Dania Khaled's Recent LinkedIn Posts

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect going into my conversation with Miguel Fernandes . What I didn’t expect was how quickly it felt familiar. Within minutes, it became clear that despite coming from different continents and very different ecosystems, the way we think is surprisingly aligned. Not just in how we approach entrepreneurship, but in why we care about it in the first place. We both see building companies as only part of the equation. The bigger work is building the mindset around entrepreneurship, strengthening the community, and creating spaces where founders can grow with honesty, trust, and substance. That kind of alignment is rare, and when it shows up, it’s worth recognizing and building on. I’m genuinely looking forward to collaborating with someone who brings depth, experience, and a community-first perspective to the table. Until next time you’re back in Qatar.

You download a fitness app because the ad promised “personalized workouts in 5 minutes.” You open the app. You are asked to create an account. Then answer 12 questions. Then choose goals you do not fully understand. Then land on a dashboard full of charts, plans, and tabs. You pause. You are not unmotivated. You are confused.. So you close the app. Or worse, you keep clicking around, stuck on screens, trying to figure out where the actual value is. This is what app abandonment usually looks like. Not rage quitting. Quiet confusion. And this is where UX gets misunderstood. UX is often brought in to “improve usability,” but in reality, it is trying to correct a bigger problem. Marketing sold one story. The product experience tells another. Marketing says This app will solve X for you. UX then has to answer What is X Where do I find it And what do I do first When those answers are not obvious in the first few moments, users disappear. Not because they hate the product. But because they do not understand it. Good UX does not convince users to stay. It simply makes the promise clear, visible, and easy to access the moment the app opens. If users are abandoning your app quickly or getting stuck inside it, the question is not How do we add more features The question is Are we delivering the same story we sold them in the first place? Yara A. explores where these incorrect user expectations are formed in the first place.

The smallest “feature” can feel like a huge act of respect. On a flight recently, I noticed a simple option that basically said, “Let me sleep. Don’t wake me for meals.” No new screens. No clever copywriting marathon. Just permission. And it hit me how often products accidentally do the opposite. We build experiences that assume constant availability. We assume users want every notification, every prompt, every “just checking in.” We treat attention like an unlimited resource. But people are tired. They are managing kids, time zones, anxiety, work, and 19 open tabs in their head. Sometimes the best experience is being left alone. That tiny “do not disturb” choice does a few powerful things for stickiness: It reduces worry. The user stops monitoring the system. It builds trust. The product proves it will not take more than it needs. It gives control. Control is comfort in disguise. It reminds me of the hotel door hanger. Not because it’s cute. Because it’s a clear agreement between guest and service. Most retention problems are not because your product is missing features. They happen because your product feels like it might interrupt me at the wrong time. This doesn’t feel like UX. It feels like safety.

Ten seconds in, I was annoyed. Not mildly. Immediately. Before I could try anything. Before I could generate one logo. Before I could even understand how the system thinks, it asked for $20+ upfront. No preview. No meaningful trial. No proof of value. Just pay first. And something was yelling telling me not to fall for this (I should know better after all). If a platform makes you pay before you see anything at all, it usually means they’re not confident you’ll stick around once you do. But I ignored my gut. Because sometimes you want to be wrong (especially when you really do need that solution they promised under a time crunch). Sometimes you hope a tool surprises you. So I paid. And very quickly, the disappointment started stacking. It hallucinates more than it delivers. Way more. I started giving it basic tests. Simple prompts. Clear instructions. Nothing complex. And every time, I found myself literally slapping my hand on my forehead. The outputs “seemed” polished at first glance, but the logic wasn’t there. Random design decisions. Inconsistent typography. Falcon heads appearing out of nowhere (I literally burst out laughing but then I panicked, I realized I will not get what I paid for). It’s one thing for AI to be imperfect. We expect that. It’s another thing to market precision and deliver chaos behind a paywall. What frustrates me most isn’t even the money. It’s the friction in the first 10 seconds. The immediate barrier. The forced commitment. In 2026, user experience is your marketing. If your very first interaction is telling you “pay up” before you see anything, you’ve already lost me. And probably a lot of others too. Have any platforms done this to you lately?

If UX has ever felt confusing to you you are not missing something. This genuinely surprised me. I went through UX content on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn and realized most of it is not made for founders at all. It is UX people talking to other UX people using their own language their own tools their own assumptions. Meanwhile founders are expected to make product decisions that directly affect growth retention and revenue without being part of the conversation. Take one simple metric. Daily Active Users. Most founders recognize the term. Very few have had it explained properly. DAU is not about traffic. It is about behavior. Then there is the equation almost no one explains in plain language. DAU divided by MAU equals stickiness. This tells you one thing whether users are coming back or slowly disappearing. Around 20 percent means occasional use. Around 40 percent means habit is forming. Above 50 percent means your product has real pull. You cannot fix this with marketing. You cannot advertise your way into higher DAU. Low DAU usually means one of three things. The value was not clear fast enough The effort felt higher than the reward Or the journey asked users to think too much No colors. No animations. No design tools. Just human behavior. This is where my work is different. I am not teaching UX as a discipline. I am simplifying UX as a decision making framework. My audience is not designers. It is founders and organizations. People who need to understand how user journeys affect trust retention and growth without learning design jargon. That is the bridge I am building. If UX has ever felt confusing this is why. And if you are a founder or part of an organization trying to make better product decisions this is the UX conversation you were probably missing. Follow if you want UX explained in human language for real decisions with real consequences.

Hiring UX UI without domain alignment breaks apps in invisible ways. Not because the designer lacks skill. But because the goal of the product is different. UX is not neutral. It always serves a purpose. Take health apps. They are education driven. Users arrive unsure. Sometimes anxious. Sometimes afraid. Good health UX slows people down. It explains consequences. It reduces ambiguity. It optimizes for understanding, not speed. Now look at gaming apps. They are entertainment driven. Users arrive relaxed. Curious. Ready to explore. Good game UX hides rules. Encourages trial and error. Rewards curiosity and risk. Social media is different again. It is interaction driven. The goal is reaction. Not understanding. Not correctness. Now banking. Banking apps are trust driven. Users want certainty. Predictability. Zero surprises. When you hire a designer whose instincts were shaped by gaming, you may get motion where clarity is needed, choice where guidance is required, and delight where reassurance matters most. That is not a skill problem. It is a goal mismatch. UX hiring should start with one question. What behavior must this product discourage? Because UX is goal design, not screen design. And when goals change, instincts must change too.

I’ve watched smart people turn into spreadsheets when the process gets unclear. Not because they love tracking. Because silence makes you do weird things. A designer friend recently shared their job search numbers. Hundreds of applications. A handful of replies. A couple of offers. Weeks of back to back interviews, then nothing. So they started “optimizing” themselves. Change the resume every 50 applications. Rewrite the story. Reorder the portfolio. More proof. More polish. More effort. That is what users do in products too. When the product doesn’t tell you where you stand, people start guessing what the product wants. They click differently. They hesitate. They redo steps. They start over. They stop trusting their own judgment. One detail stuck with me. Applying in the first day led to better outcomes. That is pure human behavior. Timing feels like a door. If it looks even slightly closed, people don’t push, they leave. The hidden problem founders miss is this: uncertainty creates self blame. And self blame is heavy. Heavy doesn’t come back tomorrow. Think of it like airport security. People tolerate the line. They tolerate the rules. They lose it when they do not know if they are doing it right. When your product makes progress feel visible, effort starts to feel worth it. When it doesn’t, even motivated people begin to disappear quietly.

Two months of applying. Tailored resumes. Every job board. Zero interviews. That feeling is familiar, even if you have never job hunted in your life. It is the same feeling a new user gets when they do everything “right” in your app and still don’t get a win. They sign up. They verify. They click around. They even try again tomorrow. And nothing clicks back. When someone is putting in effort and getting no signal, they don’t assume “I need to try harder.” They assume “this isn’t for me.” In hiring, a resume often gets skimmed in 6 to 8 seconds. In product, your first impression gets even less. So the real problem is rarely effort. It is interpretation. People are not rejecting the person or the product. They are failing to quickly understand: Who this is for. What it helps me do. Why I should trust it. What to do next. A resume is a lot like a book cover in a crowded store. Nobody hates your writing. They just cannot tell, fast enough, what shelf it belongs on. Founders run into this with onboarding copy, homepages, pricing pages, even feature names. If your best users have to “reframe” your value for you, you are leaking retention before it even becomes retention. Clarity is the first retention mechanic.

Most forgettable apps have one thing in common. You don’t miss them when they’re gone. Take apps that: Remind you to drink water, Show inspirational quotes, Or track habits without changing outcomes. Nice ideas. Clean design. But nothing actually breaks when you stop using them. Compare that to apps that: Replace spreadsheets you hate, Save you hours of manual work, Or prevent expensive mistakes. You feel their absence immediately. That’s the difference. Apps don’t become memorable because they’re clever. They become memorable because they remove friction you don’t want to deal with again. If an app only adds information, it’s optional. If it removes pain, it sticks. Retention isn’t about engagement tricks. It’s about whether the problem is real enough to care. Forgettable apps aren’t bad products. They’re just not essential.

Honestly, my first impression of the Billion Followers Summit came from the app, not the event itself. It looked good, no issue there. But it kept resetting. Every update meant opening it again, watching the intro again, searching again, booking again. Each time it was just a few seconds, but when you’re moving around, trying to get into sessions, and a lot of people are doing the same thing, it gets frustrating quickly. It’s one of those things that feels small until you’re actually in the moment. Then you notice it. Once I got inside, things improved a lot. The scale was impressive. The energy was real. Some of the AI and tech sessions were genuinely interesting. What stood out most was seeing how creators monetize topics you’d never expect. That part really expanded how I think about content and business. Not a complaint. Just an observation. Big events are made of small experiences, and digital ones matter more than we think. That’s it.

During this very difficult emotional week, people across Qatar and the wider Middle East have experienced the full spectrum of emotions. Swinging them from fear and uncertainty to relief and back again. And again. And here in Qatar, there is one thing everyone now recognizes instantly. The national safety alert. If you live here, you know exactly the sound I’m talking about. The moment it goes off, your body reacts before your mind even has time to read the message. Your attention locks onto your phone immediately, eyes wide open, heart pumping out of your chest. First, I want to say how grateful many of us are for this system. These alerts have been incredibly important. They warn people when to shelter and stay safe, and they update us when threats have been eliminated. That kind of communication during tense moments matters a lot. But the interesting thing I noticed was, there are actually two different sounds used in these alerts. One is the terrifying alarm that instantly sends your body into fight or flight mode. Everyone in Qatar now knows exactly which one I mean. And then there is the small, cute, little “ding”. A softer sound. Sometimes for the same type of warning message. But the emotional reaction is completely different. Same message. Same screen. Completely different biological response, from sound alone. A simple sound associated with a message can shift the emotional state of an entire nation. Moments like these prove to us how powerful design signals really are. Sounds, alerts, colors, and micro-interactions may look like tiny details on a screen, but they shape how the human brain reacts in seconds. Technology does not just deliver information. It shapes emotion, behavior and attention. And during this difficult week, we have all experienced this, a few times.. to the extent that when we hear this sound in some reels while scrolling social media, we recoil.. Reminds me never to underestimate how powerful the details of a user experience can be. But beyond the design lesson, this week also reminded me of something much more important. How proud I am to have been raised in Qatar, the country I call home. I’m deeply grateful to the government for prioritizing the safety of its people, and also grateful to the community here for the compassion, unity, and care people have shown one another during these tough days. In challenging moments, you see the true strength of a society. And this week, Qatar showed exactly that. 🇶🇦 🙏🏻اللهم اجعل هذه البلد امنه مطمئنه

You know that moment when a “simple review” turns into 47 comments, 12 screenshots, and one paragraph that starts with “small tweak”. That is where good work goes to die. I have watched teams build a beautiful prototype, share the link, then slowly turn the whole thing into a comment thread. People stop thinking in the product. They start thinking in text. A PM writes a mini essay. A dev interprets it like a requirements doc. A client circles something in a screenshot like it’s a crime scene. Now you are not designing together. You are playing telephone with pixels. The hidden problem is not feedback volume. It is feedback format. When the space only lets people react, they will react. When the space lets people move things, sketch over them, and try an alternative in 10 seconds, they will think. It is the difference between touring a house and leaving notes on a brochure. Tools like Figma got sticky for a reason. Not because the UI is pretty. Because the fastest way to express an opinion is to show it, not explain it. Founders feel this too, even outside design. Every time your product forces users to translate what they mean into words, you create friction. Every time you let them act directly, you create momentum. Momentum is a retention feature. Not a roadmap item. Clarity is what happens when people can do the thing, not describe the thing.

A 4.2 rating from 12,000 users is better than a 4.9 rating from 52. That 4.2 was earned under pressure. The 4.9 isn’t wrong, it just means your app hasn't been tested enough. When few people rate an app, the score reflects a narrow slice of experience. Early users. Limited usage patterns. Minimal exposure to edge cases. As usage grows, friction shows up. More devices. More workflows. More reasons to complain. That naturally pulls ratings down. So when a product maintains a solid rating at scale, it’s not perfect. It’s resilient. The metric itself doesn’t change. What changes is how much reality it has survived. Height of a number is easy. Holding it at scale is not.

The fastest way to lose retention is not a bad feature. It’s a surprise bill. Founders sometimes treat pricing like a reveal. Base price up front. The real cost later. A fee at checkout. A “platform charge.” A required add-on that only appears when the user is already committed. That moment doesn’t feel like pricing. It feels like a trap. And once someone feels trapped, they stop reading your copy. They start looking for exits. You can see it in behavior. More drop-offs right before payment. More refunds. More support tickets that sound emotional, not logical. Because the user isn’t reacting to the amount. They’re reacting to the shift in trust. It’s like ordering a simple meal, then being told the cutlery is extra. You don’t just feel annoyed. You feel played. PwC found that 67% of customers avoid a brand after just one negative experience. Hidden costs create that kind of memory.

More and more content feels like a hallway of locked doors. You click with genuine interest. You get two paragraphs. Then a wall. “Subscribe to continue.” Gating content is not the problem. The problem is what it does to trust when the value hasn’t shown up yet. Because in the user’s mind, that moment is not “monetization.” It is “you’re asking me to commit before I feel safe.” Founders often assume the decision is rational. Price vs benefit. But most of the time it’s emotional. Effort vs reward. Hope vs disappointment. If the first experience feels like a trap, people don’t think, “Maybe later.” They think, “I’m being managed.” This is why the best paid products don’t feel gated. They feel earned. Like walking into a bookstore, picking up a book, reading a few pages, and knowing you want the rest. Not because someone blocked the door. Because the words did their job. People pay when the value creates relief. They bounce when the experience creates suspicion. Trust is the real paywall.

I keep seeing teams hire for “product design” and then only reward pretty screens. Not because they are shallow. Because pretty is easy to score in 30 seconds. A founder opens a portfolio. They see clean UI, shiny components, perfect states. Instant relief. “This person will make us look legit.” But the work that actually moves retention rarely looks like that. It looks like noticing where people hesitate on step 2. It looks like a messy flow finally becoming calm. It looks like fewer support tickets, fewer rage clicks, fewer silent drop offs. It looks like users coming back because the product feels safe and obvious. That work is harder to screenshot. So hiring drifts toward what is legible, not what is valuable. It’s like judging a hotel only by the lobby. The lobby matters, yes. But you return because the check-in was painless, the room made sense, and nothing felt like a trap. UI is not the problem. Trust is. When the portfolio conversation becomes “show me more images,” what they are really saying is: “I need proof fast.” “I am scared of ambiguity.” “I do not have a good way to evaluate judgment.” The irony is that stickiness is mostly judgment. The best product designer I know could show you one unglamorous before and after and still explain exactly why DAU stopped bleeding. Flash is optional. Clarity is the feature.

Last night, at 1 a.m., my phone rang. I was in very very deep sleep. It was the night of Web Summit. I genuinely thought something terrible had happened. I answered the phone scared. It was… a guy I do not know. Asking if I had a Web Summit ticket. I still don’t know where in the grapevine he heard that I was a Web Summit CEO, or how any of this translated in his mind to “this is urgent enough to call someone repeatedly at 1 a.m.” Apparently, for him, it was an emergency. Because he didn’t have a ticket. And honestly As inappropriate and frustrating as that moment was It made me realize something very real. Web Summit is that big of a deal. It’s so big that people lose all sense of time. Calling someone you don’t know at 1 a.m. because you’re desperate for a ticket is wild. But it also speaks volumes! This is next-level event impact. When an event stops being seen as an event And starts being seen as life changing. That level of urgency doesn’t come from hype alone. It comes from belief. So yes I’m channeling my frustration into this post. And also taking a moment to acknowledge just how massive Web Summit actually is. When people are willing to break social rules in their sleep deprived panic You know you’re no longer dealing with “just a conference.” You’re dealing with something people believe can change their trajectory. And that Whether we like the 1 a.m. phone calls or not Is worth acknowledging. See you there!

Founders are constantly asking me this, and I think they are asking the wrong question… They keep looking for a “UX audit tool” like it’s a car inspection sticker. Because a sticker feels clean. Pass or fail. Fix a few things and you’re good for another year. But products are not cars. They’re more like hotels. A hotel can look perfect in photos. Lobby smells nice. Rooms are polished. Then you check in at 11pm after a long flight. The key card fails twice. The elevator button is confusing. Wi‑Fi needs three logins. Now the guest is not judging your design. They’re judging your care. That’s what most teams actually need when they ask for an “audit.” Not a checklist. A moment that shows where trust gets tired. And trust gets tired fast. 67% of people avoid a brand after just one negative experience. What I want founders to know is.. Users don’t leave because your product is missing a tool. They leave when the experience starts to drain their energy.

This is exactly the kind of initiative that can change a student’s trajectory. Bringing mentorship into classrooms. Connecting students to real professionals. Exposing them early to what industry actually looks like. I’m a huge advocate for bringing more hands on practice and real industry knowledge into classrooms at a young age. Not at university. Not when decisions are already made. Early. Because when students understand how the real world works, they start thinking differently. They start asking better questions. They start imagining their role in that ecosystem. And that role is not something you suddenly discover at 18. It’s something that needs to be shaped and crafted over time. Programs like Murshidi Schools Edition help close the gap between theory and reality. Between classroom learning and lived industry experience. Looking forward to seeing how this shapes our next generation.

Most “big ideas” don’t show up when you schedule them. They show up when pressure drops. I’ve watched founders do the same thing with product. They book a workshop.  Fill a board with sticky notes.  Leave with 40 features and a temporary high. Then two weeks later, the product is still not stickier. Retention is still flat. Because the session created output, not clarity. The uncomfortable truth is that behavior rarely changes from a single grand moment. It changes from small, repeatable rituals. The best teams don’t “brainstorm” their way into stickiness. They collect fragments. A screenshot of a confusing moment. A one-line complaint from a user call. A weird workaround someone invented. A sentence a user says twice without realizing it. Tiny things. Unimpressive on their own. But when you keep them, patterns start to assemble themselves. And when you’re truly stuck, the fix is often not another hour at the desk. It’s a circuit breaker. Distance. Silence. A walk. Anything that pulls you out of the same mental room your product decisions were made in. Because the loudest environments produce the safest ideas. The kind that don’t offend anyone. And don’t move any metric either. Stickiness is not usually hiding inside a workshop. It’s hiding inside the rituals you repeat when no one is watching.

Do you remember the movie “In Time” with Justin Timberlake? I remember watching it back in 2011 and it made me look at the whole human experience differently.. The idea was simple but powerful. What if the currency we lived by was time itself? We already follow numbers all day long. Our bank balance. Our gas tank. Subscription renewals. These numbers go up and down all day.. But we never really think about tracking how many minutes we have left to live. That movie didn’t just tell a story. It changed the measurement. And suddenly, the entire human experience felt different. I remembered it and thought, what about user experience design? What if we thought less about features and more about feelings? Some apps make us feel calm. Some make us anxious. Some make us feel productive. Others overwhelmed. Some feel addictive. Some feel safe. So let me ask you… When you think about the apps you use every day What emotion does each one leave you with? Curious to see what you say…

Some apps do not break. They just exhaust you, mentally.. maybe even emotionally! Not with bugs. With navigation. You open the app knowing exactly what you want to do. And somehow you end up in a maze of tabs, side menus, and tiny labels that all sound the same  (reminds me of the Ikea maze I walk into every time) The frustrating part is never the extra two taps. It is the extra two decisions. “Where would they hide this?” “Did I miss it?” “Am I doing it wrong?” It really can get on your nerves, because it’s as if the app is trying to teach them a quiet lesson. Founders often look at retention and assume leaving means the value was not there. Sometimes the value is there. The path just feels like a small daily tax. It is like walking into a grocery store where the aisles keep changing. Nothing is technically wrong. You just stop wanting to go. Stickiness is not created by new features. It is protected by clarity. People are busy enough, trying to figure out a complicated route to the destination they already know they want will just push them farther away..

Paid ads have officially passed away.. and I think OpenAI was the cause of death… Traditional advertising followed shortly after. You simply can’t compete with the way OpenAI is doing go-to-market. User experience design is now doing the heavy lifting that advertising used to do. The first interaction matters more than the explanation. Instead of pushing ads or paying influencers, they turned the prompt itself into the product. We saw it with The action figure box trend The anime cartoon versions of yourself And now this. A simple prompt that quietly says Try this. Post it. Share your version too. Just like Instagram trends. You don’t just watch. You participate. That’s the genius part. People aren’t being sold to. They’re playing. Creating. Showing off their version. The prompt becomes the invitation. The output becomes personal. And sharing becomes instinctive. This is UX design and marketing at their best. Low friction. High delight. Built-in virality. If you want people to adopt a product, stop explaining it. Let them try it. Let them share their version. Much more powerful than ads. (To make your version of this.. check the comments for the prompt👇🏻)

That moment when a membership page says “$100 a year” and your brain immediately starts negotiating. You scan the perks like you’re doing tax audits on your future self. Ebooks. Some look dated. Community. Maybe active, maybe a ghost town. Course discounts. Nice, but you already bought what you needed. So you don’t feel excited. You feel… cautious. This isn’t a pricing problem. It’s an uncertainty problem. Founders underestimate how often people are not buying “access.” They’re buying a prediction about next month. Will this still matter when I log in again? Will I actually use it, or will it become another forgotten tab? Will I feel smart for joining, or slightly annoyed at myself? Bundling more stuff rarely fixes that feeling. It can make it worse. Because now the user has to do extra work to justify the purchase. A membership is like paying for a gym that shows you a beautiful lobby, but you can’t tell if anyone is actually working out inside. The strongest memberships win on one of these signals: Freshness. It keeps earning attention after the first week. Belonging. You can feel the room is alive. Relevance. The perks match what you are doing right now, not someday. Trust. You know exactly what you are paying for without doing math. Retention does not come from “more value.” It comes from less doubt.

Most products treat onboarding like an airport. Security. Check in. More security. Then the gate. By the time users reach value, they are already tired. That is a problem. Too many steps before momentum begins. The counterintuitive fix? Shorten the user workflow to increase stickiness. 1. Energy matters more than explanation Every extra step feels responsible. Until it slows movement. People do not abandon products. They abandon effort. 2. Speed creates trust Fast progress feels smooth. Smooth feels intentional. Intentional experiences feel reliable. 3. Simple paths invite return People come back to what feels easy to re enter. Not what required effort to learn. The lesson is quiet. Less process. More progress. If the journey feels long before value appears, no amount of polish will save it.

I’ve watched more than one team celebrate a shiny new design system. Six months later, people are quietly working around it. Not because they hate consistency. Because the system starts asking for more effort than it gives back. A component update breaks three screens. So teams freeze upgrades. A new pattern takes weeks to “get approved.” So teams ship a slightly worse version now, and promise they’ll “clean it up later.” They never do. A few years pass. The system looks dated. Nobody wants to pay the emotional and financial cost of reinventing it. So the product slowly becomes a museum of old decisions. The hidden problem is not visual. It’s behavioral. If a system creates waiting, fear, or negotiation, teams will choose speed and certainty. Every time. And users will feel that drift as tiny inconsistencies that add up to something bigger. Doubt. A design system that works long term feels more like airport security than a brand book. Predictable. Fast. Boring in a good way. You always know what tray to use. You do not need a meeting to take your laptop out. When your internal experience is smooth, your external experience stays coherent. And coherent products earn trust, which quietly feeds retention. Consistency is not a style choice. It’s a promise you either keep daily, or you stop making at all.

Most travel apps help you plan the trip. Very few help you feel the trip again. A “recap reel” sounds like a nice extra. In practice, it is one of the cleanest stickiness levers you can add to a product that already has moments worth saving. Because the trip is emotional, but the app experience is often logistical. Bookings. Maps. Lists. Confirmations. Then you get home and the app goes quiet. That quiet is where retention dies. A recap changes the contract. It tells the user, “We were here with you.” Not in a creepy way. In a comforting way. Like a hotel that remembers your room preference without making a speech about it. The real value is not the video. It is the feeling of closure and reward with almost zero effort. People do not come back to apps because they love interfaces. They come back because the app helps them finish a story. If you are building anything tied to real life moments, travel, fitness, events, learning, even dating, ask yourself: Are you only helping users do the thing. Or are you helping them relive the win. Replays create a second peak after the peak. They turn “I used this” into “this is mine.” Retention is not always a feature problem. Sometimes it is a memory problem.

Grateful to Dania Khaled Khaled for the clarity, depth, and trust-centered insights shared on designing digital experiences. Big thank you to Michael Ifeanyi for being an exceptional host and guiding the conversation seamlessly. This is a wrap. 12 months. 12 TechForward Talks. Which one stayed with you?

I tried to cancel a subscription last week. I just didn’t need the app anymore. Which, apparently, is an outrageous request. Because what should’ve been one click turned into a guided tour of the app. Buttons that moved. Options that vanished. Gentle reminders asking if I was “really sure.” Very gentle. Very persistent. By screen three, I stopped feeling annoyed. I started feeling… studied. Like the design team said, “Let’s see how long they’ll last.” That’s the Roach Motel subscription. Easy check-in. Mysteriously locked exits. And sure, it might boost retention numbers for a quarter or two. But it also sends a very clear message. “We trust you to enter. We don’t trust you to leave.” If it takes five seconds to subscribe, it should take five seconds to unsubscribe. Great companies don’t rely on friction. They rely on value. And people remember who respected their time. The funny things is, when you make it easy for people to leave, they often end up staying longer.

Does working across disciplines make you look scattered… or does it actually make you stand out? This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while and this conversation finally helped me put it into words. Steve Mackie and I unpack what it really means to work across strategy, UX, storytelling, and startups and why that might be the edge more people are missing. Full I wanna GROW podcast episode drops tomorrow.

Most New Year’s resolutions are not just ineffective. They are psychologically harmful. Studies consistently show that 80 to 90 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail, most of them before February. That is not a discipline problem. That is a design problem. Psychologically, resolutions work like a spotlight. They do not change behavior. They highlight absence. What you did not do last year. Who you were not consistent enough to become. Where you fell short. That gap activates guilt and self criticism, not learning. Neuroscience explains why. Willpower lives in the conscious brain. Habits live in the automatic brain. Yet resolutions rely almost entirely on motivation and self control. Two systems that fatigue quickly. So every year the same loop repeats. Motivation spikes in January. Reality kicks in. The behavior fades. And the brain stores a dangerous belief. “I am bad at sticking to things.” That belief does more damage than the failed resolution itself. If you did not make New Year’s resolutions, you are not behind. You may actually be safer psychologically. Real change does not happen on a date. It happens when habits are redesigned. When effort is reduced. When repetition replaces motivation. Before we try to change behavior, we need to understand the system running it. That is true for products. And it is true for the brain.

If you use apps, you’re paying. Just not always with money. Here’s how most apps actually make their revenue. A simple breakdown: 1. Data (Most people do not even realize this is a form of payment.) Maps apps turn movement into traffic insights, local ads, and enterprise APIs. Fitness apps turn activity into trend data for partners. Weather apps turn location behavior into forecasting products. Users get utility. Businesses get insight. 2. Attention (This model quietly rewards addiction, not value.) Social apps monetize time spent. Content creates engagement. Engagement creates ad inventory. Ads fund the platform. The product feels free because attention is the currency. 3. Freemium (This only works if the free version is actually useful, not frustrating.) The core stays free. Advanced features cost money. More storage. More customization. More control. Free builds habit. Paid removes limits. 4. Subscriptions (People subscribe to reduce decision fatigue, not because they love paying.) Users pay for consistency. Music, video, learning, meditation. Not for one feature. For ongoing access. 5. Transactions (Margins look small until volume turns them into a machine.) Marketplaces take a small cut. Rides. Food. Tickets. Payments. Scale makes the model work. 6. Enterprise and APIs (The user experience is optimized for users. The revenue is optimized for businesses.) Many consumer apps make real money from businesses. Location data. Payments. Messaging. Analytics. Users power it. Companies pay for it. Most apps don’t pick one. They start with one. Then stack the rest. Next time you come across a new platform and the revenue model is obvious on day one, just remember, it’s usually not the final one.

Remember how we used to go on LinkedIn after a bad day at work, when we just wanted to quit and find a new job? That was the platform’s core use case in 2011. LinkedIn back then was not designed to keep you around. You didn’t scroll it. You didn’t exist on it daily. You logged in with intent, updated your CV, searched for roles, maybe checked a company page, then left. The UX supported short, purposeful visits. Get in, get out. And staying relevant was not really part of the equation. Your relevance lived inside the workplace. Your job title, your employer, and your years of experience carried most of the weight. If you were competent and consistent, that was enough. Visibility was local. Careers moved slowly. The system rewarded stability. Today, LinkedIn feels like it is in a race with every other social platform. That race includes people, companies, initiatives, and content creators all competing for attention. For many, this feels overwhelming. Some are still operating with the old UX mindset of “I’ll use LinkedIn when I need to escape to a new job.” Those are often the same people who find the platform exhausting or label it as cringe. For others, LinkedIn did something powerful. It gave them a voice before they had the title that traditionally grants one. It allowed ideas to travel further than organizational hierarchies ever allowed. And for many, it created tension. Should I create content or just apply for jobs? How will my application even be seen when 2,000 people apply within hours? Am I supposed to build visibility or quietly wait? That confusion can easily turn into anxiety. From a UX perspective, what LinkedIn did was a full culture and behavior shift. The platform redesigned what participation looks like. Those who were left behind often feel frustrated. Those who learned how to evolve with the system understood how the game is now played. This shift did not happen accidentally. LinkedIn didn’t just add features. It redesigned behavior. And LinkedIn is not the only platform doing this. Every major tech product today is shaping how we think, act, and relate to work, identity, and visibility, whether we like it or not. The real question is not whether platforms are changing us. The question is whether we stay stuck in old platform mindsets, or learn how powerful the art and psychology of user experience design can be when building our next product, platform, or career move. I joined Linkedin in 2011, do you remember what year you joined it? What problem were you trying to solve using it back then? 👇

Most forgettable apps have one thing in common. You don’t miss them when they’re gone. Take apps that: Remind you to drink water, Show inspirational quotes, Or track habits without changing outcomes. Nice ideas. Clean design. But nothing actually breaks when you stop using them. Compare that to apps that: Replace spreadsheets you hate, Save you hours of manual work, Or prevent expensive mistakes. You feel their absence immediately. That’s the difference. Apps don’t become memorable because they’re clever. They become memorable because they remove friction you don’t want to deal with again. If an app only adds information, it’s optional. If it removes pain, it sticks. Retention isn’t about engagement tricks. It’s about whether the problem is real enough to care. Forgettable apps aren’t bad products. They’re just not essential.

The fastest way to lose a good designer is not low pay. It is the dangling carrot. I have watched people stay loyal for years, hit the “next level” wall, then slowly go quiet. They keep shipping. They keep smiling in meetings. But the inside is gone. Not because they got lazy. Because the system stopped feeling honest. “Doing great, we just need a business case” is a product experience. It is a retention experience. It tells someone, your effort and your reward are no longer connected. And when that link breaks, motivation turns into suspicion. What’s interesting is how quickly that flips in a small startup. Suddenly the feedback loop is clean. You do work, you see the impact. You say no to something, it stays no. The founders mean what they say. The work has edges and consequences. It is not always healthier, startups can be chaos. But the chaos is usually legible. Big companies often fail in a quieter way. They add layers between action and outcome until everything feels like waiting. Like airport security where the rules keep changing. You will still take your shoes off. You just stop believing it matters. For founders, this is the part worth stealing. Retention, in teams and in users, is rarely about features or perks. It is about whether people can predict the rules and trust the payoff. Friction is not the problem. Unreliable cause and effect is.

Some moments are not meant for screens. Especially the moment right before sleep, or the moment you wake up half-aware, reaching for something familiar. A lot of products assume “more UI” means more control. But at the bedside, control looks different. You do not want brightness. You do not want menus. You do not want options that require a fully awake brain. You want one thing. Certainty. A physical button works because it meets you where you are. Tired. Quiet. Slightly impatient. Your hand finds it without thinking, and your body trusts it. This is why screenless interactions can be more sticky than polished interfaces. They lower the effort at the exact moment users have the least energy to give. It’s the same reason a light switch is still faster than opening an app when you’re in the dark. Founders sometimes chase engagement by adding more layers. But the products people keep are often the ones that disappear into habit. The best interface is the one your user barely has to enter.

I judge a product in the first 2 seconds the same way I judge a watch face. Can I get what I came for, with one glance, half awake, while walking. On a 3.7 inch screen, every pixel has a job. Especially when the resolution is something like 416x240 and you do not get free smoothness. The trap is thinking “clean” automatically means “intuitive”. Intuitive is a feeling. It is the tiny relief of not having to interpret. A clock face is basically a micro home screen. Time is the promise. Everything else is a negotiation. World time, icons, little cards, extra numbers. They might all be useful. But usefulness still has to earn its place on that first glance. Because the moment you make people decode the layout, you turned “check the time” into “solve the interface”. It starts to feel like airport security. Even when you are not carrying anything, you still have to empty your pockets. I see this pattern all the time in founder products too: The primary job is obvious, but not dominant. Secondary info is valuable, but visually louder than it deserves to be. The user is forced to choose what to look at, before they even get the reward. A sticky experience is often just repeated relief. The best design is the one that makes the user feel quietly capable.

I keep seeing the same quiet fear in product teams lately. “If AI can draw the screens, what’s left for me to think about.” It shows up as hesitation. Or overuse. Both look the same in the product. Using AI for interviews, tagging, and summaries feels safe. It saves time without touching your taste. Wireframes feel different because wireframes are where your judgment lives. What to show first. What to hide. What you are asking a human to decide, and when. When you let a machine produce the first draft, you risk inheriting its defaults. And defaults are sticky. They sneak into onboarding, pricing pages, settings, all the places where retention is quietly decided. Founders tell me, “But our competitors will move faster.” They will. Some will ship a lot of screens that look finished and feel strangely empty. Like a hotel lobby that was decorated by someone who never had to sleep there. The teams that win will use AI like a speedboat, not like a captain. You can outsource the pixels. You cannot outsource the tradeoffs. The real advantage is not who generates more wireframes. It is who keeps the clearest point of view about effort vs reward, and protects it in the first 10 seconds. Speed is everywhere now. Taste and restraint are about to become the rare part.

A weird kind of product problem is when everything works. Just not for one country. I’ve seen apps with solid onboarding globally, then a single market drops off a cliff. Same screens. Same flow. Totally different reaction. Most founders assume it’s design taste. Colors, layout, wording. But when the gap is that extreme, it’s usually not taste. It’s trust. In the US, anything that smells like “health” plus “camera” plus “account” can trigger a very specific feeling in the first 10 seconds. What is this doing with my data. Why do I need to sign up. What are you storing. Who sees this. Even if you are doing everything right. The user is not auditing your architecture. They are scanning for risk. And onboarding is where risk has the loudest voice, because the reward is still hypothetical. A free app that helps people understand prescriptions is obviously useful. But usefulness does not beat uncertainty. Not in that moment. When one market drops off and the rest behave normally, it’s often not a UI issue. It’s a comfort issue. The real conversion lever is not clarity. It’s safety.

Web Summit knocked me into a daze that lasted a little over three days… Everything was on 2X speed. People rushing. Talking. Pitching. Building... and then there was me, trying to take it all in (in between many side chats) It also felt like everyone was experiencing the same space very very differently. People around me were both energized and overwhelmed (those who went know what I mean). But this time, something else stood out. This time, people were openly talking about what’s not working. Not avoiding it. Not sugarcoating it. Brutally honest conversations about gaps in the ecosystem. Why things stall. Why research doesn’t always translate into industry. Why startups struggle to scale. Why talent gets boxed into narrow lanes. More importantly, people were talking about how to fix it. By working across disciplines (something that I practice and preach… a lot about). By connecting ideas instead of protecting silos. By building stronger bridges between industry, research, startups, and policy. That’s when something really clicked for me while listening to Steven Bartlett (AKA: Diary of a CEO). He said it simply and honestly. The best way to truly stand out in your industry is by having complementary multi skills. Skills that strengthen each other. Not just depth in one lane, but range that creates perspective (he used Ronaldo as an example, which soccer fans appreciated) And that’s when I realized something bigger. It’s not just industries that are siloed. Our own skills are siloed too. We’ve trained people to specialize deeply. Tech stays tech. Media stays media. Research stays research. But why can’t one person hold multiple complementary skills If not to take on multiple roles, then at least to bring richer perspectives into the same role That shift was everywhere this year. This Web Summit felt more honest. More self aware. More mature. Not just about connecting industries. But about reconnecting the parts within ourselves too. Did you notice anything different this year?

I got an ad for a random app while scrolling on Instagram. I thought, sure, why not. I’ll download it. Honestly, around 50% of the apps I download get abandoned almost immediately. The ad promises one thing. The app delivers something else. Or the onboarding is boring. Or I don’t feel value fast enough. No stickiness. This one was felt different. Not because I instantly got what I wanted. I hadn’t even explored the content yet. What caught me was the onboarding. It was smooth. Fun. And every single step explained why I was doing it. Every question made me feel seen (actually seen, like the app was taking notes on me). Each one explained why it was being asked and how answering it would benefit me. At one point, it asked me about my life goals. And I stopped (wait, why would a micro-learning audiobook app care about my life goals? I even questioned if I was on the right app) Then it explained. If I know your goals, I can recommend better books for you. Fair. Then it started recommending books and simply asked Am I on the right track? Yes or no. Every answer trained the system (and nothing felt repetitive, which I appreciated A LOT) What really stood out was how information was shown. Not just told. Stats were visual. Clear. Designed to be understood in one or two seconds. The onboarding wasn’t just smooth. It was enjoyable. I actually learned something about myself while going through it. All of this happened before I even looked at a single book. And that’s when it hit me. This founder really understands how to introduce a solution to the world. I ended up looking up who built Deepstash, and found the founder, Vladimir O.. This is one of the smartest onboarding experiences I’ve seen in a long time. Clear thinking. Strong prioritization. And real respect for the user. Shout out to him for leading such a well thought out experience.

Login is not a feature. It is a trust moment. And it is one of the easiest places to make a user feel stupid on day one. A lot of apps try to be “smart” with a unified flow. One email field. One password. The system decides if you are logging in or creating an account. On paper, it is clean. In real life, it often creates a tiny panic. Did I already sign up? Which password did I use? Am I about to create a duplicate account? Did the app just reject me, or did I reject it? That mental load is expensive. Not because people cannot figure it out. Because people do not want to negotiate with your product before they even enter. Login is supposed to feel like walking into a familiar place. Not like being stopped at the door because the host cannot tell if you have been there before. Founders usually think this is a copy problem. It is not. It is a certainty problem. When the user is unsure what is happening, they do the safest thing. They leave. Or they reset their password. Or they abandon onboarding and tell themselves they will come back later. Your retention does not drop because the flow is one screen longer. It drops because the first interaction asked for confidence the user did not have yet. The best login experiences feel invisible because they remove doubt, not steps.

Most travel apps help you plan the trip. Very few help you feel the trip again. A “recap reel” sounds like a nice extra. In practice, it is one of the cleanest stickiness levers you can add to a product that already has moments worth saving. Because the trip is emotional, but the app experience is often logistical. Bookings. Maps. Lists. Confirmations. Then you get home and the app goes quiet. That quiet is where retention dies. A recap changes the contract. It tells the user, “We were here with you.” Not in a creepy way. In a comforting way. Like a hotel that remembers your room preference without making a speech about it. The real value is not the video. It is the feeling of closure and reward with almost zero effort. People do not come back to apps because they love interfaces. They come back because the app helps them finish a story. If you are building anything tied to real life moments, travel, fitness, events, learning, even dating, ask yourself: Are you only helping users do the thing. Or are you helping them relive the win. Replays create a second peak after the peak. They turn “I used this” into “this is mine.” Retention is not always a feature problem. Sometimes it is a memory problem.

One of my absolute favorite interviews so far. I usually go off on tangents when I speak, but this one felt beautifully cohesive. It came full circle and really captured how everything we learn and experience becomes a layer in our journey, personally and professionally. I can’t wait to share this podcast with you all. Thank you so much to Steve Mackie you led the discussion with such a wonderful energy and curiosity.

The fastest way to annoy a user is to ask them for a review while they’re busy. Mid-task. Mid-focus. Mid-thought. Remember every time you're in a restaurant mid way through your conversations and your food and the waiter interrupts to ask you how is the food? That interruption doesn’t feel helpful. It feels selfish because the platform suddenly shifts focus from the user benefit to their own benefit. When someone is in flow, their brain is fully engaged. Breaking that moment pulls them out of momentum, and it can take 20 minutes or more to recover. That’s why great apps wait. They ask after a win. Order completed. Level cleared. Goal achieved. That’s a happy moment. That’s when feedback feels natural, not forced. Then there’s the second problem. The review prompt that pretends to be a question. “Are you enjoying the app?” Say yes, and you’re sent straight to the App Store. Say no, and you’re quietly redirected elsewhere. That’s rate steering. It filters frustration out of public view to keep ratings clean. Technically discouraged. Widely practiced. Strong products don’t interrupt flow or manage honesty. They respect timing. They accept feedback as it comes. Am I the only who who gets annoyed by these in-app notifications?