Design is no longer subjective. Data rules our world now. We’re told all design decisions must be validated by user feedback or business success metrics. Analytics are measuring the design effectiveness of every tweak and change we make. If it can’t be proven to work in a prototype, A/B test, or MVP, it’s not worth trying at all. In this… Read More ￫

Problems can never be solved at the level they were created — Albert Einstein I will never forget remember as a young child being taught how to draw a tree. I was naturally gifted at drawing even at a young age, and was able to faithfully recreate anything that I looked at. Like most learning curves I eventually hit a… Read More ￫

My “first 90-days” at Empowerly, an early-stage startup, was spent speed-fixing an utterly broken web app so that our users can successfully access our basic revenue-generating service features to complete their tasks. Now that the product is patched up, we saw our user engagement up by four-fold — and can at least for a brief moment let out a sigh… Read More ￫

When you think about the best websites, apps, and designs you have ever seen you will probably think of designs with a western structure. But have you thought about how the same website would look for an Arabic audience? Designing for an Arabic audience is not just about translating. A language is not only a way to express ideas for… Read More ￫

What is conversational design? The concept of conversational design is about looking at human conversation as a model for all interactions with digital systems. Using the principles of what makes everyday human interactions productive, it’s possible to create a better and more natural dialogue with systems. The conversation is how humans interact with one another — any two strangers who… Read More ￫

I’ve had several recruiters read my resumé about my experience in Design Systems and contact me about jobs. Only to find out they were hiring for people with Systems Design experience. I’ll be outlining what both topics are and help people understand the qualities of each. Design Systems An engineer who works on a design system typically has some interest… Read More ￫

I love stories. One of my favorites is the legend of how James Cameron pitched his idea for Aliens, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien—an example I always hoped was true until Lynda Obst confirmed its authenticity in her book Hello, He Lied. Even though it grossed over $100 million at the box office—on a measly $11 million… Read More ￫

Guerrilla warfare: an independent group of paramilitary fighters using unconventional tactics to divide and conquer an often larger, more orthodox enemy. Guerrilla marketing: a group of extremely savvy execs using unconventional tactics to divide you from your cash and conquer your custom. (Think: the zebra crossing painted to resemble a carton of McDonald’s fries or the part unwrapped KitKat bench.)… Read More ￫

Most of the times we think as complexity as something bad. And I tended to fall in that pitfall myself. Until one day when I was having a conversation with a product manager, and he was showing me how the flight schedule of Schipol Airport in Amsterdam was organised. He was showing me all the tables and data, and how… Read More ￫

I’d probably assume that most of us started in UI design with the littlest knowledge or nothing at all. But even though the odds were against us at the start, we managed our way through numerous design books and articles to understand how colors, typography, layout etc works. I remember how it is established in us at Make Technology, a… Read More ￫

Nowadays, digital products must be able to exist across any and all devices, screen sizes, and mediums at the same time: Every type of medium can now display our interfaces elements “So why the hell are we still designing our products by “page” or by screen?!” Instead, we should be creating beautiful and easy access to content, regardless of device,… Read More ￫

For a long time, people did not need to think about radically different design of fuel canisters. Up until 1938 people used square, rounded and even triangle-like jerry cans. If you look back in history, few people might need to transport huge fuel reserves in canisters of 20 litres or so. In 1936, Germany created a secret project to build… Read More ￫