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HomeAbout · Aida Hasrati
10 years · Toronto, Canada

Hire taste, not bullets.

I build tools that disappear into the work.

I'm a product designer working in B2B SaaS — Shopify ecosystems, AI marketplaces, enterprise hosting workflows. Each of the five products on the right was built around the same belief — that good tools give the user back to their work.

  • 0k+merchants impacted
  • 0%best time-to-publish
  • +0%best conversion lift
Takes · positions held

I have opinions. Here are eight.

Most senior designers claim “balanced” on every dimension. That's marketing. The truth is messier — and more useful. Each take has a strength I lean on, and a shadow I name out loud. Click any take's ✦ shadow to see the limitation that comes with it.

0170% Systems

Systems first, screens second.

Visual
Systems
the strength

When I joined ReelPlus, the first thing I shipped wasn't a screen — it was a config file. The system has to scale before the screen can. 24 elements declared in TypeScript outlives 24 Figma frames.

0255% Strategy

Strategy beats detail. Usually.

Detail
Strategy
the strength

Most decisions in my work are about what NOT to build. The −41% tagging-error lift wasn't a feature; it was a constraint I argued for. Half the senior moves are subtractive.

Upload · guided tagging
0360% Team

I work best with engineers I can argue with.

Solo
Team
the strength

My best decisions came from whiteboard arguments, not handoffs. Type-safe drag zones came from a 2-hour debate with the eng lead — not a Figma annotation. The argument is the design.

0450% Speed

Ship to learn. Polish what survives.

Speed
Polish
the strength

Pricing shipped lo-fi for an A/B test before it shipped polished. The lo-fi won. The polished version inherited the win. The fastest way to validate a design is to put it in front of users — even if it's ugly.

Pricing · A/B test
0550% Designer

I speak engineering.

Designer
Engineer
the strength

I read TypeScript, write Tailwind, review PRs. The wall between design and engineering isn't built by engineers — it's built by designers who refuse to learn the language. Learn it; the wall comes down.

0665% Reviewer

Lean maker.

Maker
Reviewer
the strength

I'd rather prototype than critique. The fastest way to find out if a design works is to build it. Most of my best feedback to other designers comes after I've tried their idea myself.

0780% Product

Product over brand.

Product
Brand
the strength

I design tools, not impressions. Every screen I ship answers: does the user get the work done? Brand is a downstream output of taste at the product level — not the other way round.

Pricing · hero treatment
0875% B2B

B2B SaaS specialist.

B2C
B2B
the strength

Merchants are my primary user. I know how to design for the moment a stakeholder is making a real decision under time pressure — not for impulse-buy moments. The five products on the right are all B2B.

All five case studies
A senior designer who can name where they sit AND where they fall short is more trustable than one who can't.
In my head this week

What I'm thinking about, right now.

A snapshot, not a manifesto. Updated weekly. The same designer who shipped the work above is, this morning, also sketching, reading, and arguing about an open question.

Currently · what's in my head this weekupdated weekly

Designing

Element-catalog audit

ReelPlus · Q1 2026

Pruning the catalog from 24 elements to 18 without breaking surface compatibility.

Reading

  • The Design of Everyday ThingsDonald Norman · re-read
  • Working in PublicNadia Eghbal · 1st pass

Tools open today

  • Figma
  • Cursor
  • Linear
  • Notion
  • GitHub
  • Tailwind

Listening

On the obsession of small details

Tobias van Schneider · Conversation · 47m

Question

When does a builder stop being a tool and start being a programming language?

Last design call I shipped

Deprecated the override toggle on type-safe drag zones.

shipped 2 weeks ago

WhyUsed <3% of the time. Removing it simplified the drop-zone validation by 40 lines.

Honest questions · gold beat

Six questions I ask myself.

A senior designer who can name where they struggle is more trustable than one who can't. Click any question to read the answer.

Honest questions · self-askedClick to read
  1. I'm impatient with discovery. Given a real product problem, my instinct is to prototype before I've validated. I've learned to write a one-page brief before opening Figma — but I have to make myself.

Most about pages perform confidence. This one performs honesty.
The work

Five products. Five interactive case studies.

Each case study includes a working signature interaction — the playground, the simulator, the gate runner — designed to feel like the product it documents.

See all work

The work explains the rest.