Ghaith Akkad — Product Design Lead & AI Product Owner

About Me

Product Design & AI Leadership

I've spent 20+ years designing consumer products people actually use, and for the past 5 years I've also been owning AI products at enterprise scale — chatbots, GenAI assistants, and biometric authentication systems serving millions. My CS engineering background is what made that transition natural.

I still open Figma every day, but I also define AI roadmaps, present to shareholders, and own backlogs end-to-end. I'm drawn to product environments where shipping fast and learning from real behavior matters more than polished decks.

View Portfolio → ↓ Download CV

Product Strategy & Discovery

Cross-functional Leadership

End-to-End Product Design

Design Systems at Scale

User Research & Usability Testing

Prototyping & Interaction Design

Research Triangulation

Experimentation & A/B Testing

Stakeholder Influence

Business Metrics & ROI

Accessibility & Inclusive Design

Design Ops & Team Rituals

Mentorship & Career Development

Agile/Scrum & Iterative Delivery

AI Product Ownership

Conversational AI & GenAI

Ethical AI (ISO 42001)

Career

Professional Experience

Product Design Lead & AI Product Owner e& UAE (Etisalat) 2017 – Present

Design Leadership

Led product design across 15+ consumer-facing platforms used by millions, working closely with Product and Engineering to continuously ship and improve features across web and mobile.
Still actively designing key flows and prototypes in Figma, from early discovery sketches through high-fidelity screens and developer handoff via Zeplin.
Owned the UX direction for high-traffic B2C products where users browse, compare, and transact. Every design decision was tied to customer behavior and business outcomes.
Dug into research across the board: market and user, qualitative and quantitative, behavioral and attitudinal. Focused on root causes, not just symptoms, and used those insights to shape features that actually moved product metrics.
Built and maintained a unified design system and component library in Figma. Improved handoff speed by ~40% while keeping brand consistency, scalability, and WCAG compliance in check.
Worked inside cross-functional product squads with PMs and engineers, co-owning discovery, prioritization, and delivery through dual-track Agile.
Set up and ran experimentation programs (A/B testing via Adobe Target and Google Optimize, behavioral analytics through GA and Hotjar) to iteratively improve conversion across the product.
Ran continuous discovery workshops to validate ideas before engineering committed. Cut development rework by about 30%.
Put design quality gates in place: structured reviews, critiques, and validation checkpoints. Nothing ships without meeting accessibility and brand standards.

AI Product Ownership (5 years)

Served as AI Product Owner for customer care, conversational AI, and biometric authentication — defining the product roadmap, presenting to shareholders, owning the backlog, and driving delivery through sprint cycles.
e& AI Chatbots: Built and scaled AI chatbots across multiple platforms (e& UAE, Smiles, e& Money) to 500K+ monthly interactions across web, mobile, WhatsApp, and IVR with 90%+ resolution accuracy. Reduced ticket volume by 40%, cut AHT by 65%.
e& GenAI Assistant: Generative AI assistant automating HR, IT, and operations requests — 90% reduction in HR support load and thousands of employee hours freed monthly.
Help Me Find: AI-driven conversational product discovery generating real-time personalized offers — 35% increase in upsell engagement.
Biometric Authentication: Owned three biometric products — Face Recognition (40 stores, mobile app, SAS machines, and 2 fully autonomous agent-less stores), Voice Biometric ("My Voice Is My Password"), and fingerprint. 3M+ users served via face recognition; 20% reduction in ICA validation costs.
Implemented ISO/IEC 42001-aligned AI governance: ethical AI practices, fairness, transparency, and data privacy across all deployments.
Keynote presenter at GITEX — represented e& AI product innovation to executives, investors, and industry leaders.

Team Leadership & Visibility

Mentored designers from junior through senior and into lead roles. Built career frameworks, ran regular 1:1s, gave honest feedback. Supported people in becoming autonomous product partners, not just executors.
Ran design rituals (reviews, critiques, workshops) and kept delivery visible and on track through Jira.
Aligned OKRs for design with Product, Engineering, and Leadership.
Guided stakeholders toward user-centered decisions by showing research and test results, not just presenting opinions.
Owned the team's internal communication to the wider company: wrote update emails, produced video demos of design work, and ran our booth at company events. Made sure design had a voice beyond the product org.
Contributed to hiring and onboarding. Helped shape how the design org grew and matured over time.

Lead Product Designer & UX Manager Advance Digital Media 2015 – 2017

Ran a large-scale product consolidation, merging 7 separate media platforms (TV, radio, news, magazines) into one unified consumer product. Shipped in 2 months.
Worked with PMs and executives in product squads, co-owning the roadmap and connecting UX decisions to revenue.
Built modular component libraries and adaptive design systems that could handle very different content types — essentially a design system for a multi-brand, content-heavy product.
Led user research and usability testing. Result: 50% improvement in user satisfaction, 20% faster page loads.

UI/UX Design Lead Picasso Interactive 2011 – 2015

Designed the Showtimes.ae app, which won 'Best UX Design in Dubai 2016' (Shortlist Middle East). 500K+ users in 6 months, 35% better retention than competitors.
Set up UX governance, design standards, and review processes. Mentored designers on growth and delivery quality.
Ran research, built personas, validated features. Prototyped early AR experiences that lifted retention 30% and session length 25%.