I Enjoyed Crafting MonshaatDigital Portals,Platforms & Design System., Al Rajhi TakafulPartner System., ShawarmerMobile App., STCInternal Systems., SafeerStudent Overseas Platform., Mbt3thStudent overseas community., FantaPS competition. & Many More Fabulous Digital Products & Platforms.
My Story
Design is what I'm doing for the last 12 years. I started my career very early. Programming was my passion while I was a teenager than I fell in love with the design! Why & when I don't know.
I used to live in Almanya, Upper Egypt, in a small village with a poor internet connection! I was born in 1991, and in 2007 was the year I called my self designer 👨🎨.
I Started my career as a Graphic designer, this did not last for few months until I switched to Web Design (doing both was the gaol at that moment). It was not an easy goal; I remember staying at home for around four months, learning and implementing new things on an hourly basis.
A year later, with four of my friends, we established our small design agency, called "Special Effects" based in Cairo. And due to our management falls, and Jan Revolution (lesson learned) we were forced to shut it down by early 2010.
I felt the loss; it was too early for me to accept such a thing. Few months later, I established my agency, called "8Media". with 24 hours of working, marketing online, travelling all over Egypt, I was able to achieve small success through the journey. I had lots of agreement with few talented services providers "Motion, Sound engineering, Branding, Hosting Experts". That's empowered the company to offer lots of different digital-focused media services such as (web design and development, branding, motion, sound and Marketing/SEO, etc.).
Ah, 8Media didn't have an official office. All the team were remotes.
Nothing meant to last forever, I felt after a while I need to learn more. And alone this was not achievable gaol. So I started looking for an excellent opportunity. At that moment, I had the chance to start with a hosting company called "Mhgoz" based in New Dammita, Egypt.
It was not a bad option at all, I learnt a lot there. And within the first eight months, I became the Team Lead for a team of more than five members.
With Mhgoz, I made lots of successful products (one-click scripts & themes mostly), and, we were able to sell it to our clients in the MENA region. But again, after around two years, I felt I need to learn more.
2013 & Sarmady - a Vodafone Company. Where the magic begins. Sarmady is the digital arm of Vodafone Egypt. The company used to own most of the successful portals and platforms in Egypt and the middle east at some point. With Sarmady, I learnt a lot daily. Designing for millions of users is not an easy task, following the identical design process and dealing with quantitative data, developing multiple concepts and comparing/testing too many things, dealing with the non-impossible team, that was a lot of fun for me. For me, until the moment Sarmady was the best Employee Experience I have ever had!
I was so lucky to have the chance to work on many projects with Sarmady team such as Filgoal, Fanta, Almasry Alyoum, Contact-Cars.
Again, In late 2013 things were not so stable in Egypt. The atmosphere, in general, was not so good and for the first time, I wanted to leave the country. That was not an easy choice at all for me.
I was looking for a good opportunity, I remember I had lots of interviews at that moment and ended up with a good offer from "Wireless-marketer" a product design and development company in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
With Wireless-Marketer I had lots of new areas to explore. rather than the normal user experience stuff and techniques. Designing Products that will be used by different segments was not an easy task. moreover, designing for multiple touchpoints (Desktop, Mobile, Digital Screens & Kiosks) relayed on new challenges and learnings as well. I was lucky to work on lots of national initiatives during my engagement with Wireless-Marketer such as the Digital National ID "Absher".
Life will give you new challenges every-day. For me, the most painful challenge was the loss of my dad between a day & night. That was the trigger to back to Egypt since the situation was too much to be handled remotely. I'm the only male left and lots of things needed to be adjusted.
Day after day, I realized that even it's a real challenge, but the growth opportunity is still there. Amin (one of my friends) and I established our product design studio. Pixvar, both of us were interested in providing the next generation of educational services. We focused on developing Mbt3th.us, one of the most thriving communities for students overseers. We built lots of exciting ideas on top of the core community, which empowered students with more resources and tools to achieve what they aim to. We established the directory (google map like), the part-time jobs portal, and Dukaan NY as well.
As a Co-Founder and managing partner, the challenges were different. Managing a team remotely and keeping deliverables on track was not an easy task. Even though Pixvar team were intelligent enough to make our life easier. After around one year and a half, I felt it's the right time to move forward.
In Oct.2015, I moved back again to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I joined Imkan as a Lead Product Designer. With Imkan and for around two years I had lots of opportunities to learn and grow more and more. Imkan was providing mainly web and mobile solutions - aka mobile/web apps. Designing mainly for mobile devices was not something new for me but the level of details I learnt to care about with Imkan was unforgettable. Shawarmer, Takamool - Zad and Sadad were the primary clients for us during that period.
In Oct.2017, I made a move to HUED, an innovation and design agency based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I started with HUED as a UX Consultant and promotion after another. At the moment, I'm filling the Associate Manager of User Experience position. With HUED, I Learnt a lot about Services Design, Design Thinking, and Innovation. Again, Lots of happy clients and successful products and stories to tell! Such as Monshaat, Alrajhi Takaful, STC, TETCO, and more.
As Associate Manager at HUED, I'm contributing throughout the different engagement phases starting from the BD, building proposal after defining the customer needs. Until the final deliverables handoff. With HUED, I used to lead multiple engagements; teams with different clients come from various industries. Such as governmental, educational, insurance, telecom & more. Building and covering a variety of experiences and target audiences. At HUED, we are liquid. Besides my core responsibilities, I practice & gain lots of different skills, and here are a few things that I did At HUED:
- BD Meeting, Scoping, and Building proposals.
- Setting the project objectives for both (HUED and Customer).
- Establishing a Project team for each engagement.
- Project Planning and conducting onboarding, alignment sessions with the different team members.
- Conducting & Planning Research (if there is a resource shortage).
- Building & Reviewing Research reports.
- Building the conceptual models, Running Ideation sessions (however, I don't run these sessions a lot).
- Setting the design strategy, direction.
- Designing both wireframes and mockups.
- Reviews and Validate on my team members' work.
- Conducting Usability testing, Hueristices, and more.
- Business owner's presentations and getting Certificates of completion.
- Enhancing Technological, conceptual methods, solutions for our team use.