portraitcoming soon
Raj Ostawal
UX and visual designer who writes the frontend. I take products from nothing to shipped, usually in the stretch where nobody has agreed what the problem is yet.
San Francisco, CA
Three things, and I keep refusing to pick one. I design the interaction and the visual language, I build the frontend, and I do enough product management to know which third of the roadmap is actually worth designing. A decision that is painful to build is usually a design problem too, and you only find that out if you have sat in both chairs.
The work I am best at starts undefined. Health records mid-migration. Reviews nobody was writing. Agents doing work on someone's behalf. Somebody has a rough shape of a problem and a deadline, and the first job is turning that into something you can actually draw. I like that part. I am comfortable being the person who writes the first version of the brief.
The job after that is always the same: make it feel simple without hiding the parts a person needs in order to trust it.
selected work
9Harco, giving people a steering wheel on autonomous agents
2026Live control over long-running agents that apply to jobs on your behalf.
Walmart, summarising a thousand reviews into one honest paragraph
passwordAI summaries of a thousand reviews, and the trust problem that came with them.
Walmart, making people want to write the review
passwordSubmissions sat at 1%. A reviewer profile made contributing worth the effort.
Moving 250,000 patients between record systems without dropping one
2025250,000 patients moved between record systems without ever losing access.
796 hospital websites, one place to actually find care
20251,200 facilities, one place to find a doctor and book a slot that is open.
Vocali, the two minutes you remember inside the three hour episode
2024Podcasts are the only medium you cannot skim. This one you can.
Guidr, mentorship without the obstacle course
2024Twelve interviews to a shipped mentee experience, brand included, by one person.
BuffPortal, putting student resources where students already look
2024Student resources moved from an unread inbox into the portal they already use.
GlazeGPT, plain questions into SQL
2022Plain questions into SQL, for people who do not write it. 100+ paying customers.
research
playground
Things I build to answer a question rather than ship a product.