Ethos
Keep it simple—focused on the core of user needs, there’s beauty in finding the simplest form to serve function.
Profile
About Karim Naguib
Design executive leading products, multidisciplinary teams, and design research from zero to one to global scale.
What I do
I build products, multidisciplinary teams, and the design research, design-engineering, and decision practices that help them learn. Over 15+ years, I have worked across consumer, B2B, enterprise, SaaS, marketplace, and AI-powered experiences—from early product formation to products serving people around the world.
I currently lead Product Design and Research at A Place for Mom. Before that, I led design organizations and product areas at Indeed, worked across traveler and partner experiences at Booking.com, and co-founded an education platform.
My leadership philosophy is collaborative and practical. I partner with product, engineering, data, and business leaders to clarify the problem, connect customer evidence to strategy, and give teams enough context and trust to do strong work.
How I lead
I care about four connected outcomes: healthy teams, a clear product direction, reliable execution, and products that genuinely help the customer. If one is missing, the others eventually feel it.
My teams have spanned product design, design research, content design, design engineering, and historical design technology, with design systems and shared quality practices connecting the work at scale. I am comfortable inside ambiguity, but I do not think ambiguity should become a permanent operating condition. The work is to make the important decisions, measures, and tradeoffs visible.
Toolbox
Process
I believe in an adaptive mindset. I spend time understanding an organization’s capabilities and appetite, then adapt to it. My process is rooted in research, continuous iteration, collaboration, data, and delivery.
Focus
I find core user needs in the midst of ambiguity, align teams and stakeholders, and create simple solutions for complex problems. I partner with leaders to turn business needs into product strategy, design vision, and executable roadmaps.
Design engineering
I use code and AI-assisted prototyping to make ideas testable earlier, connect design intent to production constraints, and improve the systems teams use to evaluate and ship.
Experience
Leadership & organizations
Building multidisciplinary design and research organizations, developing managers, creating operating clarity, and partnering with product, engineering, and data leaders.
Experience
Design research & experimentation
Building research cadences that connect qualitative evidence, behavioral data, experimentation, and launch decisions—not treating research as validation at the end.
Experience
Design engineering & technical prototyping
Using coded prototypes, contribution workflows, design foundations, and close engineering partnership to move from concept to reliable product.
Experience
Platforms, ecosystems & design systems
Building reusable foundations, developer tooling, contribution models, and quality practices that help teams and partners move consistently without losing context.
Experience
Consumer, B2B & enterprise
Designing for people making everyday decisions and for businesses navigating complex workflows across travel, hiring, education, marketplaces, and family care.
Experience
Global and cross-cultural products
Bringing a native Arabic perspective to localization, international design research, personalization, and left-to-right and right-to-left product experiences.
Global perspective
I am a native Arabic speaker who has designed and researched products across languages, markets, and cultural contexts. That includes left-to-right and right-to-left interfaces, MENA product strategy, localization, and international experimentation.
It has made me skeptical of universal defaults. A product can be translated without being understood. Strong global work begins when local context can influence the proposition and the product system—not just the final words on the screen.
Advisory lens
I bring this operator’s perspective to selected consulting, speaking, advisory, and board conversations grounded in a real decision and a clear moment of change—not generic advice at a distance.