I started with pixels.
In 2017, design meant learning how to make an interface feel right. I cared about spacing, colour and every visible detail. I still do. Craft was the door that let me in.
This is the longer version
This is not a story about finding my passion.
It is about refusing to stay in one box.
Ishtiaq, somewhere between the next idea and the next risk.Designer was the first title. It was never the final box.
I call myself a designpreneur because designer alone stopped explaining the work. I design products. I build companies. I teach. I write. None of those is a side project pretending to be serious.
They are different expressions of the same instinct: understand what is holding someone back, then build something that helps them move.
Six chapters so far
The title changed.
The curiosity didn’t.
Then the questions got bigger.
Why were users getting lost? Why did a good-looking product still need so much explaining? Why were teams adding more when the real problem was still unclear? UI became UX. UX became product thinking.
A job taught me craft. Ownership taught me consequence.
Working across NTT DATA, Kognoz, Motad and product teams showed me many kinds of complexity. Founding a company taught me what every design decision costs after the Figma file closes.
So I built Desisle.
I wanted founders to have a design partner who understood the business question, not just the screen request. Desisle became the place where strategy, design and delivery could sit in the same conversation.
Then I built the room I wish I had learned in.
ProdxVerse came from meeting talented designers who knew the tools but had never been shown how real product decisions happen. I wanted to teach the thinking behind the work.
And I wrote the book I once needed.
Don’t Quit Yet is the most personal thing I have built. Twenty-two short, real chapters for people carrying a fight nobody can see. Not a lecture. A reason to choose one more day.
Away from the title
“I am an introvert who keeps choosing very public problems.”
I recharge quietly. I watch anime. I question obvious answers. I take risks, complain about the uncertainty, and usually take the next one anyway.
The older I get, the less interested I am in looking certain. I would rather stay curious, build honestly and leave behind work that feels useful after the attention moves on.
What stays constant
Clarity before colour.
If the user, action and value are unclear, polish only makes the confusion more expensive.
Business is part of design.
A beautiful idea still has to survive the team, the market and the day after launch.
Simple is earned.
Making complexity feel obvious takes research, restraint and the confidence to remove.
Challenge with care.
Honest collaboration questions the weak path and stays long enough to build a better one.
The work shows what I make.
See how I think ↗