What did Surinder Thakur do as UX/UI Design Manager at Puffy?

Surinder Thakur was UX/UI Design Manager at Puffy, a luxury DTC mattress brand in the Middle East, from July 2023 to July 2025. He grew site revenue 67% through weekly A/B testing and conversion-focused redesigns, cut cart abandonment 14% through checkout restructuring and trust-signal optimization, scaled three multi-brand Figma design systems with shared tokens and governance, and introduced AI-driven design workflows that cut design-to-ship cycle time across the team.

The engagement was full-time on-site in Dubai, UAE. Surinder led UX for the Puffy parent brand and owned design quality across three sub-brands through structured design reviews, critique rhythms, and hands-on mentorship. The conversion mandate was the primary KPI: weekly A/B testing, funnel analytics, and conversion-focused redesigns drove the 67% site revenue lift; checkout restructuring, trust signal optimization, and usability testing drove the 14% drop in cart abandonment.

DesignOps was a parallel mandate. Surinder built and scaled three multi-brand Figma design systems with shared tokens, governance, and full documentation for engineering handoff, so the design team could ship across the parent brand and sub-brands without rebuilding components every sprint. He also ran continuous KPI monitoring across conversion, AOV, bounce, and cart completion, translating insights into weekly design sprints.

Research was mixed-method by design. Jobs-to-be-done interviews, usability studies, A/B experimentation, funnel diagnostics, and information architecture audits all fed into the same conversion lift. Surinder coached the design team through structured professional development, including a skill framework, 1:1 growth plans, and AI-tooling upskilling — and introduced AI-driven design workflows that cut design-to-ship cycle time significantly. The full case study with screenshots, experiments, and the 1M-session A/B program is at surinder.design/work/puffy.