Ali Murtaza Email & Phone Number

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Ideate Innovation is a human-centered design firm that builds products, experiences and services guided by the belief that great design is built on great research; and a thoughtful balance between user needs, business goals and technological capabilities. Since our founding in 2016, we have brought together researchers and designers from diverse backgrounds to solve complex problems for tech startups, multilateral organisations, multinational corporations, public sector entities, tech services companies and more.These organisations include the World Bank, IDEO, International Rescue Committee (IRC), Mastercard, Unilever, GSMA, BOPinc and the State Bank of Pakistan.

I'm one of three coaches/facilitators for WDO’s Young Designers Circle cohort for 2023-25. The cohort includes 35 researchers and designers from 21 countries. You can learn more about them here:https://wdo.org/programmes/young-designers-circle/young-designers-circle-2023-2025/

I worked as a research and design consultant on a project that aims to understand the demand of education for girls in Pakistan. The research team is studying this by exploring how low-income parents in Pakistan perceive their daughters' marital outcomes to be related to their educational attainment. The core project team was made up of Rice University and World Bank researchers, while my role included:1. Helping the core team test and finalise the content of the survey.2. Creating contextual visuaizations to help low-literate users understand the survey.3. Designing the digital interface for remote dissemination of the survey.

I led the MobileLive service design team in researching and redesigning the investor experience for the town of Innisfil (Ontario, Canada). The project was made up of the following major phases:1. Scoping and research on the current state of the town’s investor experience2. User journey mapping and service redesign of the entire experience3. Strategic recommendations for long-term process redesign and implementation4. Change management assistance

Karāchi, Sindh, Pakistan

Taught a course titled Philosophy of Interaction.About the Course:This course explores the field of interaction design by looking at its philosophical and academic origins; its place in our world today; and how it may change as the arc of technological progress continues to move at exponential rates. The course starts by connecting interaction design to earlier discussions about our place in the world in fields like philosophy, psychology and sociology.We then explore how those discussions developed through the industrial revolution, and into the digital age – focusing especially on the journey from the first machines we could call computers, to their current place in our lives. We also look at the role of the designer in today’s world: the what, why and how of interaction design today.Towards the end of the course, we delve into the fields of futurology and design fiction; asking where we might be headed, where we want to go, and how we might align those possible futures.

1. Led weekly skills-building workshops with the design team.2. Managed the industrial and UX design teams working on a robotics product in the healthcare space.

After 20+ years of developing software solutions for some of the world's largest businesses, Xavor has now added significantly to its already extensive technological and logistic capabilities, with the aim of designing and developing physical products that solve real-world problems in new and delightful ways.As the Head of Design at Xavor, I am responsible for helping move the company towards becoming more product-focused, by implementing a human-centred, exploratory approach to identifying, understanding and solving problems. Our current design team is made up of industrial and interaction designers from across Pakistan and China. Apart from working closely with the embedded systems, artificial intelligence, mobility and cloud teams within Xavor, we also collaborate with partners and subject matter experts around the globe, from the inception of each idea, to its commercialisation, and beyond.

Lahore, Pakistan

I led the UX research and design of Ricult's digital products, including a smartphone application for smallholder farmers in Pakistan and Thailand. We took a human-centred design approach to learning about our users, identifying their needs, before co-designing, and iterating on solutions with them.

Lahore, Pakistan

I taught DLab; a course that helps engineers learn human-centred design techniques in order to develop and deploy practical interventions to solve global poverty challenges.

Lahore, Pakistan

I managed Makeistan, Pakistan's first academic makerspace; alongside teaching the following courses in the university's Electrical Engineering department:Lab (Design & Development Lab)Computer-Aided Engineering DesignElectronics Workbench

Greater Denver Area

Lahore

Courses taught:Interaction DesignDesign PortfolioBrandingContemporary Design SeminarIntroduction to Computer Graphics

Working as Design Consultant to GRID Impact on a project for Karandaaz. The project aims to utilize mobile technology to promote financial inclusion in Pakistan. My role requires involvement across four stages of the project: field research, concept development, prototyping and user testing.

Savannah, Georgia Area

San Francisco Bay Area

Industrial design conceptualization, 3D mockups, consumer journey research, user interface design and branding.

Savannah, Georgia

Savannah, Georgia, United States

Lahore

Lahore, Pakistan

Master Of Fine Arts (Mfa), Industrial And Product Design, Summa Cum Laude (3.95)

Was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award for my thesis, titled "Perceptive Objects: Technology that Understands Us".

Bfa Visual Communication Design, Illustration, Magna Cum Laude (3.73)

Was awarded an Academic Distinction for my final year project, titled "The Story of Intelligent Evolution".

A Level