# Mahdi Farra

> Design leader with 17 years scaling teams, building systems, and shipping products.

I've grown design teams from 1→6, led cross-functional orgs of 25+, and I code. My teams ship faster. Currently designing monetization at Meta (Facebook Plus & Meta AI subscriptions). Previously founded DesignQA, an AI tool that turns UI bugs into code fixes.

This portfolio (mahdif.com) belongs to Mahdi Farra, a design leader who codes. The links below point to clean Markdown versions of each public page (any page is also reachable by adding .md to its URL). The entire site concatenated into one document is at /llms-full.txt. This file follows the llms.txt convention (https://llmstxt.org).

## Start here
- [Home](https://mahdif.com/index.md): Design leader with 17 years scaling teams, building systems, and shipping products.

## Case studies
- [DesignQA](https://mahdif.com/case-studies/designqa.md): Built AI devtool from 0→1 through rigorous user research (50+ interviews). Secured paying customers pre-launch.
- [Ronday](https://mahdif.com/case-studies/ronday.md): Scaled design team 1→6 while growing 25-person cross-functional org. Achieved 4x engagement increase and 83% performance improvement. Helped secure $7M seed funding.
- [Ava](https://mahdif.com/case-studies/ava.md): Led cross-platform design (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows) for AI-powered accessibility platform serving the deaf and hard of hearing community. Increased session duration 3x.
- [Airtime](https://mahdif.com/case-studies/airtime.md): Designed and prototyped a social video calling app that brings people together through shared experiences. Led interaction design for reactions, chat, and real-time video features.
- [Rakuten Restaurants](https://mahdif.com/case-studies/rakuten-restaurants.md): Designed B2B tools serving 100M+ users globally. Built design system for 5 designers and 15 engineers. 50% staff efficiency improvement, 40% sales increase per location.

## Writing
- [My actual Claude Code workflow as a designer](https://mahdif.com/blog/my-actual-claude-code-workflow-as-a-designer.md): The real daily loop I use to design and ship products with Claude Code. Not a tool list. Four steps, one taste file, and where the human still stays in the work.
- [Design Philosophy](https://mahdif.com/blog/design-philosophy.md): My journey in product design has been shaped by a set of guiding principles that have helped me navigate the dynamic landscape of UX. In this post, I'll share my philosophy on product design-anchored
- [How I Changed my Company's Culture with Food!](https://mahdif.com/blog/changing-company-culture-with-food.md): Food is not just fuel - This is the story of how I changed my company's culture with food!
- [Why Your New Product Feature Failed](https://mahdif.com/blog/why-your-product-feature-failed.md): I know exactly what it feels like to launch a product feature and then see it fail. I've been there, and have done that 😅
- [Tips for Promoting a Healthy Company Culture](https://mahdif.com/blog/tips-for-promoting-a-healthy-company-culture.md): Leading teams and cultivating the right company culture can be challenging and is an art in itself. Here are 6 quick tips for promoting a healthy culture in which every team member thrives
- [3 Tips for Building Strong Design Teams](https://mahdif.com/blog/three-tip-for-building-strong-design-teams.md): Building a strong product design team isn't a walk in the park, and over the years, I've found it quite challenging to find the right people 😶 That said, here are 3 tips for finding great candidates
- [5 Common Product Mistakes to Avoid](https://mahdif.com/blog/five-common-product-mistakes-to-avoid.md): I've spent 15+ years building products, and guess what? The learning never stops 🙃 - and I love it! Here are 5 common product mistakes to avoid, ones I wish I had known about earlier in my career
- [Running ChatGPT alternative locally and offline](https://mahdif.com/blog/running-chatgpt-alternative-locally-and-offline.md): Concerned about data privacy with ChatGPT? Introducing Ollama, a secure, efficient solution for local language model deployment.
- [Reinventing The Clap Reaction](https://mahdif.com/blog/reinventing-the-clap-reaction.md): Using technology to express human emotions.
- [Building an App to Generate Gif Quizzes](https://mahdif.com/blog/designing-and-launching-an-app-to-generate-gif-quizzes.md): A walk through my design and development process for building gifbanana.com, why I built it, and how much it cost me.
- [The Art of Design Spec'ing](https://mahdif.com/blog/the-art-of-design-specing.md): Let's learn more about design specs, how to create them, and how they smooth out the hand-off process between design and engineering.
- [Blogging here I come!](https://mahdif.com/blog/first-official-blog-post.md): It's been a while since I've published an article. It's time to get back to it.

## Pages
- [Work](https://mahdif.com/work.md): Selected case studies and portfolio projects
- [About](https://mahdif.com/about.md): Background, the places I have lived, skills, and photography
- [Résumé](https://mahdif.com/resume.md): Career history and roles
- [Side Projects](https://mahdif.com/side-projects.md): Things I have built on the side
- [Contact](https://mahdif.com/contact.md): How to get in touch
- [Résumé PDF](https://mahdif.com/resume/Mahdi-Farra-Resume.pdf): downloadable resume

## Reading and listening
- [Books](https://mahdif.com/books.md): Books I recommend, with ratings
- [Podcasts](https://mahdif.com/podcasts.md): Podcasts I listen to

## Optional
- [Lab](https://mahdif.com/lab.md): Experiments and small explorations