About – Awais Imran

—Waisybabu—

PAKISTANI LIVING IN SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

PONDERER ON THE MEANING OF LIFE

HEALTH/FITNESS ENTHUSIAST

ALWAYS EXPERIMENTING

CASUAL PHOTOGRAPHER

OCCASIONAL WRITER

VORACIOUS READER

PASSIONATE GAMER

MARRIED TO SARA

AVID TRAVELER

MEDITATOR

HUMAN

I’m lucky to have found design when I did in my software engineering undergrad. “You could get paid for making UIs!?”, I thought during my 3rd semester course on Human-Computer Interaction. It was the perfect level of abstraction between deciding what to build (product), and actually building it (engineering). I taught myself design over the years and haven’t looked back.

But being the constant experimenter that I was, I tried a bunch of other adjacent fields along the way. Before design and software became my main thing, I was a writer for technology blogs in high school. That’s where I developed my taste for effective product design — reviewing apps on the daily, covering the latest Apple events, the newest phones, and writing tips and tricks to get the most out of your gadgets. I also dabbled in online marketing, community building, and startups.

If you told the 18-year-old Awais sitting in class at NUST University in Islamabad that I’d be happily living and working in Silicon Valley, he would just not believe you. It’s a dream come true.

Today, I love working on complex systems. I take my inspiration from unique sources — beyond the Dribbbles and competing products of the industry, to art and architecture, video games, cinema, philosophy books, and the built world. I like to believe I have great attention to detail too, while knowing when to zoom out to see the big picture.

But who am I when I’m not product designing and design leading?

I pride myself on building a vibrant life outside of work — with varied interests, rich friendships, deep family ties, acts of creativity, and a connection to transcendence.

Captured below are snippets of that life. I hope you’ll enjoy!

—Awais aka “Waisybabu” to close friends and family