The story
Built by curiosity. Proven by evidence.
Thirteen years. Ten industries. Two startups. One standard: could everyone use it?
I got into technology the way most curious kids do: by taking things apart to see why they worked. An Information Technology degree taught me to build software; the human-computer interaction courses inside it taught me something better, that the hardest engineering problem is usually a person trying to get something done.
So I built for people. First as a founder: an agriculture marketplace that connected growers to buyers, incubated at the NIC incubator, then an analytics platform for job seekers, incubated at DMZ in Toronto. Startups teach you what no classroom can: how to listen when the market disagrees with you, and how to change course without losing heart.
Then came the big rooms: national platforms serving millions, eye-tracking labs built from scratch, design systems that outlived my contracts. And then Canada, a new chapter that meant proving everything again from the first hello. Milton is home now. The community work I do here isn't a side project; it's the same job with the same standard: services, and neighbours, deserve experiences that respect their time and their dignity.
Founder · Agriculture marketplace
Built and led a marketplace connecting agricultural producers with buyers. Incubated at the NIC incubator.
Founder · Job-seeker analytics
Built an analytics platform helping job seekers understand the market, the thinking that later shaped DataUpskill. Incubated at DMZ, Toronto.
The road so far
Chapters, not job titles
Every stop added a discipline. Together they're the practice.
Where design met evidence
Designed data-driven products and hand-coded interactive websites: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, D3, AmCharts. The habit of pairing design with data, and designing with code in mind, started here.
Agile, at scale
Years as the design liaison between business owners, product managers and developers, shipping analytics products in Agile cycles and learning that a design is only as good as its handoff.
Public services at national scale
Led design and research on platforms serving millions: Najm's accident-reporting app, NHC's housing services, benchmarking for the Public Investment Fund. Government stakeholders, compliance, public trust: the deep end of service design.
Director of Digital Experience, my own practice
Seventeen client engagements delivered since 2023 through my incorporated practice: a retail chain taken from zero to $250K in monthly sales in 100 days, a storage facility's digital twin for space-planning ROI, an Ontario institute's operations platform, civic data tools for newcomers.
Accessibility, institutionalized
Consulted on an Ontario school board's digital transformation with AODA / WCAG 2.1 accessibility and plain language at its core.
Leadership
Experience is only useful if it's shared
Thirteen years in, the craft is table stakes. The multiplier is people.
Mentoring
Startup founders at Plan9, UX students at Humber, newcomers rebuilding careers. Mentoring keeps me honest: if I can't explain a decision simply, it probably wasn't a good one.
Stakeholder management
C-level executives, finance leads, government agencies, front-line staff: I've sat across all of them, translating between business goals and user needs without losing either.
Collaboration
The permanent liaison seat: design to development, product to communications, research to decision. Agile ceremonies are where my work gets better, not slower.
Leadership
Led design teams of three, founded two companies, and built research capabilities (like an eye-tracking lab) that outlasted my engagement. Leadership, to me, is leaving systems behind, not dependence.
Empathy
Design is how I serve. So is showing up.
Human-centred design can't be a 9-to-5 value. These are the places I give time to, right here in my community.
Ontario Seniors Forum · Milton
I regularly run awareness sessions helping seniors use AI safely and confidently, from spotting scams to using AI tools that genuinely improve daily life.
Humber College
Guest speaker to UX design students, sharing real public-sector case studies and what evidence-first design looks like outside the classroom.
100 Women Who Care
Volunteer with this giving-circle non-profit, creating their website so local generosity has a proper digital home.
Newcomer employability
Ongoing one-on-one support helping newcomers translate international experience into Canadian careers, the same empathy that shaped DataUpskill.
Plan9 Technology Incubator
Volunteer mentor advising startup leaders on improving the UX of their digital products, sharpening young teams' instincts for user-centred thinking.
What's next
The next interface is a place
Screens were chapter one. Digital twins and connected environments are chapter two.
As a certified Unity Digital Twins Practitioner, I follow how real-time 3D is quietly rewiring whole industries: farms monitored as living models in agriculture, production lines simulated before a bolt is turned in manufacturing, data centres tuned through virtual replicas, construction and infrastructure managed against their digital counterparts, public services planning facilities and traffic in simulation, and healthcare rehearsing procedures in spatial environments.
Pair that with hands-on IoT experience design, connecting physical products and sensors to the digital services people actually touch, and the design brief changes: the interface stops being a screen and becomes the environment itself. I upskilled for that future on purpose. When immersive experiences reach everyday platforms, I intend to be the designer in the room who has already built for it.
Credentials
Credentials, with the details
Not just badge names. Open each one to see what it actually covered.
BS (Hons) Information Technology, HCI focus
Four-year honours degree where design met code. Coursework spanned human-computer interaction, software engineering, databases and data visualization, and the final-year focus on HCI is why my design specifications still speak fluent developer.
IBM Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner
IBM's framework for applying design thinking at enterprise scale. Covered:
- The Loop: continuously observe, reflect and make
- Hills: framing outcomes as user-centred goals rather than feature lists
- Playbacks: aligning stakeholders through regular story-driven reviews
- Sponsor Users: keeping real users embedded in the process
Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate
Coursera program covering the full analytics workflow: ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, act. Included data cleaning, spreadsheet and SQL analysis, visualization and dashboarding, R fundamentals, and a hands-on capstone. It's the certificate behind the "data-informed" in my practice.
Unity Digital Twins Practitioner
Real-time 3D fundamentals and digital twin workflows: building virtual replicas of physical products, spaces and systems, connecting them to live data, and understanding the industry applications now reshaping agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure and public services.
Miro certifications ×3, collaboration & diagramming
Three certifications covering advanced visual collaboration: structured diagramming and mapping (the journey maps, service blueprints and information architecture across my case studies), and facilitation of remote workshops that keep distributed stakeholders genuinely engaged.
Productization, DMZ at Toronto Metropolitan University
Startup program at one of Canada's leading incubators: product-market fit, positioning, go-to-market strategy and pitching. Completed while building my job-seeker analytics startup, so every lesson was applied the same week it was learned.
Beyond the pixels
The parts of me that don't fit a portfolio
Curiosity doesn't clock out at five. It just changes subjects.
Ten industries, several countries and a lot of shared meals later, cultural awareness isn't a line on my resume. It's how I run research sessions, workshops and Tuesday standups.
Let's talk about your product.
Happy to walk through any case study in depth, including the NDA-protected decks, Miro boards and Figma prototypes.
- Emailadil@cybensol.com
- Phone437-881-4400
- LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/adilmakes
- AvailabilityFull-time roles · Incorporated contractor
- LocationMilton, Ontario · Hybrid-ready
Accessibility statement
This site was hand-built to meet WCAG 2.1 AA: semantic landmarks and headings, a skip-to-content link, full keyboard navigation with visible focus indicators, contrast-checked colour with no meaning carried by colour alone, descriptive alternative text, and respect for reduced-motion preferences (animations, the orbiting hero and the custom cursor switch off automatically).
The Accessibility menu in the header adds reader-controlled options: dark mode, a high-contrast colour-blind-friendly theme, and text sizing up to 125%. Preferences are remembered between visits. The interface follows the Snow UI design system: Inter across the entire type ramp, a disciplined 20px radius and spacing scale, and one restrained accent colour.
If anything here is hard to use, tell me. Improving it is literally the job.