A Senior Product Designer with an engineering backbone — designing digital experiences people love, and facilitating the workshops that align teams around building them right.
End-to-end product design across fintech, travel, and B2B — from strategy and research to interaction design and pixel-perfect delivery. An engineering background that makes every design buildable.
Discovery research, usability testing, expert evaluations, and user interviews. I ask lots of "why"s — and use tools like Maze and Dovetail to turn real insight into sharp design decisions.
Scalable, living design systems built to empower product teams. From component libraries to experience principles — designed for consistency, speed, and long-term maintainability.
Bridging user needs and business goals. Defining experience principles, aligning product and engineering, and making sure design decisions are grounded in both data and human insight.
Recognised as the go-to facilitator at Almosafer — leading discovery workshops, design thinking sessions, and research synthesis sprints that aligned cross-functional teams and turned ambiguity into clear design direction. Miro is my canvas; alignment is the output.
Most designers execute briefs. Shahad writes them. Recognised as Almosafer's most impactful workshop facilitator, she led the cross-functional sessions that shaped product direction — bringing PMs, engineers, researchers, and stakeholders into alignment before a single screen was sketched.
From day-one discovery to synthesis sprints, her workshops didn't just inform design — they aligned entire teams around a human-centered direction.
Facilitated problem framing sessions with PMs, engineers, and stakeholders — surfacing assumptions, aligning on user needs, and defining the right problem before design began.
Led structured ideation sprints that brought diverse perspectives into the design process — building team ownership of the direction from day one.
Turned raw research data into shared understanding — affinity mapping, insight clustering, and "how might we" sessions that gave teams a clear, prioritised design brief.
Led the end-to-end revamp of core fintech products — driving product strategy, defining experience principles, and aligning Product and Engineering. Conducted deep user research and workflow analysis to translate insights into meaningful improvements.
Guided product strategy through research, user feedback, and cross-functional collaboration. Led UX/UI improvements across key verticals — and became the company's most sought-after workshop facilitator, running discovery sessions that shaped product direction across multiple teams.
✦ Lead Workshop FacilitatorApplied research and design expertise to solve business challenges across industries. Conducted discovery research, usability tests, expert evaluations, and user interviews — translating insight into strategic design recommendations.
Redesigned and implemented web pages for performance. Conducted software testing and prepared detailed reports — where the engineering-meets-design mindset began.
I'm Shahad — a Senior Product Designer based in Riyadh with a Software Engineering degree from Prince Sultan University and 6+ years shaping digital products people genuinely love to use.
Currently at HALA Payments, previously at Almosafer (Seera Group) and Uxbert Labs. I bring an engineering perspective to design — which means I understand how things are built, not just how they look.
Beyond the screen, I'm known for leading the workshops that shape what gets built — facilitating discovery sessions, design thinking sprints, and research synthesis workshops that align teams and turn ambiguity into clarity.
"Passionate to bring an engineering perspective to design — and to lead the rooms where the best ideas come to life."
Bachelor of Software Engineering — Second Class Honours. The foundation for an engineering-meets-design career.
User Experience Certificate (UXC) — the gold standard in UX certification, globally recognised.
Human-Computer Interaction for UX Design (MIT) · User Experience Nanodegree (Udacity).
