Lifestyle
Ever opened an app or visited a website and found exactly what you were looking for, without having to think twice about where to click next?
It might seem like a small thing, but making a digital experience feel that simple…isn’t always so simple.
Behind every button, screen, and journey are many decisions about what customers need, how they behave, and what makes their lives easier.
And that’s where Product Designers come in.
We sat down with Mohammad Samhouri, Product Design Manager at Bank al Etihad, to find out what his job involves, what happens behind the scenes, and how he found his way into the field.
It starts long before the design
You might think a Product Designer spends most of their time deciding what a website or app should look like. But as Mohammad explains, that’s only one part of the job.
Product Designers work closely with the teams that own and manage products, the developers who build them, those who look after the customer experience, and different business teams across the bank. And while the role has a lot in common with UI and UX design, it goes further than designing screens and journeys.
A Product Designer needs to understand the business case behind what’s being built, what customers need from it, and what can realistically be developed.
That means researching what’s already out there and asking plenty of questions before any designing begins.
“Sometimes you can have an innovative idea, but you still have to ask whether it actually makes sense for your market and the people you’re designing for,” Mohammad says.
And then there’s the technical side to consider. Some ideas might look great on paper but turn out to be hard for developers to implement.
“It’s really a balancing act between the purpose of the product, what customers need, and what’s technically possible,” he adds.
From a rough idea to a finished design
Once the direction is clear, the design process starts.
Mohammad begins by understanding who will use a product or feature. That involves research, identifying different customer groups, and creating “user personas,” which are fictional profiles of the people a product is being designed for.
Then come the customer journeys and user flows: mapping out what someone wants to accomplish on a website or app and how they’ll move through it.
Next, the screens start to take shape, first as “low-fidelity wireframes.” These are simple black-and-white sketches showing where different elements go and how the screens connect. They’re quick to make and easy to change, so they’re a good way to check that the journey makes sense before getting into the details.
Once that’s agreed, Mohammad moves on to “high-fidelity designs,” which look much closer to what customers will eventually see, with colours, buttons, and more visual details.
These are then turned into clickable prototypes, so people can try out the experience before it’s built.
And that’s where things get interesting.
Sometimes, customers tell you what they need without saying a word
Product Designers use surveys, focus groups, and interviews to better understand customers’ needs. But what customers say isn’t the only thing that matters.
“Sometimes someone might not give any verbal feedback, but you can see from their facial expression that they’re confused,” Mohammad points out. “That’s a sign that something isn’t working like it should, and we need to go back and improve it.”
Something that seems obvious to the person who designed it might not be so clear to someone using it for the first time.
That’s why testing designs with real people matters.
As Mohammad puts it, “The goal isn’t simply to create something that looks good. It’s to make sure people can actually use it.”
What happens when everyone has an opinion?
Design is one of those things where almost everyone has a preference.
One person likes a certain colour. Someone else prefers a different layout. Another might think a button would look better somewhere else.
So how do you decide what works best?
“Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to design, but we can’t make decisions based on personal taste. We need to look at what the research and user feedback are telling us,” Mohammad explains.
Customer feedback helps designers understand which choices work best for the people using the product. But it’s not the only thing guiding their decisions.
“We also have an established design system,” he adds. “It gives us guidelines for elements like buttons, colours, and layouts, so we’re not making every decision from scratch. It helps us create a consistent experience for customers.”
“Simple” can take a surprising amount of work
One of the biggest misconceptions about product design is how quickly it can be done.
“People sometimes underestimate how much time and effort goes into designing something that looks simple. There can be so many different flows and things you need to consider before you get to the final design,” Mohammad notes.
Take the bank’s multi-currency prepaid card, for example. Topping it up, converting between currencies, or checking your balance might seem straightforward. But behind the scenes, the team had to think through every step customers would take, what information they’d need along the way, and where they might get stuck.
And managing all these different considerations means Product Designers usually have to wear many hats.
They need to think visually, but also analytically. They need to put themselves in the shoes of customers who may not be comfortable with technology, and design experiences that still feel intuitive to them.
At our bank, that matters a lot. People rely on digital banking services for everyday tasks, from paying bills to sending money to family, so every experience needs to be easy to use, whether someone is opening their first account or has banked with us for decades.
Has AI changed the job?
Like many other professions, product design is changing with AI.
Mohammad sees the value in using AI tools to make certain tasks faster, such as research or creating prototypes that would otherwise take longer to build.
But he also believes there’s an important difference between using AI to help with the work and relying on it to make the decisions.
“A Product Designer isn’t just someone who executes instructions,” Mohammad explains. “AI can help us come up with ideas and explore different solutions, but we still need to question those suggestions, weigh the pros and cons, and decide what actually works best for the people who will use them.”
From developer to Product Design Manager
Mohammad didn’t always plan on becoming a Product Designer.
He studied Computer Science and first came across the field through a Human-Computer Interaction course, which introduced him to how people interact with technology.
He then started his career as a developer, but it didn’t take long before he found another area that interested him.
“Because I worked in smaller teams, I was doing a bit of everything. I was working on front-end development, but I was also doing some of the designs. Over time, I realised I enjoyed the design part more,” he recalls.
That realisation eventually led him to make the shift into product design, combining his technical background with his interest in creating experiences that work better for people.
What good design comes down to
For Mohammad, good product design comes down to understanding the problems customers face and finding ways to make things easier.
Sometimes that means removing an unnecessary step. Sometimes it’s making information easier to find. And sometimes it’s rethinking something that seemed perfectly clear until someone else tried using it.
Because the best digital experiences don’t leave you wondering what to do next.
They simply let you get on with what you came to do.
