United Arab Emirates

UX Design

UI/ Visual Design

Design Operations

Service Design

Product Design

Customer Experience (CX)

UX Research

Farzan Balkani

Co-Founder

Usability Testing

Typography

Quantitative research

Public Speaking

Product analytics

Product strategy

Qualitative research

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Time management

Critical-thinking

Empathy

Team player

Organisation skills

Presentation skills

Conflict resolution

Stakeholder management

Leadership

Project management

Analytical skills

2D Animation

Accessibility

Advanced data analytics

Conversion optimisation

Data visualisation

Design systems

Illustration

Information architecture

User research

Figma

Adobe Creative Suite

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

Understanding factors that lead to a motivated team - recognition, communication and more.

Keeping team members motivated

Understand the process of training, motivating and directing your team members.

Managing people

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

Steps to building and maintaining a strong, cohesive and effective team.

Building an effective team

Learn the tips to successfully manage a team in a remote environment.

Managing a remote team

How to maintain trust, commitment, accountability deliver results while handling conflict

Avoiding common dysfunctions

Tips for transitioning into a new role or company.

Changing roles

How to successfully prepare and position yourself for a job promotion?

How to get promoted

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

How to set up the team for success by defining and measuring team's performance.

Choosing metrics and team goals

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

How to define and execute a successful launch and managing stakeholders expectations. (eg. MVP)

Launching new products or features

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

Managing being the only designer at your company and working with non-designers.

Being the only designer

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

How to set up product analytics and metrics to track success?

Leveraging Product Analytics

At Fractured Light Studios, we specialize in transforming concepts into highly successful hypercasual games for mobile platforms. Despite the volatile nature of the mobile market, we have meticulously devised a robust business strategy to navigate its challenges effectively. At our core, Fractured Light Studios represents more than merely achieving success in the hypercasual genre; it serves as a foundation for our overarching aspiration of venturing into console game development.

Digikala stands as the largest online retailer in Iran, offering an extensive array of products spanning from electronics and appliances to fashion and groceries. Renowned for its intuitive website, dependable delivery services, and diverse payment options, Digikala has played a pivotal role in transforming the e-commerce landscape in Iran, granting consumers convenient access to a wide spectrum of products and brands.

My role involves providing strategic counsel and insights to design and product teams, aimed at refining customer experience and steering product triumph.

As a CXO, I had to guard the end-to-end customer experiences, advocating for customer needs to stakeholders and leveraging customer insights and data to drive proactive feature development and innovation. Since you need to be a customer representative, I spent daily infusing customer-centric thinking into board members and influencing company-wide strategies.

We needed insights in our teams for decision-making from the product and business standpoint. So, to expose the customer/user insights into the verticals and to the stakeholders, I reimagined the role of UX Research to act as a CX Evangelist inside the teams.

I was directly involved in numerous research projects that either changed the business mindset or helped the product get on track to deliver superior customer satisfaction and a frictionless experience.

I have led the design team to establish a customized design system and crafted a scalable and mobile-first design approach, ensuring consistent user experiences. We integrated company DNA and user needs into the design system, aligning with business goals.
I’ve changed the resource allocation structure in product design and UX research to optimize the performance.

Since we lacked the mobile-first mindset and customer-centric mindset, I’ve helped the team elevate design and tech standards, fostering innovation and user satisfaction by allowing the team to shift from UI design to Product design.

We aimed to build a startup studio full of new products with rapid development.

Our primary product was “Paymishe,” a C2C e-commerce platform that helped small businesses convert their traditional Instagram page stores into fully functional online shops with just one click! 
We wanted to create a safe medium for people without trust in social transactions while offering analytics and new ways of working for these small shops.

Another product was a simple (now a production-heavy) Instagram page for teaching English practically to GenZs called Zabanyad. After a year, we gained 100K followers and started developing our mobile app.

We had multiple customers with various projects, from dating apps based on memes to a project price calculator. I was designing and leading some of the projects.

Hamechio was an online marketplace to sell goods from all over the country.

Sariina was a startup that provided e-commerce solutions. We have created new ideas and products, from an email-to-task-management app to an artist’s marketplace.

Me and the team designed, developed, and maintained over 40 medium to large-sized online shops in various sectors (from Toys to FMCG). All these projects needed hours of meetings with the client to clarify the needs and features they may want based on the specifics of their industry and customers. These features ranged from simple daily deals to massive dropship software that we needed to integrate with the software.

I started with ADP as a UI designer (while doing a bit of front-end), and after a few months, we created a new company with the same team called Sariina.

Dealing with a traditional business, I had to improve the visibility of this business by improving its social presence and making it more web-friendly.

Piconel was born to provide exceptional retail services while focusing on gaining the customer's trust by providing complete transparency in a market in which ambiguity is a plus.

Over the years, I have provided extensive consultancy services to businesses of various scales, aiding them in creating numerous new brands or companies. With a profound comprehension of the design process, I possess the expertise to develop visually appealing and functional experiences. Artlesshand represents the culmination of my extensive experience in the design and experience industry.

Since I was getting good at web development, I joined this team to create multiple high-profile websites, shops, and corporate multimedia directories.

We were an agile and small group of people. During this time, we had a couple of high-profile (primarily industrial) customers and provided them with web services (designing websites with maintenance).

In Jabeabzar, my idea was to create a helpful set of web-based tools for mobile devices and desktops that don’t need any installation or extra effort. Since it was the early days of large-screen phones, I saw a possibility to gain a position there.

I was a double hat employee here; while designing for web and digital mediums, I managed multiple projects and did my best to ensure the idea to the delivery phase.

Hyperbrush was my first attempt at creating a design agency. I’ve created a team of 5 to design websites and multimedia projects, which were trendy back then.

Farzan Balkani🇦🇪

About Farzan Balkani

Expertise

What mentees say