A short story… I am the Design Director (Head of UX and Design) of a 🦄 billion-dollar digital bank in Saudi Arabia. I am the team lead of 15+ UX/UI design, UX writer, UX researcher and visual designers, people spread over a variety of offices and disciplines.

As a leader I love helping designers produce their best work. I really enjoyed being involved in the conceptual discussions, helping integrate design-thinking across the business, embedding human-centered design practices in engineering teams. I was good at it. I want to help lead others, and I also want to design.

Head of Design

Through a bit of trial and error, I discovered the Principal Design and team leads roles — positions I’ve held at various tech companies since. I get asked a lot what a Principals actually does, and whilst I can’t answer for every company — I can tell you what I do 🤔.

In my experience, it’s been a role where I get to practice my craft (i.e. feature design, working with engineers, shipping cool stuff to customers) whilst also helping other designers produce their best work. I lead by example, whilst coaching other designers to achieve excellence on their own terms.

It’s leadership, but in the sense that I’m accountable to the success of other people… but not responsible. That’s how I measure my success — if the people around me feel more creative, productive and supported in their role… then I’ve done a good job.

The role plays out to be about 60% hands-on feature work, and 40% design operations. The hands-on work for a Principal tends to be higher impact, more strategically important features — or projects that need a bit of a helping hand. The remaining 40% is a bit fuzzier, but is defined by making sure everyone has what they need to do great work — that varies place to place, but is mostly covered by design operations, coaching and communicating the work with the stakeholders.

Design Ops ⚡️

In this capacity I make sure the teams I work with have the tools and processes necessary to do their best work. That can take many forms, and ranges from building out and scaling design systems, finding new ways to collaborate remotely, writing documentation on how to work more effectively, or simply maintaining the suite of tools necessary for modern, user-centered design.

The way I approach the above is to look for ways teams work that don’t scale, or where certain struggles have become commonplace — and build structure around them. At Campaign Monitor that involved building better relations between design and engineering, at the bank is was to find ways to help designers feel more inspired and creative, I established design systems and facilitated remote communication, and I’ve been building collaborative practices.

Coaching

In 2017 I opened my coaching practice, Rookiup and Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) as a way to gain more exposure to designers outside my immediate role. Since then I’ve had the pleasure and absolute privilege to coach 200+ designers from all over the world.

I see myself as an ally ☺️ to the people I coach, both within the companies I work for and freelancers. I help my people navigate career growth, develop concepts and overcome tough creative challenges — with a focus on happiness, creativity and mental wellbeing. I lead with curiosity, honesty and vulnerability — and in doing so I’ve learned an incredible amount about design, communication and myself.

I’ve coached designers from household names like Facebook, Zillow and Uber — but also talent from emerging markets like Nigeria, India and Brazil — from juniors just setting out, to seniors navigating burnout. It’s hard to know the impact you have as a coach, but people have said some nice things about me…

My Role: I designed the UX, IA and UI for this project.

To help parents and teachers keep children safe online, the MOTC (formerly known as the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology) launched a website filled with valuable information and resources on cyber safety.

Users are guided through the site by cartoon characters Saif and Saqr, who were developed by Graphic Designer, Samar Semaan. She created the characters to help make the topic of cyber safety less scary and more accessible to youth.

Saif represents a typical Qatari boy who is curious about the world that exists online. Saqr, a falcon, is Saif’s wise sidekick, who helps him make the right choices. The characters are featured throughout the site, and will be used for future games and youth outreach initiatives.

Design Option 1

Design Option 2

My Role: I designed the UX and IA for this project.

Autoquake Finance Customer Entry Points Map First Page

Autoquake-wireframes

Reach out. Let’s be creative together!

As a UX Designer and creative director living in Jordan working for UAE, KSA and Jordanian clients, I got engaged with a lot’s of digital products.

Artworks and illustrations were my gateway to the creative industry which led me to the first steps in the digital world.

In this thoughts, I will explain all that most of my clients, partners and investors ask me about for a quick answer in the future.

Art Direction

Starting with basic websites several years ago I found myself working as an Art Director for complex projects with a holistic approach soon. Visually appealing designs, subtle details and brand guidelines combined to innovative interfaces across various touch points became my daily companion.

Out of this love for aesthetic design my passion for functionality and structure evolved. Jumping right into Photoshop didn’t feel accurate anymore and skipping the steps of building a framework based on functionality and usability became inevitable.

User Experience Design

A user-centered mindset and sensitivity for design turned out to be the perfect fit when collaborating with agencies, clients and brands to develop digital concepts and solve problems together.

This rough framework outlines my common used process of developing a digital experiences:

1. Research and gather the present state.
2. Structure setup and content of the project.
3. Concept and Strategy.
4. Create, evaluate and iterate deliverables like A) Personas. B) Site maps. C) Use cases and scenarios. D) User flow. E) Sketches and Infographics. F) Wireframes.
5. High fidelity mockups.
6. Following up with the development team.

You can find more about my user experience processes.

Communicating the conceptual approach / UX strategy and reasoning behind it, is present during the whole process.

To achieve the goal of making the web a better place I trust in teamwork, latest technology and intuition.