Autodesk's Aishwarya Balamukundan on Judging Core77's Fusion Forward Competition

Ask Aishwarya Balamukundan what excites her most in design right now, and she'll point to something almost invisible: the shrinking gap between having an idea and holding the finished thing. As Senior Director of Marketing for Autodesk's Design & Manufacturing portfolio, including Fusion, she's spent over 12 years watching that gap close, and it's a shift she's bringing directly to her role judging Fusion Forward: Design for Home, Core77's competition with Autodesk Fusion.

Aishwarya Balamukundan, Sr. Director of Marketing, Design & Manufacturing at Autodesk

At Autodesk Balamukundan leads product marketing, go-to-market strategy, and self-serve growth for Fusion, a platform used by makers, engineers, and manufacturers worldwide. Over her tenure she's built cross-functional teams at the intersection of product-led growth, competitive intelligence, and campaign strategy, including founding the company's first PLG team. As a juror, she's said she's particularly drawn to work sitting at the intersection of technology, education, and equity.

When asked to describe what excites her most about the design field, she says "That the distance between 'I have an idea' and 'I made the thing' keeps collapsing. Generative and agentic tools are absorbing the tedious middle of the process, so designers spend more time on judgment and intent. The interesting question is no longer whether you can model it, but whether you should."

That same clarity sharpens into a warning when she talks about what worries her. "That speed becomes the point," she says. "When it costs nothing to generate a hundred options, the temptation is to ship the first one that looks good instead of the one that's right. Volume is not the same as exploration, and taste doesn't scale automatically with output."

For entrants preparing their Fusion Forward submissions, Balamukundan's advice is specific: don't just show the finished object. "Show us the constraint you were working against, and how the design answers it," she says. "The strongest entries make the problem legible before they make the solution look good." She wants to see the tradeoffs entrants resolved, what they gave up to get there, and the evidence that shows their work actually landed, not just a polished final render.

Fusion Forward: Design for Home is now open for entries. Three categories to choose from, $9,750 in prizes. Deadline for entry September 28.