Design as Interaction: How Nihaarika Arora is Shaping Everyday Experiences

Nihaarika Arora is a product and industrial designer whose work operates at the intersection of physical objects and user experience. Through projects spanning commercial retail, institutional platforms, and independent design, her practice reflects a broader shift in contemporary design—one that moves beyond objects toward shaping everyday interactions.

Through formal undergraduate education in industrial design and subsequent work and graduate degree in human–computer interaction, her perspective expanded to include behavioral patterns, cognitive responses, and the subtle dynamics of user engagement.

Her work today reflects this layered approach. Rather than focusing solely on form, Arora’s designs emphasize micro-interactions—the ways in which small details such as proportion, structure, and material influence daily routines. Across her projects, the goal is consistent: to reduce friction in everyday use while introducing clarity, intention, and a sense of ease into the user experience.

This multidisciplinary foundation allows Arora to move fluidly between physical product development and systems-based thinking. Her background in industrial design provides a strong understanding of materials, manufacturing processes, and structural constraints, while her experience in digital product design introduces considerations of user journeys and behavioral patterns. In practice, this combination enables her to develop product collections that extend beyond individual objects, addressing how products function together within broader retail and consumer contexts.

A significant portion of Arora’s work takes place within commercial retail environments. At Core Home, she has contributed to product development across categories including hydration and food storage, where the focus lies in creating products that can operate at scale within global markets. Her work in this context reflects the demands of large-scale production, where design decisions must align with manufacturing feasibility, supply chain constraints, and consumer accessibility while maintaining a clear product identity.

In contrast, her work within institutional platforms reflects a different set of priorities. Her project, the Modern Geometry Jewelry Stand, was developed for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Design Store and is currently retailed across its locations in New York and Kyoto. Its inclusion within the MoMA Design Store places the work within a globally recognized institutional retail platform known for curating contemporary design objects of high conceptual and functional quality. Designed as a single-material object with streamlined production logic, the piece reflects both structural clarity and manufacturing efficiency.

The project has received multiple international design awards, including the NY Product Design Awards, French Design Awards, London Design Awards, and the International Design Awards, where it was recognized for its clarity of form, production logic, and user-oriented design approach. These acknowledgments reflect a consistent evaluation of the work across multiple design programs that assess both conceptual development and practical execution.

Alongside commercial and institutional work, Arora maintains an independent design practice that allows for deeper conceptual exploration. One such project is the Ora menstrual cup and applicator, a product designed to alleviate the intimidation of folding and inserting menstrual cups among young teenagers. The project reflects a focus on usability, material exploration, and product systems, and was recognized by the International Design Awards in the Personal & Lifestyle / Health & Wellness category, where it was noted for its user-centered approach to an often-overlooked product experience.

Across these varied contexts, Arora’s work is informed by a cross-cultural perspective shaped by her experiences in Mumbai and New York. This background informs a design approach that distinguishes between cultural influence and application. Rather than applying overt cultural references, her work draws from underlying principles such as balance, repetition, and spatial harmony, allowing identity to emerge through proportion, materiality, and subtle visual cues.

A defining characteristic of her work is a sense of restraint. Rather than approaching minimalism as a stylistic preference, Arora treats it as a functional principle—removing elements that do not serve the user until the essential idea becomes clear. This approach not only enhances usability but also aligns with manufacturing efficiency and structural integrity. In projects such as the Modern Geometry Jewelry Stand, decisions around material and form are driven as much by production logic as by visual clarity, resulting in objects that are both efficient to produce and intuitive to use.

Research and user behavior play a central role in her design process. Before form is introduced, her work begins with understanding how users interact with objects in real contexts—their habits, frustrations, and the informal solutions they develop over time. This behavioral insight often becomes the foundation of the design. In the case of jewelry storage, for example, the challenge was not the object itself but the mismatch between storage systems and user behavior. By rethinking visibility and organization, the design addresses the root design challenge rather than working around it.

The visibility of her work has expanded through its presence in institutional retail environments and its recognition across multiple international design award programs. These developments have contributed to continued collaborations across commercial and independent contexts, while reinforcing a design approach grounded in both conceptual clarity and practical application.

Operating as an independent designer presents its own set of challenges, particularly in the absence of traditional institutional support. Without built-in infrastructure, designers must navigate not only the creative process but also production, communication, and business development. For Arora, establishing credibility has been shaped by iterative development, long-term collaboration, and a sustained engagement with both industry and institutional platforms.

As design continues to evolve across disciplines, her work reflects a broader understanding of authorship—one that extends beyond form-making to include systems thinking, user behavior, and the cultural contexts in which objects exist. In this landscape, design is no longer defined solely by the object itself, but by the experience it creates and the role it plays in everyday life.