Akshat Sharma

Experience Strategist at Merkle, dentsu

I design and strategize experiences from screenNot just devices. Any canvas for a story: interfaces, films, journeys. to service.

Four years of it: health-tech at Neurowyzr, enterprise CX at Merkle (dentsu). The cognitive screen I rebuilt is in production — Special Mention, Singapore Good Design Awards.

Six projects · start to finish

Selected work

All projects
Plugg-out cover

Plugg-out

2024

Award-winning service design that makes invisible 'vampire power' visible, and changes the behavior behind it.

Service DesignJourney MappingService Blueprint
Nestlé Garden of Life cover

Nestlé Garden of Life

2026

Reframing a wellness brand's homepage into an ingredient-led, story-driven experience narrative.

Experience StrategyUX AuditCX Ecosystem Mapping
SPCE cover

SPCE

2025

A sustainable packaging circular ecosystem for India's food delivery, turning throwaway packaging into something that comes back.

Service DesignService BlueprintProduct Design
Dollar General cover

Dollar General

2026

A customer-experience evaluation uncovering trust, savings, and omnichannel friction across a national value retailer's digital and in-store journey.

CX EvaluationHeuristic EvaluationCompetitive Analysis
Cognitive Games cover

Cognitive Games

2025

Turning 3-minute clinical assessments into 20 minutes of engagement, without breaking the science underneath.

Product DesignGamificationInteraction Design
DBFS 3.0 cover

DBFS 3.0

2024

Redesigning a medical-grade cognitive screen so sessions got faster, clearer, and clinically more reliable.

Product DesignDesign SystemsUsability Testing

01 / 01

A little about me

I look for the problem underneath the brief.

Strategy on one side, craft on the other. AI in the loop to keep the busywork small. And outside it: anime conventions, Osaka, and everyone who had to hear about both.

  • Experience Strategist, Merkle (dentsu)
  • Previously Neurowyzr, Singapore
  • Pune, India
  • Systems, not screens
Meet the Extra Me
Akshat inside a colorful light installation
Will enter the weird room first
Akshat beside a lake surrounded by trees
Walks until the brief makes sense
Akshat presenting a digital experience to a team
Happiest with a room and a problem
Akshat explaining an experience strategy during a collaborative workshop
Making the strategy tangible
A handmade Solo Leveling print at Comic Con India
Anime research. Obviously.
Akshat wearing an Infinite Dreams shirt in a cinema
Films, frames, impossible ideas
Akshat making a playful pose with a museum sculpture
Serious about not being too serious
Akshat with friends under a mirrored ceiling
Good work is a group project
Akshat with his family
The original design review panel
Akshat exploring an outdoor market
Field research, loosely defined
Akshat and friends at a historic monument
Good company, older systems
Akshat with a large event team
Behind every clean outcome: people
Akshat with a large group of collaborators
Collaboration is part of the craft
Akshat observing a team evaluate workshop material
Listening before deciding
A group selfie with Akshat and friends
The unofficial retrospective
Akshat taking a mirror photo with family
The people behind the person
A printed photograph of a celebration
Keeps the physical evidence
Some memories deserve motion

What I can do

The toolkit behind the work.

01 / 06Scroll to explore

01 · Experience strategy

Find the problem under the brief.

Research, an audit, and a map of the whole system—until the real problem is somewhere you can point at. Then a direction sharp enough to argue with.

Projects in viewGarden of Life · Dollar General

  • Research & synthesis
  • Problem reframing
  • Competitive analysis
  • Experience principles
Akshat explaining experience strategy during an enterprise workshop
Making strategy tangible Enterprise experience workshop
Garden of Life homepage audit
Homepage audit Where the drop-off actually was
Dollar General trust journey across the customer experience
CX trust journey Dollar General

02 · Service design

Make the whole journey work.

I connect the visible experience to the people, operations, incentives, and touchpoints underneath it—then prototype the service as a whole.

Projects in viewPlugg-out · SPCE

  • Journey mapping
  • Service blueprints
  • Ecosystem design
  • Value exchange
Plugg-out circular service flow
Circular service flow Plugg-out
SPCE service blueprint
Service blueprint SPCE
Final service prototype Round 4

04 · Facilitation & collaboration

Get the room moving together.

I use workshops, interviews, and shared artifacts to make disagreement useful, evidence visible, and decisions easier to carry forward.

Projects in viewGarden of Life · Neurowyzr · Digital Arts Society

  • Co-creation
  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Interview facilitation
  • Design critique
Akshat presenting experience findings to a team
Presenting the findings Experience strategy workshop
Neurowyzr stakeholder meeting
Stakeholder alignment Neurowyzr
Akshat with a collaborative creative team
Building with people The team around the work

05 · Motion

Use movement to explain.

Motion gives state, hierarchy, and pace a physical feel. I use it to make an interaction easier to follow and a story harder to forget.

Projects in viewMotion studies · Interactive experiments

  • UI animation
  • Storyboards
  • Visual pacing
  • Generative video
Motion reel Selected experiments
Visual experiment Composition study
Story through time Timeline motion

06 · AI as a material

Build faster. Judge harder.

I use AI for synthesis, visual exploration, and functional prototypes—while keeping the framing, evaluation, and accountability with the human.

Projects in viewAI Gains · Functional prototypes

  • AI-assisted research
  • Functional prototypes
  • Creative direction
  • Responsible review
Stories of building together AI narrative prototype
Intelligent ecosystem AI experience concept
Functional build From direction to working interface

How I work

Not a funnel.
A prism.

The double diamond assumes every project starts at the same edge. Mine don't — one lands as a research question, the next as a half-built product with a date already promised. A prism doesn't care which face the light hits; it splits into the same spectrum either way. So I start where the work actually is, and use AI to compress the busywork, which leaves room to diverge, sharpen the threads worth keeping, and curate what ships. The prism turns, but the light coming out of it doesn't change: make the complexity simple enough that someone can act on it.

ExploreEnhanceCurate

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