Work

Hijra Bank

Team

Role: Head of Design & Research. Defined the design vision, principles, and process.

Team: 24 people. Product Designers, Researchers, DesignOps.

Overview

Led and built a team of 25+, consists of Product Designers, Interaction Designers, Illustrator, UX Writers, and Researchers. Advocated simplicity and created the product design vision & principles, design processes, design system, and career leveling for the team. Led the product design conceptualization of the future version of the services.

Achievements

Launced in November 2022, Hijra Bank App was in the top three of Best Shariah Banking from Indonesia Halal Industry Awards (IHYA). Its P2P Financing App, awarded the most Innovative Sharia Fintech from the Global Islamic Finance Awards (GIFA).

Alpheya, a full suite of cloud-native, AI-powered wealthtech solutions

Team

Role: Head of Design & Research. Built the team from 0. Set up the design vision, principles, process, including the design system.

Team: 24 people. Product Designers, Interaction Designers, Researchers, UX Writers/Content Managers, Marketing Designer.

Scale of impact

Reaching 5M+ customers in the UAE through top banks in the UAE, and other millions in Saudi Arabia and UK.

Why Alpheya

  1. AI-first and future proof. Built in the cloud, with AI at its core, Alpheya’s platform is easy to integrate with and built to empower innovation and agility for your business

  2. Hyper-personalization. API first, persona-driven, and highly configurable, Alpheya delivers a Hyper-personalized experience to all users while also enabling you to build your own custom journeys

  3. Comprehensive platform for your business. Alpheya serves all your channels, segments (retail, high net worth), and business models (discretionary, advisory, self-directed), with a configurable holistic platform revolutionizing the way wealth management is delivered

Work scope

Digital Client Experience (end clients)

  • Hyper-personalized web and mobile apps, tailored to MENA region

  • Digital client engagement and account information access

  • Digital onboarding

  • Self-directed trading

  • Robo-advisory with automatic portfolio rebalancing

Wealth Relationship Management (Relationship Managers)

  • For Relationship Managers

  • Wealth CRM

  • Client 360, Account 360, and Portfolio 360 insights

  • Tasks and workflow management

  • AI-powered client opportunities

  • Client acquisition and prospect management

Portfolio Management and Execution (For Advisors)

  • Financial planning and risk assessment

  • Discretionary portfolio management and advisory

  • Portfolio analysis, stress testing, and simulation

  • Single and multi-order execution

AI Copilot

  • Knowledge assistant

  • AI-powered insights, opportunities, and next best action

  • Personalized client communication

Financial Marketplace

  • Breadth of global asset classes

  • Pre-built integrations with leading funds and alternatives product platforms

  • Curated news, market data, and research

Digital Reporting and Analytics

  • Client retention and growth analytics

  • Performance reporting and attribution analysis

  • Metrics and KPI reporting

Viki: Redesigning the heart of a global TV site, its video player

Role: Head of Design, hands-on.

This was a redesign of Rakuten Viki's Video Player, with the goal to minimize distractions and creates an engaging experience for the users who are watching shows with timed-comments.

The improved video player design

The old player

Rakuten Viki's old video player has unclear information, unclear grouping of actions, and sharp-edged icons that appear cold and dangerous. Placement of buttons are not strategically positioned to fit users’ needs (e.g., share icon which is not used favorably by users is placed at a prominent area on the video player, between the “like” and “subtitle “ buttons).

The design approach and details

Better grouping.

4dp and 8dp grid.

Making sure touch areas are easy to access.

Growing the community: Helping users to interact with each other

Real time comments section was added to engage users more and drive interaction between fans.

Smartwatch App to Improve Video Viewing Experience on Viki

Role: Designer.

This was part of a hackaton project of Rakuten Viki, with the goal to help users control the video and easily comment on the video using speech-to-text.

The app

The prototype on an Android smart watch.

The sketch

The idea was simple: users would be able to browse episodes and add comment using speech-to-text.

The design

What's the result?

Unfortunately until I left, we still haven't developed the smart watch app. The adoption of the smartwatch is not high enough for us to put this into priority list.

Redesign of AirAsia App that drives 200%+ increase in revenue and 3 million downloads

Role: Lead Designer and Front-End Engineer.

AirAsia is the world's best low-cost airline, and a pioneer of low-cost travel in Asia. It had low app engagement and huge drop off to complete a flight booking with its 30+ screens.

I was hired to design the UX and develop the front-end library.

The old app with 30+ steps

More steps is good for your health, but not for a flight booking app. The old app needed 30+ steps to complete a booking process, not to mention the outdated visual design.

Excessive use of red and cluttered interface.

Early prototype

The very early prototype to show the new concept.

 

Wireframes

 

More prototype iterations…

 

The app as of June 2012

The new app had 38% fewer screens, and it took only around 13 screens to complete the booking process, compared to 30+ with the old app.

 

The Metrics

3D Animated Avatar for Chat

Role: Lead UX Designer.

This was way before Apple’s Animoji. Unfortunately it didn’t go to commercial release due to financial problem.

Main screen (inbox) and avatar editing.

Editing the Eyes.

Animation editor.

Adding animated avatar to the chat window.

Animating the eyes.

Geeky time: Transport for London mobile app

Role: Mobile Software Engineer, UI Lead

I used to be a software engineer at British Telecoms. I led the front-end development using Java 2 ME framework. This was a project in 2007. That time, Nokia N95 was one of the hottest phones in the market, and Java Micro Edition was the most popular programming language for mobile phones.

About the client: Transport for London is the local government body responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London in England. Its role is to implement the transport strategy and to manage transport services across London.

The hot N95 (at that time), with Transport for London App.

 

The sketches (by an engineer)

 

The main app: TfL Countdown Service

The main app was designed and built to help commuters in London, especially for tourists that were going to come for Summer Olympic 2012.

 

Some experiments for Transport for London

Social App for Transport for London

Interactive navigation

 

And of course, the WAP for mobile