Your product works. Your users are not finding value fast enough. For climate and deep-tech startups, that gap between feature delivery and actual user adoption shows up in slow onboarding, rising support tickets, and pilots that stall before they prove the technology. What if Design partners with Seed to Series B climate and deep-tech startups to close that gap, building research-backed user flows, scalable design systems, and high-fidelity prototypes that reduce friction, accelerate activation, and give your engineering team a dev-ready foundation to build from.
End-to-end design solutions from user research to high-fidelity interfaces and interactive prototypes, built around how your users actually behave.
Identify where users drop off, get confused, or take longer than expected to reach value. We map the full user journey, restructure information architecture, and design flows that get users to their goal faster, with less support burden on your team.
Translate user flows into high-fidelity interfaces your engineering team can build without ambiguity. We create component libraries, design tokens, and accessibility-compliant specifications that reduce back-and-forth between design and development.
Build interactive prototypes that let stakeholders test real user flows before a line of code is written. Micro-interactions, transition logic, and gesture controls are defined and validated at the design stage, cutting revision cycles in development.
Establish a visual system that scales across your product, marketing, and investor materials. Logo systems, color tokens, typography scales, and icon libraries are built for reuse across every surface your brand appears on.
Conduct user interviews, map competitive landscapes, and run usability tests to surface the friction points your users will not report directly but your support queue will. Research insights feed directly into design decisions rather than sitting in a separate deliverable.
Ship responsive websites in Webflow or Framer with CMS structures your marketing team can actually maintain. Built for performance, SEO, and the content updates that come every time you close a new partner or hit a funding milestone.
Most climate and deep-tech products are built by people who understand the technology deeply but have not had the time or the distance to see how a new user experiences it. That gap shows up in onboarding drop-off, underused features, and support tickets that keep repeating the same questions. We work with startups from Seed to Series B to close that gap. Through sprint-based research, usability testing, and iterative prototyping, we rebuild the flows that are not working and give your engineering team specifications they can implement without guesswork. The result is a product experience that matches the quality of the underlying technology.
From Seed-stage climate hardware companies to Series B deep-tech software platforms, we have helped founders and product teams close the gap between how good their product is and how clearly their users can navigate it.
"They very quickly understood the kind of messaging that was important to us and how to translate that into a compelling visual experience. I can't recommend them enough!"
"Working with What if Design has been transformative. Faster feature rollouts, reduced development costs, and a fantastic user experience. They quickly understood our vision and offered proactive ideas"
"The extremely high quality of outputs with fast turn around times and availability of team at short notice has been perfect for our requirements"
"They very quickly understood the kind of messaging that was important to us and how to translate that into a compelling visual experience. I can't recommend them enough!"
"Working with What if Design has been transformative. Faster feature rollouts, reduced development costs, and a fantastic user experience. They quickly understood our vision and offered proactive ideas"
"The extremely high quality of outputs with fast turn around times and availability of team at short notice has been perfect for our requirements"
"They very quickly understood the kind of messaging that was important to us and how to translate that into a compelling visual experience. I can't recommend them enough!"
"Working with What if Design has been transformative. Faster feature rollouts, reduced development costs, and a fantastic user experience. They quickly understood our vision and offered proactive ideas"
"The extremely high quality of outputs with fast turn around times and availability of team at short notice has been perfect for our requirements"
Built for climate and deep-tech startups that need design thinking and execution speed in the same place.
Sprint-based design cycles with turnarounds as quick as 48 hours, useful when a conference, funding announcement, or product launch is driving your timeline.
Full-service design coverage at a fraction of what you would spend building an in-house team, without the onboarding overhead or the risk of a wrong hire at a critical growth stage.
User research, usability testing, and behavioral analysis inform design decisions before they reach development, reducing costly rework and improving adoption rates from launch.
From initial stakeholder alignment to iterative prototyping, we work as an embedded extension of your team, translating complex technical products into flows that your users and buyers can navigate without friction.
Design and strategy leaders with backgrounds in architecture, global operations, and climate tech product design.
Co-founder
Akhila brings a rare combination of architectural thinking and digital design execution to every product she works on. Before co-founding What if Design, she designed for LEED-certified sustainable buildings and led urban interventions valued at over $100 million. That background, working through complex technical briefs under real physical and regulatory constraints, shaped how she approaches digital product design: structure first, aesthetics second. At What if Design, Akhila leads the strategic design vision, ensuring every project is grounded in the client's business goals before a single screen is designed. Her work spans Fortune 500 companies and early-stage climate tech startups, consistently translating technically dense requirements into interfaces that users can navigate without friction. She brings a rigorous approach to user research, balancing what data reveals with what only direct observation surfaces.
Co-founder
Tejas combines business strategy with design thinking to build solutions that close the gap between what a product does and what a buyer needs to see before committing. Before co-founding What if Design, he drove business expansion for OYO across three countries and designed training programs that equipped over 1,700 professionals throughout India. That background in scaling operations and translating organizational goals into practical systems shapes how he approaches client engagements. At What if Design, Tejas leads client strategy and ensures every design deliverable connects directly to a measurable business objective, whether that is improving activation rates, shortening sales cycles, or reducing the volume of support questions that indicate an onboarding gap. He specializes in stakeholder alignment workshops that surface conflicting assumptions early and set projects up for faster execution.
UX (user experience) design covers the structural layer: user journeys, information architecture, user flows, and usability testing that ensure your product is navigable from the first interaction. UI (user interface) design handles the visual execution: high-fidelity mockups, component libraries, design tokens, and developer-ready specifications. For technically complex products like those in climate tech or deep tech, the two are tightly connected. Strong flow logic without clear visual hierarchy creates confusion at the interface level, and polished visuals built on a poorly structured flow still leave users stranded.
Tell us about your product and where users are getting stuck. We'll outline an approach and timeline within 24 hours.
Share your project details and we'll respond within 24 hours with a customized approach and timeline.
For immediate assistance, feel free to give us a direct call at You can also send us a quick email at team@whatifdesign.in
For immediate assistance, feel free to give us a direct call at You can also send us a quick email at team@whatifdesign.in