# Ajmal Afif

> Portfolio, writing, and learning logs of Ajmal Afif — a product designer. Project case studies (including Grab design-system and product work), notes on craft, and notes on living with meaningful productivity.

This is a personal site. The links below point to human-readable pages; descriptions are the author's own summaries.

## About
- [About Ajmal Afif](https://ajmalafif.com/about): Background, experience, and contact.
- [Work](https://ajmalafif.com/work): Career overview and selected work.

## Projects
- [Driving Grab Design System Adoption](https://ajmalafif.com/projects/grab-design-system): One of the biggest challenges in designing a Super App is design system adoption. I am driving it at Grab through behavioral design and system design.
- [Fare Alert](https://ajmalafif.com/projects/fare-alert): At Grab I designed Fare Alert, an opt-in feature that alerts riders when the fare drops during a surge, shaped with behavioural science and user testing.
- [Earning Insight](https://ajmalafif.com/projects/earning-insight): Giving insight to drivers through transparency is a first step to gaining trust and behavior change.

## Notes
- [Topping up a Suica card with cash on iOS](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/the-ultimate-guide-to-cash-charge-top-up-for-suica-card-on-ios): Frustrated because your Suica card won't top up via Apple Pay or an overseas card? Here is how I charged mine with cash at the station, as a last resort.
- [My personal productivity hack for deep work](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/my-personal-productivity-hack-for-deep-work): Every focus hack I try starts strong, then plateaus. What actually sticks for me is self-accountability: a 'social contract' or 'over-the-shoulder' buddy.
- [Note to self: always do the tutorials!](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/note-to-self-always-do-the-tutorials): I always have to learn this personal lesson the hard way, every time! It‘s so tempting to jump right in, then found myself stumbled around most of the time 😅
- [Data Storytelling workshop by Kontinentalist](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/data-storytelling-workshop-by-kontinentalist): I attended the virtual 2-day workshop on Data Storytelling by Kontinentalist. I had a high expectation going in and really glad that I took it.
- [How my website works](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/how-my-website-works): The inner workings of my personal website and the insights I gained when I worked on it gradually over a few months.
- [Learning in public](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/learning-in-public): Breaking a long silence on my own blog. A friend reminded me it's mine to do whatever I want with, so here I am, writing in public and learning as I go.
- [Guides to approach your Shopify store redesign](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/guides-to-approach-your-shopify-store-redesign): Redesigning your Shopify store can feel scary, costly, and risky enough to make or break it. Before you dive in, let me share how I'd rethink the approach.
- [How to approach design for Shopify stores](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/how-to-approach-design-for-shopify-stores): I've tried processes like Design Sprint and HCD, but designing on Shopify stores means working within constraints already set, and that's not a bad thing.
- [Tools for hosting your community](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/tools-for-hosting-your-community): My honest take on the tools for hosting a community around your niche: Slack, Discord, Spectrum, and Discourse, with the pros and cons I weigh for each.
- [Moving to Singapore](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/moving-to-singapore): I recently moved to Singapore to join Aviva Digital Garage as a UI/UX Developer — really a designer who codes. Excited to see how this new chapter unfolds.
- [3rd edition of ajmalafif.com — site redesign](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/3rd-edition-of-ajmalafif-com-site-redesign): It took a few late nights to finish the 3rd edition of my personal site — I tinkered with assemble.io, Harp and Ghost before settling on Jekyll.
- [Create custom page template in Roots](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/create-custom-page-template-in-roots): First create a file inside wp-content/themes/roots with this convention page-filename.php. So in my case, I named it page-ajmalafif.php
- [Include external JavaScript into Roots](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/include-external-javascript-into-roots): How I add an external JavaScript file to the Roots WordPress theme: drop it into the assets/js folder, then register it in scripts.php under lib.
- [Fake your passion](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/fake-your-passion): Can passion really be faked? I think it sometimes is — a quiet survival move when career or interest demands it, even when the feeling isn't there yet.
- [Magic hour](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/magic-hour): Magic hour. It‘s the time where opportunity floats and luck surfaces. Magic hour is to be discovered and find out; not something to be taken for granted.
- [Break and Create](https://ajmalafif.com/notes/break-and-create): Breaking bad habits and creating new ones isn't easy. It takes more than mental effort — even motivation won't cut it. It asks for sacrifice and endurance.

## Learning
- [Fancy landing pages with react-three-fiber](https://ajmalafif.com/learn/build-fancy-landing-pages-with-react-three-fiber-and-threejs): Notes from a paid course by 0xca0a on building fancy landing pages with react-three-fiber and ThreeJS. My first time dabbling with both r3f and Three.js.
- [日本語](https://ajmalafif.com/learn/japanese): Learning Japanese is a lifelong, endless pursuit as I build a family with my Japanese partner — exciting, daunting, and a humbling privilege at once.
- [The Joy of React](https://ajmalafif.com/learn/the-joy-of-react): I signed up for early access to Josh W Comeau's The Joy of React. I've never learned React properly—just Google and trial & error—and I hope this fixes that.
- [Tinkering with Midjourney](https://ajmalafif.com/learn/tinkering-with-midjourney): This year I‘ve decided to explore AI tools (such as Midjourney) more seriously. I‘m experimenting with its use cases with random stuffs or side projects.
- [SwiftUI for Designers](https://ajmalafif.com/learn/swiftui-for-designers): SwiftUI for Designers is a course created by Philip Davis, who recently joined Apple Maps as a designer.

## Optional
- [Uses](https://ajmalafif.com/uses): The hardware I lean on day to day: my Mac mini M1, Dell UltraSharp monitor, Keychron K2, MX Master 3, Omnidesk standing desk, plus my camera and audio gear.
- [Now](https://ajmalafif.com/now): What I am reading, learning, and up to right now. A place to signal where my attention is these days, which I try to keep updated as often as I can.
- [Pay It Forward](https://ajmalafif.com/pay-it-forward): Kindness got me here, so I am paying it forward — nearly two years mentoring fellow students, with testimonials from them and the heroes who shaped me.
- [RSS feed](https://ajmalafif.com/rss.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://ajmalafif.com/sitemap.xml)