Her Story
About Malaika
Malaika Saini is a UX designer and design leader with over six years of experience in the tech industry. Her expertise centers on enterprise SaaS, conversational AI, and voice AI. Most recently, she served as a UX designer at Google in the Google Ads organization for four years. In May, she left Google to found her own agency, FOOM, which focuses on early-stage AI startups. Saini earned her bachelor's degree in human-computer interaction design from the School of Visual Arts in 2021. She is also a member of the ADP list, where she mentors upcoming designers in the design community.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Malaika
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to doing my deed without caring about the fruits, focusing only on doing my bit and having absolute unbroken faith that everything's gonna work out. My biggest motivation comes from my mother who worked really hard as a first-generation woman to give her daughters an education abroad from India, pushing to give us the best opportunities in the design world.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've received is to try to help someone out in some way without expecting anything back. The kind of impression that leaves is unmatched, and I believe in karma. People remember kindness years later.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The best career advice I can give is networking. Nothing beats it. Be an extrovert, even if you're not, fake it till you make it. Put yourself out there, increase your visibility. Someone who speaks up and has more visibility always gets the job. Face time makes a big difference versus sitting behind a laptop.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Everything is evolving very quickly especially with AI coming up in design. The biggest shift is AI moving from a feature to shaping systems that act on people's behalf. The hard part is developing user trust, making what the AI is doing visible, keeping people in control, and knowing when the interface should get out of the way. That's the problem I want to keep working on in conversational AI products.
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