Alipta Ballav · Design + AI · Ex-Microsoft

I turn complex enterprise and AI systems into products people adopt.

And build the teams, systems and shared direction organizations need to scale them.

Discuss a leadership role

Portfolio

25+ years across design, technology and business strategy. Ex-Microsoft, Bangalore.

Alipta Ballav, Design + AI leader and former Microsoft design manager

2 → 21

Design practice built

L1 → L3

UX maturity in four years

8–10 → 2

Integration delivery · days

Delivery efficiency—not call handling time.

20+

Retailer implementations

CV / Résumé

Alipta Ballav’s CV

Design leadership, career experience and credentials.

PDF · Updated September 2026

Download CV · PDF

Selected leadership work.

Complex products, organizational change and the evidence that followed.

Leadership · Microsoft · 2025 — 2026

Driving Cultural Change Through an Agentic Design Framework

Fragmented experiments → shared AI practice

Leadership · Microsoft · 2025 — 2026

Transforming Quality Management with AI

Passive review → active guidance

Individual Contributor · Microsoft · 2022 — 2026

Conversation Orchestration — UX Case Study

8–10 days → 2 days integration

Leadership · Microsoft · 2022 — 2024

Microsoft Cloud for Retail — Store Operations

20+ retailer implementations

Leadership · Cerner · 2017 — 2022

Building a Design Practice from 2 to 21

2 → 21 designers · L1 → L3 maturity

How I lead

How I move teams forward

My leadership philosophy

Lead from the back

Build trust, coach judgment, and give people ownership.

Lead from the front

In unfamiliar territory, explore hands-on and make uncertainty tangible—then step back.

Make uncertainty testable

Prototype the riskiest assumption before committing the team to a direction.

Give teams ownership

Set clear expectations, coach individual judgment and share decisions—not just tasks.

Resolve trade-offs together

Bring product and engineering into design decisions early, with constraints and success measures made explicit.

Leadership in practice: 01 · AI culture change and 05 · Building a design practice.

Alipta Ballav facilitating a collaborative design workshop. — Facilitating teams

Alipta Ballav receiving recognition on stage at a professional event. — Industry recognition

Independent Lab

Experiments in Human–AI Interaction.

Two working prototypes exploring more deliberate and adaptive intelligence.

Working prototype · 01

SLOW AI

Pause is a feature.

AI that reveals uncertainty, invites reflection and preserves human judgment.

Explore SLOW AI

Working prototype · 02

Generative UI

The interface follows intent.

Interfaces assembled around changing tasks—within accessibility, system and trust guardrails.

Explore Generative UI

Professional journey

01
2022 — 2026
Microsoft Corporation
Senior Design Manager
Led a six-person design team across Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Customer Service and Retail Industry Cloud, advancing AI-powered enterprise workflows.
02
2017 — 2022
Cerner Corporation
Senior Manager, User Experience
Owned hiring, clinical-design capability and the transfer of U.S. healthcare projects into the Bangalore UX practice.
03
2015 — 2017
Harman
Senior UX Designer
Worked across research and interaction design for Ellucian, Finacle, Toyota and Harman’s Audio Architect platform.
04
2007 — 2015
Wipro Technologies
Principal Consultant, UX
Led digital experience transformations across banking, healthcare and telecom for global enterprise clients.
05
1998 — 2007
Startups + Logica CMG
Design and technology roles
Built an early career foundation across visual design, frontend development and digital product delivery.