A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MEتعارف
I am a participatory designer. But also…
A researcher, storyteller, and collaborator.
Also a cat mom, a typography nerd, a systems thinker, and someone who still reads the footnotes.
Born and raised in Islamabad, I grew up on books, family stories, and curiosity. These days, home is spread across a few cities, but I still find joy in long conversations, good food, old books, and the people around me.
I am currently completing the Erasmus Mundus MFA in Design & Healthcare, and will begin the next semester at Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University, in September 2026.
My practice combines participatory design, design research, and storytelling to explore how people experience and navigate systems of care. Much of my work focuses on women and children, working alongside communities to understand everyday experiences and create more inclusive futures.
I am interested in participation as a meaningful design process, in questioning dominant narratives, and in using design as a way to generate insight, dialogue, and new possibilities.
My work spans research, facilitation, speculative design, and collaborative making, often bringing together lived experience, community knowledge, and design practice.
What I do
Three things, mostly.
01
Participatory design with children and women
Workshops, tools and methods that treat children and women as co-designers, not subjects of research. Especially in education and healthcare settings.
02
Strategic communication for movements
Narrative campaigns, identity systems and event design for organisations working on women's leadership, education equity and care.
03
Research at the edge of care
Slow, situated research on what care looks like for women and children inside health and education systems, especially where resources are limited.
Questions I keep returning to
What I keep asking.
- 01
Where is the power imbalance between designer and participant, and how do we shrink it?
If the designer always frames the question, sets the timeline and owns the outcome, how much space is truly shared?
- 02
How do we challenge the Western and Euro-centered assumptions embedded in design?
Whose histories, references and senses of 'good' design keep shaping the briefs, methods and criteria we use?
- 03
How should AI reshape design practice without diminishing human agency?
What would it mean to build tools that amplify judgment and intuition rather than automate them away?
- 04
How do we move beyond tokenism toward meaningful participation?
What would it look like if participants had real authorship over the questions, the process and what gets produced?
- 05
Can design become a practice of care and liberation, rather than simply problem-solving?
What changes if we treat design less as a fix and more as a way of holding space, building solidarity and imagining otherwise?
Chapters
Where I've been.
2025 – Present
Belgium · Portugal · UK
Response_Able Futures
An Erasmus Mundus MFA in Design & Health_Care, moving between LUCA School of Arts, the University of Aveiro and Sheffield Hallam University. The programme asks what design can do at the intersection of health, care and social systems, and I am learning to work slowly, think with communities, and question the assumptions baked into design methods.
2020 – 2025
Islamabad, Pakistan
Teach For All / Teach For Pakistan
I spent five years shaping stories around education equity in Pakistan. As Strategic Communication Manager, I led campaigns, built brand systems, produced national events, and worked with a global network of partners. It taught me that good communication is also a form of care: clear, honest, and accountable to the people it speaks about.
2018 – 2020
Islamabad, Pakistan
Strategic Research Institute
As a design researcher, I made research visible. Working with political scientists and sociologists, I turned complex data into infographics, visual essays and the institute's first research magazine. It was here that I learned to love the space between evidence and storytelling.
2016 – 2017
Islamabad, Pakistan
White Rice Communications
My first design job. I worked on brands, campaigns and print pieces for all kinds of clients, and learned how to move an idea from a brief to something real.
2012 – 2016
Islamabad, Pakistan
COMSATS University Islamabad
My undergraduate years in Communication Design were where I learned to look closely: at typography, image-making, semiotics, and the quiet politics of visual culture. I worked across print, identity, and editorial design, and began to understand that every formal choice carries meaning. My thesis, Visualizing Emotions, explored Sylvia Plath's journals through design and became my first real attempt to use visual language to hold something human and difficult.
In conversation
Selected talks, publications & exhibitions.
2026
Porto, Portugal
UNLOOP Symposium — University of Porto
Shared Not Everything Resolves, a reflection on menopause, feminist HCI and why design does not always need to solve things. An extended abstract was published with the symposium.
2026
Aveiro, Portugal
Talking Heads Exhibition — University of Aveiro
Showed an interactive piece on menopause literacy, made through narrative and participatory design methods.
2025
Genk, Belgium
Desire_Able City Exhibition — C-Mine
Exhibited Re/Move, a participatory service design project about children's independent mobility, co-created with families and the city of Genk.
2019
Kathmandu, Nepal
Myth of Sanctification — NexUs Culture
An artist residency and exhibition on gender, body, sanctity and politics, set in the middle of Kathmandu.
2016
Islamabad, Pakistan
Alethia Degree Show — COMSATS University Islamabad
My undergraduate thesis show, Visualizing Emotions, explored how design can hold the interior world of Sylvia Plath's journals.
How I work
Tools I use.
Research & knowledge
Gather evidence
- Obsidian
- NotebookLM
AI for analysis & synthesis
Generate insights
- Claude
- Miro
Design, mapping & collaboration
Communicate and co-create
- FigJam
- Miro
- Canva
- Slack
- Notion
Prototyping & experimentation
Test and iterate solutions
- Figma
- Lovable
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Photoshop
Currently
Reading, listening, watching.
Reading
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
On grief, memory, and the strange architecture of loss.
Listening
Empire
William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Histories of empire, told with rigour and a sharp eye for detail.
Watching
Pachinko (S2)
Apple TV
For the women, the language, and the way time folds in on itself.
Off the clock
The small loves.
Oceans (the Atlantic especially), sunsets, birds, trees, long walks, books, music, textures, illustrations and typography.
Four cats: Naku, Hubble, Daffy and Kiki, usually somewhere in the background of every video call.
Oceans
The Atlantic, especially.
Sunsets
Light doing its slow goodbye.
Trees
Company that outlives us.
Books
Piled, dog-eared, returned to.
Typography
Letters that hold a voice.
Naku & Daffy
The shadow and the tuxedo.
Hubble
Named for looking upward.
Kiki
Small, loud, entirely in charge.