I build what I design.
A design that can't be built is a drawing. I prototype in real code, so what I show you is what ships, not an approximation of it.
About
Cairo, five Saudi cities, and a desk in Kuala Lumpur.
I was born in Cairo and moved to Saudi Arabia when I was five. Dammam, Jubail, Al Kharj, Jeddah, Rabigh: five cities from the east coast to the west, because of where my father’s work took us. Growing up there meant growing up next to people from dozens of countries, which is a particular kind of education.
I have been designing since I was fifteen, so about thirteen years now. I studied civil engineering, worked as one for a while, and then left to do this instead.
These days I live in Kuala Lumpur and build products end to end. I also teach what I learn, on two YouTube channels: one in Arabic about UX and design, and a personal one where I pull apart whatever AI tool I have just found and report back.
How it went
2003
Cairo to Dammam
Five years old, and the start of a childhood spent moving. Egypt for the holidays, Saudi for everything else.
2013
A friend shows me Photoshop
I was fifteen. I made a wallpaper for my own phone, and the feeling of having made the thing on my screen never really wore off.
2016
Civil engineering, in Malaysia
The degree was engineering. The evenings were graphic design and video for student clubs, and my first paid work.
2019
I hear the words “UX design”
I had always been more interested in why people do things than in what they click. Finding out that was a job was the hinge.
Feb 2022
Google UX certificate
Formalising what I had been picking up sideways for three years.
Dec 2022
Graduate, then take the engineering job
Site engineer in Jubail, one of the cities I grew up in. Good pay, real responsibility, and every day identical to the last.
Jan 2023
Start the channel
Arabic UX content barely existed, so I started making it. People asked for things I only half understood, which forced me to actually learn them.
Late 2023
Quit with nothing lined up
No design offer, no plan B. I handed in my notice, left Saudi, and flew back to Malaysia. Still the largest risk I have taken.
Early 2024
First design job
Creative designer at a company in Kuala Lumpur. Marketing, social, and their website, which I designed inside the limits of WordPress.
Mid 2024
Into product
I wanted an in-house team and a real product. Visual design was already solid, so I could spend the effort on UX, and on the business underneath it.
2025
Design lead on a platform
Nine months of designing something an agency built. Every change cost a week, which taught me exactly what a handoff is worth.
2026
I stop handing it over
Courses in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git and the command line, then I rebuilt that platform myself. Twice. Then built one of my own.
The longer version
It started with a wallpaper
A friend showed me Photoshop when I was fifteen. Within a week I was making wallpapers for my own phone and my own desktop, and the thing that hooked me was not the software. It was that I could make the thing instead of waiting for someone else to.
That feeling has been behind every decision since. It is why I moved from graphic design into UX, and years later it is exactly why I started writing code.
Four years of engineering I would not undo
I studied civil engineering. It is about as far from product design as a degree gets, and I do not regret a day of it. It was hard in a way that rearranged how I handle pressure. I came out of it able to sit inside a difficult problem for a long time without panicking, which turns out to be most of the job.
In 2019 I heard the term UX design for the first time. I have always been more curious about why people behave the way they do than about any interface, so finding out there was a discipline sitting exactly on that line was the hinge the rest of this turns on.
The day I noticed I was doing the wrong job
I graduated at the end of 2022 and took a job as a site engineer in Jubail. The pay was fine. The work was real. And every day was identical to the one before it.
What actually decided it was noticing what I did with my own time. I was spending my evenings getting better at design, and nothing at all on getting better at engineering. That is a fairly loud signal once you hear it.
So I resigned, with no design offer and no plan B, and moved back to Malaysia. It is still the biggest risk I have taken. I know it could have gone the other way, and I know some of that was luck.
Teaching is how I actually learned
I started the YouTube channel in January 2023, in Arabic, because there was almost nothing in Arabic for people trying to get into UX. It has since grown to around twenty thousand people.
The part nobody warns you about is what it does to you. People kept asking about things I understood only well enough to use, not well enough to explain. Every one of those questions sent me back to learn something properly. The channel taught me more than it taught anyone watching it.
Learning to build the thing I drew
The last piece was code. I took proper courses first: HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then APIs, then Git, then a crash course on the command line, because I had genuinely never been comfortable in a terminal.
Then I rebuilt a platform I had spent nine months designing for someone else to build. Twice. And after that I built one of my own, alone.
It is the wallpaper thing again, just larger. Static screens became responsive, interactive, live things I could put in front of people myself. I have not really stopped since.
What I believe
01Not every product needs a design system.
Most need twenty tokens and a component set someone else already made. Multi-level semantic naming is a cost, and a small product cannot pay it. Build the system the product has actually earned.
AI is leverage, not the point.
It collapses the distance between an idea and a working version of it. The judgement about which ideas deserve that is still the job.
Small wins compound.
I would rather take a small win every day than wait a long time for a big one. Small wins compound, and compounding is what actually adds up to something large. Kaizen is the older name for the same idea.
Off screen
Lulu
An American Shorthair someone was about to give up on. She is half the reason I cannot walk past a street cat.
Bobo let himself in
A Siberian who walked in through the front door and declined to leave. No adoption process, no discussion. He simply arrived and stayed.
Football
I played for my university team and later in a third division side. I still play, and I still watch far too much of it.
A slowly expanding shelf
A Monstera deliciosa, a palm, golden and marble queen pothos, and the obligatory snake plant.
Coffee, badly at first
Currently working through pour over and espresso, one mediocre cup at a time.
More camera gear than I can justify
Cameras, drones, gimbals, microphones. Video production was my way in as a student and I never really put it down.
There is also an ongoing obsession with getting AI agents to do the work I would rather not be awake for, which is either a hobby or just the job again wearing a different hat.
If any of that sounded familiar, I would like to hear from you.
I love talking about Design, Product, Content Creation and Tech in general. Fire me a message if you can relate to any of that!