I was born in 1996 in a small town in Lodhran city, Pakistan. I played in the mud streets with my three brothers and many cousins. At night, I would look at the clear, starry sky. I have many beautiful storytelling memories with my grandma. Completed my early education in my village but was not good at studies.

After completing my matriculation, I studied mathematics in my FSC. I was enthusiastic about engineering and similar fields, partly because of movies like "3 Idiots,". Initially, I wanted to get into computer science or software engineering. However, when I secured fewer marks in my pre-engineering test (E-CAT), I got admission into another discipline, Electronics Engineering.

W hen I got admission to engineering university, I was initially happy. However, after the 2nd semester, I started hating engineering because of the pathetic way of teaching and the rat race for GPA. There was no emphasis on critical thinking or problem-solving skills; everyone was obsessed with getting a good GPA, pleasing teachers, and spending time with them to build good relations, all to achieve a high CGPA. I hated this mindset because everyone was running in the same rat race without analyzing their unique talents. I struggled with memorization, which was a key part of institutional education.

Among the subjects I was studying, the one where I found the most interest was communication skills. I excelled in this area, especially compared to others in my class. I was good at communicating with friends and solving their relationship issues, among other things. So, I had a natural talent for communication, which I enjoyed and was good at in general.

To summarize, during that period, I was lost and unsure about my future. I was concerned about what I would do after completing my engineering education with poor grades, especially since my father was very strict and I relied on him for my monthly expenses. To become financially independent, I explored freelancing platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, which I was familiar with through my seniors. With the help of a dear friend who was already earning on Fiverr, I learned skills like Photoshop and Illustrator. Within six months, I started earning a good amount on Fiverr, enough to cover all my expenses.

After the last semester of my engineering, I was earning a good amount because my friends and I were taking orders on Fiverr and outsourcing to many students with their respective skills. During those years, COVID hit badly, and all of the staff moved back to their homes and went into lockdown. However, we took proactive steps to learn the fundamentals of web development. Within 4-5 months, I understood all the general things like what frameworks and different libraries are out there. I gained good knowledge to deal with my online clients, win projects, build the simple front-end of websites, and then give the backend to different freelancers to outsource the project further. During that time, I was also exploring other categories, such as starting different projects on content writing.

When I was doing the front-end of websites, my clients and friends always gave me this compliment that my front-end designs were really amazing. However, I didn’t pay too much attention and forced myself to indulge in the logic side of coding. I tried very hard to be a good developer, but I realized that it wasn't making me better at it, even though I focused a lot. So, I learned enough of what we can call the fundamentals, like HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQuery, etc.

As far as I know myself, my core motivation in those days was money, so I explored every possible skill from which I could make money. I explored stock marketing, crypto, content writing, web development (WordPress), and many more because I was discovering where I am really good at. One of the quotes from Steve Jobs inspired me a lot in his very famous speech Stanford Commencement Address. He said:

“You’ve got to find what you love. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet keep looking. Don’t settle”

I was learning from a lot of resources, such as podcasts, to understand different business models and human psychology. Moreover, I learned about the Amazon business model and launched a few products for my uncle. I was exploring what makes any business successful and what particular patterns make businesses unsuccessful.

Now, the question is, why did someone like me, who explored so many different fields, end up in UX design? In the early part of the story, as I already mentioned, my friends always praised my front-end development skills for delivering pixel-perfect results and high-quality visual designs. Another crucial aspect is that at the core of my heart, I am a curious person who always wants to know what parameters make a business successful and what causes them to fail. Once, while scrolling for a web solution on YouTube, I found this amazing person (Michal Malewicz) who gave me details about the UX designer's path roadmap. From that day, I started following UX and became a self-taught UX Designer. Formally, I have taken a course in Google UX Design from Coursera.

I started taking on some freelance projects again, particularly in the UX category. I was working for a US-based client in their startup. Essentially, that startup specializes in service requests for plumbers, cleaners, masons, etc.

During that period I decided to move to UAE essentially because I was bored doing freelance projects and I want to explore the bigger and better job market place and more importantly I want to gain the on-site experience so when I moved here at the starting months I worked as a customer services executive because I didn't find my niche specific job immediately. I enjoyed a lot doing it at initially because there are so many things to learn there. The typical day starting from taking tele sales calls engaging with customers convincing them to take company membership etc.

After a few months at Hashtag Info-tech, where I worked as a UX Designer on real estate websites, I found the scope limited.

Seeking more significant opportunities, I applied to Horizon Group of Companies in Abu Dhabi and was fortunate to be selected among many designers. Since then, I have started working on one of their subsidiaries, hiresgulf.com. Now, HiresGulf is a talent management website targeting B2B & B2C. I am the lead product designer responsible for planning new features, optimizing old design patterns, and redesigning their employer dashboards. I plan to strategically shift the design implementation, establish a proper design system, and define brand consistency metrics.

My daily operations are mainly based on an Agile or Lean UX approach. I don't believe in carrying a huge baggage of deliverables, only to waste the company's time and money on useless features that users never opt for. The fundamental principle of Lean UX is straightforward: by delivering the most realistic and functional features within the limited time and energy available, and then launching straight into the market to test real user feedback, we can proceed with the rest if all goes well. Because even the smartest teams can't predict market and user behavior.

To conclude all this. My future will be hopefully more exciting in this niche because I have so many things to learn and understand. I hope I will get a chance to work in more scale able projects with huge users so that I can get a chance to study more user insights and make thoughtful decisions in my design thinking.

Thank you so much for your time. Feel free to talk to me if you have something interesting to discuss.

Email at: hamzanawazbwp@gmail.com