://t.co/O7RUBRr6sk

[Sarika @sarikago]

@floguo Peonies (so many layers) and orchids (always die but always come back to life)!

[Sarika @sarikago]

@MaxBrodeurUrbas @floguo my dream science fair

[Sarika @sarikago]

@tope_docx @_EricHu Such a great capture of what it means to be human 🤍

[Sarika @sarikago]

this one somehow made the cut but I’m not mad about it

[Sarika @sarikago]

as much as I love events I can’t be bothered to browse through 1,546 sf tech week events to find the ones I’m interested in.

hence I will only be attending the ones my Claude agent has deemed worthy of my time and signed me up for. every event being hosted on partiful made this extra easy!

[Sarika @sarikago]

@MaitrikShah_ Ty! So fun watching the builders running around like agents.

[Sarika @sarikago]

everyone on tech twitter calls themselves a builder these days, but Labour Day’s about celebrating the ones who actually built our nation from the ground up. the roads we take, the bridges we cross, the monuments we admire. whipped up a quick animation to honour the original “builders”! 👷🏽‍♀️