Oussama Belabed

I have always been fascinated by objects, buildings, mechanisms, anything with an intention behind its shape. Nothing is magic, everything has a logic, and understanding that logic is the first step before acting on it.

Then the internet arrived, with enthusiasts filming their repairs and their tinkering, purely for the pleasure of doing things well. I followed all of it for years without imagining it would become my job.

During my economics degree, I spent my evenings reworking websites and mockups without quite knowing why. I eventually noticed it was the only part of my week where I never checked the clock. I decided to leave and study design in Paris. Economics had taught me to read a system; design taught me to build one.

I'm a Product Designer with a strong product and strategy bent.

I have designed a care-coordination platform in a regulated sector, tools used daily by thousands of restaurant operators, the first app built for a trade that had never had one, and a support automation system for online merchants. These are very different contexts, but I approach each one the same way, by understanding the problem before touching the interface.

I work just as easily with a PM, a developer, a founder alone on their product, or directly with the end user. One thing never changes. I defend my decisions with arguments rather than preferences, and I learn from whatever doesn't hold up against reality.

What draws me in is never the finished object, it's the moment someone uses it, and it either works or it doesn't. A building, a tool, an application, I always look at the same thing, the gap between what was intended and what the person actually feels while using it.

I admire people who know how to remove rather than add. Taking away often demands more rigour than piling on. It's a standard I hold as much in my work as in my life, looking for simplicity without ever sliding into thinness.

Designing a product is, to me, the most concrete way to turn an intention into something that genuinely works, and that respects the person using it.