QA/ABOUT SURINDER
Has Surinder Thakur worked on educational or university platforms?
Yes. Surinder Thakur served as design consultant and advisor on the KGC educational platform for Abu Dhabi University between September 2025 and March 2026. The engagement covered structured design reviews, interaction patterns for the learning surface, and senior advisory on the product decisions that shaped how students and faculty interact with the platform.
The KGC platform is an internal educational product for Abu Dhabi University, not a public marketing site. Surinder's role was specifically advisory: bringing 19 years of senior product design experience into the team's design conversations, pressure-testing flows, calling out usability and accessibility concerns early, and helping the team make product decisions that would hold up at university scale. The framing was "second senior voice on the team" rather than execution lead.
The advisory model is distinct from the lead-designer engagements Surinder runs on surinder.design today (AI Flow Sprint, AI-Native Product Design, Embedded Design Partner). It belongs in a smaller category of work where the team already has design capacity and what they need is senior pattern recognition and review, not full delivery. This kind of engagement is no longer an active offer on the site, but it is part of the recent track record.
Alongside KGC, Surinder was the lead solo designer on the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award (SKEA) digital platform for the Abu Dhabi Chamber, engaged through PwC, in the same period. The two together represent senior design work across Abu Dhabi government and Abu Dhabi higher education sectors between late 2025 and early 2026.