THE CONTEXT
Majid Al Futtaim owns some of the largest retail and entertainment brands in the Middle East, from Carrefour to VOX Cinemas.
Each brand had its own loyalty programme. The goal was to unify them all into a single app. I joined through Cohaesus, the digital agency brought in as the UX and engineering partner.
On paper everything looked aligned. In reality UX had been brought in late, multiple agencies were not aligned, key technology partnerships were unstable, and nobody had properly worked through the how.
It was not a design problem yet. It was a clarity problem.
The project brought together five specialist partners:
ᐧ BBD Perfect Storm - Branding and market research
ᐧ Loyalty Juggernaut - Loyalty platform
ᐧ Beam - Mobile wallet
ᐧ I AM+ - Voice functionality
ᐧ Cohaesus - UX and engineering
6 months
delivery timeline
4
rounds of usability testing
5
partner agencies
1.5 M
downloads
THE CHALLENGE
One of the first things I did was take the full list of requirements and organise them into something usable.
I printed everything out and brought the different partners together to estimate effort.
Facilitating that session was not technically my role. But someone needed to do it. The professional facilitator brought in to manage the session walked out and quit.
That was the room I stepped into. When we mapped everything out it became obvious we could not deliver everything that had been promised.
That workshop forced a prioritisation conversation that had not happened yet.
It also changed how I was seen on the project.
'We weren't there to validate the propositions, but that's what ended up happening...also nobody had thought to ask the payment provider if the tech actually worked the way the stakeholders and project sponsor thought it would.'
You really can't make these things up!
HOW I LEAD
Working backwards
My instinct as a first time lead was to start with the end goal. Understand the timeline, create a plan, be pragmatic and keep everyone on the same page as much as possible.
It was the first time I realised that leading and doing are very different skills.
Facilitating that first chaotic workshop, stepping in when nobody else would, that was the moment the project changed for me.
'Always there to help at all stages of a project'
Simon Kinslow
Holding it together
I worked closely with two UI designers and one senior UX designer.
I was not formally managing them at the start but I was responsible for making sure the work held together.
Regular design reviews, stakeholder workshops, clarity across features and journeys. None of this structure existed when I joined. Building it while delivering was the job.
'Producing high caliber work, and with a collaboration effort second to none'
Dalton Alexander
Staying when it was hard
Honestly, a lot of it did not go to plan. The technology was not ready in places where we needed it.
Multiple agencies working in parallel created misalignment that took constant effort to manage.
There were moments I genuinely wanted to walk away. I did not. That decision, to stay and see it through, taught me more about my own resilience than any project before or since.
'Wealth of knowledge, unwavering passion for helping teams, most uplifting person in the room in high pressure situations'
Roxana Dantes
WHAT I DID
01
Making sense of the experience
Before jumping into screens I focused on alignment. Working with the senior UX designer we created a UX vision for each core area of the app covering what we were trying to achieve, design principles, what to do and what to avoid, and reference points to keep the team oriented.
02
Mapping the whole thing
Before any screens were designed I mapped the entire app. Every screen, every flow, every integration point across all five partner systems.
It was not pretty but it made everything clear. It became the single reference point that kept five agencies aligned on what we were building.
03
Four rounds of usability testing
I planned and ran four rounds of usability testing in Dubai with real users, all of it myself. Some of the most useful insights were the simplest.
-
Users could not find the quick payment entry point. Wallet setup was being skipped entirely.
-
Red was interpreted as losing points, not gaining them.
-
The urgent toggle would be left permanently on.
-
The family feature created significant confusion across every round of testing.
04
Making the hard calls
The family feature and the voice functionality were two of the hardest conversations. For the family feature, I brought every question that had come up in testing to the stakeholders.
Collectively we reached the same conclusion: if we wanted to deliver within the given timelines, rethinking the entire family proposition would take far more time and research than we had. It was descoped.
The voice assistant was similar except it just didn't work. When a feature does not meet baseline user expectations or match someone's mental model they will not use it. Worst case they abandon the app altogether. The evidence made the argument.
05
Coordinating five partners
The project brought together multiple agencies working in parallel, which created misalignment that took constant effort to manage.
Payment integration constrained design decisions we would have made differently. UX being brought in late meant we were always catching up on decisions that had already been made. We were constantly adapting. That was the reality of the project.
THE WORK
SHARE app - Examples of key screens I worked on
THE OUTCOME
Our engagement came to a natural close before launch. What followed was built on the foundations we laid during our time on the project. The testing, the prioritisation work, the design system, the team structure, the stakeholder alignment. That was our contribution.
1.5M
Downloads
1.9M
outlets at launch
5,000+
outlets as of 2026
WHAT I LEARNED
Being given responsibility before you feel ready is how you grow.
Cohaesus backed my potential over my CV and it taught me something about what good leadership looks like. It shaped how I think about developing the people in my own teams now.
Facilitation is a design skill.
Getting the right people in a room with the right information and helping them reach a decision is as valuable as anything you produce in a design tool.
And evidence changes conversations. I planned and ran four rounds of usability testing in Dubai with real users. Testing did not just surface problems. It changed the direction of the product. Not always easily, but it changes them.