About

Akber Ahmed, Senior Product Designer in Berlin

I've spent eight years designing products across AI, fashion, mobility and EdTech, most of it at Snap, shipping end-to-end experiences for major retail clients from early research through to production.

I love the point where design systems meet real user behaviour, and I do my best work in the room from day one, not handed a brief after the decisions are made.

Two questions kept following me: how do you make a model's output feel trustworthy rather than arbitrary, and how do you design for latency, uncertainty and the first session before personalisation kicks in? In my last year at Snap they became the brief for Muse, an AI stylist I designed from 0 to 1.

Then I set that brief for myself and shipped Roam, an AI trip planner, solo, from first research note to a live app tested by real users. Both taught me the same thing: good AI design isn't the interface layer, it's closing the gap between what the model knows and what the user expects. With today's tooling one designer can carry that whole problem, research to deployed code, and bring it to a team already tested. That's the design engineer side of my work, and it's how I'm building Doch right now.

Off the clock I'm usually trying a new recipe, keeping my plants alive, exploring a new corner of Berlin, or watching something obscure nobody I know has heard of.

Work Experience

think-cell

Senior designer

Berlin, Germany

2025 - 2026

Designing a complex enterprise product used by millions of professionals globally. Expert users with high expectations and zero patience for friction, which makes precision and consistency the only options.

think-cell

Senior designer

Berlin, Germany

2025 - 2026

Designing a complex enterprise product used by millions of professionals globally. Expert users with high expectations and zero patience for friction, which makes precision and consistency the only options.

Freelance

Product designer

Berlin, Germany

2024

End-to-end design work for early-stage clients. Most significant project was SmartSubs, a subscription management iOS app, taken from initial research and personas through to design system, high-fidelity UI, and developer handoff.

Freelance

Product designer

Berlin, Germany

2024

End-to-end design work for early-stage clients. Most significant project was SmartSubs, a subscription management iOS app, taken from initial research and personas through to design system, high-fidelity UI, and developer handoff.

Fit Analytics โ†’ Snap Inc.

Senior product designer โ†’ Interface designer (IC4)

Berlin, Germany

2019 - 2023

Snap acquired Fit Analytics in 2021. Led the Fit Finder redesign, driving a 14% conversion uplift and 12% reduction in returns. Co-created the ARES design system and mentored junior designers through regular critiques.

Fit Analytics โ†’ Snap Inc.

Senior product designer โ†’ Interface designer (IC4)

Berlin, Germany

2019 - 2023

Snap acquired Fit Analytics in 2021. Led the Fit Finder redesign, driving a 14% conversion uplift and 12% reduction in returns. Co-created the ARES design system and mentored junior designers through regular critiques.

Lingoda

Product designer

Berlin, Germany

2018

Designed B2C interfaces for student and teacher portals on a global EdTech platform, built the initial style guide, and ran usability tests to refine the experience.

Lingoda

Product designer

Berlin, Germany

2018

Designed B2C interfaces for student and teacher portals on a global EdTech platform, built the initial style guide, and ran usability tests to refine the experience.

Sixt my Driver

Product designer

Berlin, Germany

2017

Oversaw end-to-end design across web, mobile, and marketing for a global mobility platform, conducting user research and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to hit high-impact KPIs.

Sixt my Driver

Product designer

Berlin, Germany

2017

Oversaw end-to-end design across web, mobile, and marketing for a global mobility platform, conducting user research and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to hit high-impact KPIs.

Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, MullenLowe Group

Junior to senior art director

Karachi, Pakistan

2012 - 2016

Before moving into product design, I spent four years in advertising, leading visual concepts, pitching campaigns to executive stakeholders, and learning how to make things land with an audience.

Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, MullenLowe Group

Junior to senior art director

Karachi, Pakistan

2012 - 2016

Before moving into product design, I spent four years in advertising, leading visual concepts, pitching campaigns to executive stakeholders, and learning how to make things land with an audience.

Technical Stack

Figma

Design systems, tokens

Figma

Design systems, tokens

Claude

Ideation, prompts, code

Claude

Ideation, prompts, code

Cursor

Design to code

Cursor

Design to code

Vercel

Deployment

Vercel

Deployment

UXtweak

Usability testing

UXtweak

Usability testing

Framer

Web design

Framer

Web design

Vercel

Deployment

Vercel

Deployment

Framer

Web design

Framer

Web design

UXtweak

Usability testing

UXtweak

Usability testing

Say Hello

Always looking to connect and build impactful products.

Say Hello

Always looking to connect and build impactful products.

Say Hello

Always looking to connect and build impactful products.