Who am I ?
My name is Abdelrahman Osama I'm Egyptian and currently working in KSU @ Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I'm married and have two kids, Hamza & Salman.
My name is Abdelrahman Osama I'm Egyptian and currently working in KSU @ Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I'm married and have two kids, Hamza & Salman.
UX Designer + Web standards expert who makes web sites & web applications that are easy and fun to use.
I started my career in 1999 and specialized in web standards & user experience since 2005 some people believe I maybe the first in the Middle East to make web standards compliant web sites.
Back at 2009 I had an idea, I couldn’t start working on it back then as I needed a developer who believe in the idea and willing to join, which unfortunately I couldn’t find. so after I passed by a big push of excitement I decided to learn development myself, to start doing my ideas without the need of cash money to hire a developer or a developer who is convinced with my idea and willing to join a startup.
So I started learning development in ponga, and over a weekend I found my self already done with most of the basic features. that was about the end of January of 2011. and now after less than a year here I’m realeasing the beta testing release actually I released it about a month ago but never had the time to write about it since then.
Ponga is a fun social network where you are not required to expose your real identity, some times we like to hide our identities on the open web it’s kind of a game, on ponga this is the main goal, you don’t even have the place to expose your real identity, Ponga is not a game where you sit and play with it like farmville etc.. it’s just something to pass by every now and then, and this mostly how we use the web when feeling bored, check here and there seeking new funny stuff. this is what ponga for it’s kind of a pet where you give it a name you take care of. you don’t have to spend hours of your time to keep it happy, just need you to pass by every now and then, by gaining more score you reach higher levels, higher levels means more needs means more money needed, means more friends you need to add to gain more daily salary, will not spoil it for you just check it out 
To me ponga is really a unique experience it’s something you put so money effort + thinking + hours in it, and you just hope people will like.
In ponga I discovered the difference between a UX design of a game and a UX of Task management app for example, unlike a real life app gaming experience need to be much more mysterious, you need to let people discover stuff themselves, you need to reveal more things along the way, in games it’s preferred to increase interaction, unlike real life apps you need to decrease interaction needed to do stuff as much as you can.
A big thanks to Sherif Shaaban who is the logo designer & intro page visual designer, and to Mostafa S. Amin who taught me web development (javascript/jQurey + PHP) and was my consultant in hard times passed by ponga development, and last but not least to Yasser Gaessa the artist of the pongas. and many thanks of all my friends in a secret facebook group who I had to consult on each and every feature and designs of ponga, they where very helpful and supportive
October 16, 2011 in Creative, Design, Fun, Personal, Point, UX, Web in the Middle East, inspiration | 1 Comment
hey…I am a fresh graduate , I was making a product last year when I was still student and that’s where I first heard of UX , so i read a couple of books about it and I followed some blogs now after I graduated i am thinking of being UX Designer I always read that you do not have to be a UI designer to be a UX designer but i always found people doing both together(I am good at development not designing) my questions is
UX and UI nearly are the same thing or you may say fresh UI is the result of good UX, I believe you mean Visual Designer not UI Designer , yes you can be a UX/UI Designer without being a visual designer, actually that’s what I’m doing
UX is an umbrella where many things get under From what I have seen in this profession you are either a UX Designer who focuses on User Research – Information Architecture (IA) – content strategy – UI like (Don Norman, Jesse James Garett, LukeW )
Or you focus on Interaction design (IxD) – UI – Visual Design like Ghaida Zahran and others you will find here, they focus on icons, buttons and controls in general and they have better balance for UI and colors. and they are mostly titled as interaction designers or UI designers.
I believe you want to be the first one, and this is how most well known UX Designers are like, then they use visual designers to create the last layer of visual effects.
About your second question, this job started to spread really fast this last year in the US and Europe, and I believe it will be coming to the middle east very soon and it’s demand will be very high , but I believe maybe after one year or something, but as you will be one of the very few in this field maybe you will be one of the first to be picked, any way till people recognize it we could still work as web designers/developers and try to apply our values and fight with our bosses/clients trying to explaining the value of what we are doing to them 
For the third question UX design is a skill on it’s own. but in general you need to understand users physiology (how users think), you need to make wireframes, you need to be open minded and speak too much with other people about there opinion with interfaces, you need to be aware of latest technologies, you need to read some blogs and follow some tweets, and last but not least you need to be creative, as I believe that UX is half theoretical where you gain of books, blogs & conferences and half depends on creativity. and here is really one good article on this topic.
You may also like to check my post of UX resources
September 15, 2011 in Community, UX, Web in the Middle East, business | Leave a comment
A friend ask me about some resources to start learning UX Design, so I thought of sharing them here.
UX is an umbrella that includes Information Architecture (IA), Interaction Design (IxD), Information Design and other stuff, here is some specialized books in some of those fields. Read those only after finishing the first list
Easily explaining the relation between UX and UI, Brilliant.
Chicken and Egg from Kai Brunner on Vimeo.
June 18, 2011 in Creative, Fun, UX | Leave a comment
Good day every one, long time no posts, you have to excuse me as the web industry is moving forward really quickly, I’m trying to follow up events, trends, concepts. from Responsive Design to social media, from CSS3 Animations to the philosophy of UX, special thanks to Luke for summarizing those presentations for us.
Daily cycle, running between my fulltime job, ponga, other freelance consultancy & ofcourse my family.
Through the last days I’ve met really professional people that I didn’t know I may meet in the arab world, that is the benefits of attending geeky events like SWCairo, TEDxRiyadh and other events that I could attend on Twitter only.
Here is a list of some of the creative people I met recently:
I just have an advice for startups, that I wanted to say, I see most of the teams are mostly developers, I want to say to you have a little bit more attention on UX, because I believe this is the key success of any web/phone application. and it’s the key success of many of the successful companies like Apple, Google & 37Signals.
Have you ever think why most of unadvanced users love iPhones over nokias Androids etc…, that’s it you got it, it’s the UX / Usability / Interaction design. but the problem is as Jesse James Garrett said in one of his presentations I blogged awhile ago, that UX Design is not something you can see, like visual design, but it’s something you feel, like feeling cold but I can’t see it, I feel pleasure while using iPhone, Gmail or 37Signals‘s Basecamp which I really recommend it for project management by the way, but I don’t know why I’m feeling this pleasure, this is the effect of UX
Some UX Resources:
May 15, 2011 in Community, UX, Various, Web in the Middle East, inspiration | 2 Comments
A brilliant short lecture by Jeffrey Veen, a must see for Project managers + UX Designers + Web developers.
April 12, 2011 in Technical, Various, Web2.0 | Leave a comment
Me, Sherif Shaaban & our beloved friends on a secret facebook group, have been working on a creative funny project, it’s the first time I’m actually coding myself, special thanks to Mostafa Amin who helped too much in helping me with my first steps on coding.
What is a ponga? nobody know yet, but it’s something fun, social & cute.
It’s still work in progress, but I’m really pleased with the results till now, many thanks to Sherif for his magnificent creative work.
Follow us on @theponga.
April 11, 2011 in Community, Fun, Point, Web2.0 | Leave a comment
An article by UX for the masses that is describing perfectly What makes a good UX designer?, really useful article, a must read.
Here is the main mentioned qualities in short:
- Being like Mr T
- Being a designer
- Being a researcher
- Being a techie
- Being a creative
- Being a suit
- Being a team player
Never found an article describing UX Designers clearly as this one.
Brilliant advertising idea, using the power of humor and web community, check the results at the end.
February 12, 2011 in Advertising, Community, Creative, Fun | Leave a comment
Today I’m announcing two conversions first the conversion from XHTML1.0 to HTML5 second the conversion from MT to WP, Since awhile ago I’ve been hoping to find some time to make those conversions, and here I come.
Actually converting to HTML5 wasn’t so painful but what was really painful is converting from MT to WP, MT wasn’t that bad any way, but I had to make the conversion as there was some bugs in commenting and showing old comments that I couldn’t resolve and I couldn’t find any support from MT team to resolve this issue.
This is my first post from WP, C U Soon
