Overview
Wahed is a pioneering halal fintech investment platform built to democratize ethical investing for a global Muslim audience. With 500K+ app downloads across 130 countries, the product needed to earn user trust at every single touchpoint.
As Senior Product Designer, I led the full product design lifecycle from ideation through to launch — across multiple financial products and features. My work introduced scalable UI systems and high-impact features that enriched the user experience and delivered significant business growth.
The Challenge
In an increasingly competitive global fintech arena, Wahed faced a multifaceted challenge — to differentiate its design approach and build brand identity that would resonate deeply with a diverse international audience while reinforcing its credibility as an ethical financial institution.
A critical objective was to simplify and enhance the user onboarding journey, making ethical investing intuitive and genuinely accessible for first-time investors across the globe. Building trust incrementally — across products, engineering, and marketing — as the platform expanded.
"For a fintech product trusted with people's money, functional is never enough. The UI is the trust signal."
My Role
As Senior Product Designer from July 2017 to April 2023, my role extended far beyond visual execution — I owned the complete product design strategy, from high-level UX thinking and information architecture right down to pixel-level delivery across iOS, Android, and web.
01
End-to-end product ownership
Led the complete product design lifecycle from ideation through delivery — ensuring design thinking was seamlessly integrated with development and overarching product strategy.
02
Component library and design system
Architected and maintained reusable UI components across four product touchpoints — ensuring consistent design language that significantly accelerated team delivery speed.
03
Cross-functional collaboration
Collaborated directly with product, engineering, and marketing. Acted as the design bridge — translating business requirements into user-centred experiences with measurable outcomes.
04
User research and iteration
Conducted user research, usability testing, and stakeholder interviews to validate design decisions — resulting in a 20% increase in engagement and 30% drop in support tickets.
Design Approach
My design strategy was rooted in a thorough understanding of user needs and an unwavering commitment to ethical finance principles. I treated the design system not as a maintenance task but as a living product — one the entire team depended on to ship with confidence.
"A design system without a growth mindset is just expensive documentation. The shift was treating it as an internal product."
Reflections and Key Learnings
01
Treat the design system as a product, not a deliverable
The biggest shift was moving from maintenance thinking to growth thinking. A design system with no roadmap, no owner, and no adoption metrics quietly becomes the thing that slows everyone down. The moment we gave it product-level attention, everything downstream improved.
02
In fintech, the UI is the trust signal
Users are trusting this product with their money and their values. Every design decision had to earn that trust. Functional was never enough. The bar was always: does this make the user feel confident, capable, and in control?
03
Real impact comes from connecting design to business outcomes
The most important conversations I had were not about UI. They were about revenue, retention, and what leadership needed to see to trust design at a strategic level. Learning to speak that language — and delivering numbers that validated it — changed everything.
