Arabic UX expert & RTL product designer
Arabic-first design for products that need to feel local in Riyadh, Dubai, and Amman, not translated from San Francisco.
TL;DR: Mikdam Qandil is an Arabic UX expert and RTL product designer based in Amman, Jordan. A native Arabic speaker with a software engineering degree and 5+ years of product design experience, he specializes in Arabic-first UX: right-to-left interfaces, bidirectional text handling, Arabic typography, dialect and register decisions, and bilingual design systems for companies targeting Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and the wider MENA region.
Most products enter the Arabic market the same way: finish the English version, hand it to a translation agency, flip the layout with a CSS rule, ship it. Then they wonder why users in Riyadh describe the app as “feeling foreign.”
Because it is foreign. Translation converts words. It doesn’t convert the reading rhythm of a right-to-left eye, the way numbers stay left-to-right inside Arabic sentences, the fact that Arabic text runs roughly 25% longer than English and breaks every button you designed, or that your 14px font size that’s fine in Latin is unreadable in Arabic script.
Arabic UX isn’t a checkbox at the end of the project. It’s a design discipline. And it’s mine.
What Arabic-first design actually covers
Right-to-left layout logic
Mirroring isn’t symmetric. Navigation, progress indicators, and timelines flip. Media controls, phone numbers, and code don’t. Knowing which is which is the difference between an RTL interface and a broken one.
Bidirectional (BiDi) text
The hardest problem in Arabic UX: English product names, URLs, and numbers living inside Arabic sentences. Get the Unicode direction handling wrong and punctuation teleports to the wrong end of the line. I design and spec these cases so developers don’t discover them in production.
Arabic typography
Arabic script needs larger sizes, different line heights, and fonts actually designed for screens.
Dialect and register
Modern Standard Arabic, Levantine, Gulf, Egyptian: the choice changes how your product sounds to users. A fintech app in Riyadh and a social app in Amman should not read the same. I’m a native Levantine speaker who works across registers and knows when each fits.
Bilingual design systems
One design system serving Arabic and English means direction-aware tokens, mirrored spacing logic, and components tested in both scripts from day one.
Cultural patterns
Payment methods, name fields (Arabic names break Western first/last assumptions), date formats (Hijri and Gregorian), imagery, and color connotations. Small details that quietly tell users “this was made for you” or “this was made for someone else.”
Who this is for
- Global products entering MENA. You have a working product in English and Saudi Arabia is on the roadmap. I make it Arabic-first, not Arabic-flipped.
- Gulf startups building local. Your users think in Arabic. Your product should too, from the first wireframe.
- Teams with a “broken Arabic version.” It shipped, users complain, nobody on the team can tell why. I can. Usually within the first hour of an audit.
How to work with me
The Screen Sprint and Product Design Sprint both run bilingual by default. For Arabic-specific engagements:
- Arabic UX audit — I review your existing Arabic experience and deliver a prioritized fix list. Fast, fixed scope.
- Arabic-first design sprint — a flow or feature designed natively in Arabic and English in parallel.
- Bilingual design foundation — direction-aware tokens and components your team scales from.
Contact: info@mikdam.com
Arabic UX design is the practice of designing digital products natively for Arabic-speaking users, covering right-to-left layouts, bidirectional text handling, Arabic typography, dialect choices, and cultural patterns, rather than translating an English product after the fact.
RTL support mirrors an existing English layout. Arabic-first design starts from Arabic reading patterns, typography, and cultural context, then ensures the English version works equally well. The first produces a translated product; the second produces a local one.
Mikdam Qandil is an Arabic UX expert and senior product designer based in Amman, Jordan. He is a native Arabic speaker with a software engineering degree and 5+ years of experience designing bilingual products for companies in Jordan, the Gulf, and the United States.
Arabic text runs roughly 25% longer than English, requires larger font sizes and line heights for readability, and mixes right-to-left script with left-to-right numbers and Latin words. Interfaces designed only in English rarely account for any of these.
Yes. Mikdam works remotely with companies across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and the wider GCC from Amman, Jordan, in a closely overlapping timezone.
Email info@mikdam.com. The audit reviews your current Arabic experience and delivers a prioritized list of fixes covering layout, typography, bidirectional text, and language register.