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8+ years across Fintech, Travel & Platform Products

Senior Product Designer 

Maryam Richards

I help turn product problems into clear, prioritised design solutions  that drive trust and adoption.

City of Cape Town
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Grove IT group
Old Mutual
Almosafer

My Product Design Hat

What I focus on

I help teams by getting clarity on the problem, align on what matters most, and design solutions teams can confidently move forward with to experiment and test. 

The work naturally includes conversations, pushback, and alignment — and I see that as a core part of building trust and shipping better outcomes.

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Frame the core problem

I start by framing the real problem using user behaviour and high-level data to understand where people hesitate or drop off.

Identify high Impact Opportunities.

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Prioritization 

Prioritising design fixes or opprotunities based on Impact vs Effort.

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Design & Experiment

Design solutions that can be tested and iterated. This keeps teams focused and avoids unnecessary complexity.

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Impact & Learning

Setup metrics and measure and decide what to iterate next based on outcomes. Key Takeaways - next ...

Product Design in Action

Selected Work

Each case study focuses on problem framing, product & decision-making, trade-offs, and outcomes.

Reframing fare choice to drive value, flexibility, and attachment

As Almosafer expanded fare options, users struggled to compare and choose fares with confidence.

The real problem

The challenge wasn’t adding more fares — it was helping users understand value and flexibility at the moment of decision.

Product decision

We prioritised value framing and choice hierarchy over feature depth.

Design response

This informed how fare options were structured, explained, and optimised across the booking journey.

Outcome

Improved add-on attachment and closed the experience gap between the platform and airline bookings.

Almosafer

Travel & Booking platform

Upselling Fare Families UX

+36.6%

Overall Conversion Rate

+17%

Attachment Rates

"This project taught me the value of pacing design, validating often, and scaling smart."

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Financial Services Platform

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Reframing risk and friction to improve conversion and onboarding

Problem

The majority of users accessed the savings investment journey on mobile, where content-heavy legal and risk information created high cognitive load. Users spent up to 20 minutes in the application and frequently dropped off at the risk appetite step.

Product & design decision

We prioritised the mobile experience, reframing how risk and legal information was presented using progressive disclosure and behavioural principles. By reducing cognitive load and surfacing only what was essential at each step — while keeping deeper detail accessible — we enabled users to move forward without feeling overwhelmed.

Outcome

The simplified mobile flow reduced time spent in the application, significantly decreased drop-off at the risk appetite step, and led to a 22% increase in completed investment applications, improving overall conversion and onboarding outcomes

Before

55.1%

Form Completion Rate

After

64.6%

Form Completion Rate

From rejection to clarity, AI-Powered Portfolio Analysis 

Problem

Designers often face repeated failed portfolio reviews without clear, actionable feedback & interview rejections with vague responses and subjective opinions make it difficult to understand what to improve or how to progress.

Product & design 
ProDesignFit was designed as an AI-Human assisted audit tool that translates ambiguous feedback into structured, prioritised insights.

 

 — Helping designers understand why their work isn’t landing and what to fix first.

From MVP to North Star
The MVP validates whether clear, prioritised feedback drives action.
The north star is a scalable platform that helps designers turn rejection into progress and hiring teams evaluate work more consistently.

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Designers
Get Instant Portfolio

Feedback

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Handshake During Interview

1:1 Mentors:
Get Guidance and Interview Ready

Directional Directional impact (MVP) metrics

%

Portfolio
Submissions

%

Mentor
Requests

%

Portfolio
Rebuild Requests

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Additional Organisational Contributions while at Almosafer

Funnel Audits, Upselling & Experimentation

Design Community Contributions

Building a Space for Product Designers to exercise the product mind muscles

Product Design Gym was born from real self reflection — years of working and realizing that designers often get stuck between craft and strategy. I was one of them too

 

A learning platform and resource library for designers to build product sense through real-world examples.

Think of it as a gym for design thinking — where you don’t just learn design, you train your brain to think like a product designer through repetition, reflection, and real case studies from top tech companies.

Learnings & Insights

Design is as much about reflection as creation.

I document lessons from real projects — what worked, what didn't, and what I'd do differently next time to avoid making the same mistakes and so it can help and benefit others. In addition, each project, comes new acquired knowledge that I believe will help someone in the same or similar situation. 

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Maryam Richards

Let's Create Something Impactful Together

I work best in defined scopes, with clear goals and mutual respect for focus and boundaries.

Based in Cape Town · SAST time zone ·  Working globally (remote)

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