Bilal Karim
✌️

Bilal Karim

Toronto, Canada

Hey! I’m Bilal, an experienced product designer driven by deep curiosity and passion for solving complex problems.

5 months ago

At my core, I am a designer, coder, and maker. Throughout my career of 10 years, I’ve had the pleasure of crafting innovative products that have earned recognition from esteemed institutions like MIT and garnered attention from renowned organizations such as Google, TechCrunch, Techvibes, Metro News, and CBC.

I excel in fast-paced and collaborative build, ship and learn environments, and take full ownership to consistently deliver remarkable results. What sets me apart is my unique ability to oversee the entire product design lifecycle—from conception to design to implementation, and beyond. I am highly skilled in both designing intuitive and visually appealing user interfaces as well as bringing them to life through proficient coding and development. This combination allows me to ensure a seamless integration of design and development, resulting in exceptional user experiences for consumer applications and enterprise products.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, GitHub, and Unsplash.

Work Experience

2024 — Now
2021 — 2024
Toronto, Canada

Currently at Shopify, I have successfully led the design of several ecommerce features that resolved high merchant frustrations such as merging customers and adding recipients to gift cards, resulting in overall decreased frustrations and increased adoption by large merchants.

Taking full ownership of the design, coding, and shipping process, I implemented various UX improvements that significantly enhanced the quality and usability of Shopify’s Admin. This experience allowed me to develop a comprehensive guide that empowered other designers to confidently ship PRs, establishing me as the go-to person for designers seeking guidance in code implementation.

Additionally, I proactively shared learnings with cross-discipline colleagues, fostering a culture of continuous learning. To further demonstrate my commitment to growth, I expanded my proficiency in React, ensuring my work met Shopify’s engineering standards and showcased my problem-solving skills through intersection of design and code.

2019 — 2021
Toronto, Canada

I shipped omni-channel product experiences for incident response teams using PagerDuty Analytics, ranging from web to Slack. As a result, the Analytics feature saw increased growth with mid-market and enterprise customers.

In my role as player-coach, I efficiently oversaw a team of 2 junior product designers, guiding their growth and ensuring project success. I also took the initiative to champion design advocacy efforts, initiating projects to improve product development processes and highlighting the importance of UX metrics for alignment across teams.

Moreover, I played a crucial part in establishing design systems, working closely with both UX and Engineering teams to define processes and requirements for publishing UI components. Finally, I contributed to enhancing the efficiency of our UX team by streamlining design tooling, thereby facilitating improved design and collaboration throughout the organization.

2018 — 2019
Toronto, Canada

I was responsible for designing and developing product demos using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. These demos played a pivotal role in demonstrating AI and machine-learning capabilities to optimize forecast accuracy, inventory availability, and promotion plans for category managers. As a result, we successfully acquired a prominent North American enterprise retailer as a client.

Furthermore, I crafted high-fidelity code prototypes to support our Engineering teams, facilitating continuous UI enhancements. I also played a key role in expanding design system by collaborating closely with Product and Engineering teams, resulting in a comprehensive library of shared UI components for more efficient product development. Lastly, I advocated for the importance of design across various teams through engaging lunch & learn sessions and contributing to the company culture.

2014 — 2018
Calgary, Canada

As MyHEAT’s first hire, I single-handedly led the entire end-to-end product design and development. This included efforts for 3 key product offerings: a web app for homeowners to visualize home heat loss, API-enabled widgets for utilities to enhance customer engagement, and web-based QA tools for internal teams to improve data quality.

By overseeing the entire product design and development lifecycle, I scaled the web app from 10k homes in 1 Canadian city to more than 1.2 million homes across 15 Canadian cities. To ensure efficient project management, I employed agile methodologies, maintaining clear roadmaps through prioritized backlogs and executing weekly sprints. Additionally, I conducted thorough idea validation by creating wireframes and prototypes for testing new features and concepts with both internal and external users.

Finally, I played a pivotal role in crafting the branding and identity of MyHEAT while developing impactful marketing collateral to elevate and reinforce the company’s brand presence.

Side Projects

2021
Process

See the progression of your entire design process within a Figma file or specific layers through a custom-built solution leveraging the Figma API.

2018

Visualize a year-long journey using Google Maps, with data from Moves & Instagram.

2017

Instantly view and share pictures from event photo booths with a simple, responsive, and fast web application.

2015

Discover, share, and rank nearby courts for your favourite outdoor sports using a UI powered by Google Maps.

Writing

2023
Personal blueprint

Consider this as a dynamic blueprint, which will constantly evolve and expand alongside my personal and professional development.

Education

2011 — 2014
Master of Science (MSc), GIS at University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada
2007 — 2011
Bachelor of Science (BSc), GIS at University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada