Iman Alhakim
My name is Iman Alhakim. I love spending my time with my family and traveling around the world.
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What fascinates me about design is the focus on innovation, solving problems, and continually evolving in a way that is centered around users and making their experience delightfully functional. I enjoy a design process that helps designers make sure that every decision and every solution is user-centric. The more we as designers are informed about our users, the better our designs will be. As a designer, I’ve always found myself attracted to problems that limit people’s potential or reduce their quality of life. This drives me to use what I’ve learned to help shed light on these issues or build solutions that unlock human potential.
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One core concept in design that has fascinated me is inclusive design. Inclusive design is understanding and utilizing the full range of human diversity to produce inclusive and superior products. Inclusive design encourages designers to shift their basic assumptions and seek more inputs in the various parts of their process. In order for my design to be a success, it has to be inclusive. Observing and designing based on diverse perspectives, circumstances, cultures, and environments create smooth interaction between technology and human beings. At its core, inclusive design is about human diversity. Everyone deserves to be deeply involved in the products that we build and without inclusive design, we could be excluding people from fully participating or benefitting.
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During the last two years in the IMD program, I learned that the thinking process is more important than a solution. In fact, having a well-developed process and framework will produce superior results. Digging deep into the design process can uncover underlying issues that would have stayed hidden otherwise. Building a strong foundation with users is foundational to a feasible and viable design. This naturally means that research is one of the foundational elements of great design. The ability to create a connection with users and put myself in their shoes allows me to design the service/product from their perspective and from their pain points rather than mine. Users are the center of my design, as they should be.
My Values as a Designer
Empathy and diversity are two values that are important to me as a user-centered designer because they revolve purely around the users and their needs. Empathy allows me to feel, relate, and put myself in the user’s situation and be able to view the world through their eyes.
Bringing in a diverse set of people with diverse ideas, experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives allows us to better understand our users and allows us to creatively design better products and experiences. I’ve always found myself inspired and amazed by how human interactions with technology continues to evolve as we introduce new technologies.
When designers are able to collaborate with each other and with their clients, the outcomes will be extraordinary. Although working as a group can be very challenging, bringing together the diversity of ideas and thoughts allows us to solve problems in unique ways and produce amazing and unexpected solutions and designs.