About Morty Akard

What if this worked differently?

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time playing games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted and GTA. I remember wondering why changing a car’s colour was so easy in a game but not in real life.

So I started imagining how it could work.

In my head, the car had its normal body with a transparent layer on top. Coloured liquid could flow between them, and with the press of a button, the whole car could slowly change colour.

I kept thinking about the idea: where the colours would be stored, how the liquid would move, and how I could make the system work better. Sometimes, days later, I’d suddenly think of a different solution and change it again in my head.

The colour-changing car was only one example. Whenever I wanted something that didn’t exist, or wished something worked differently, I usually started imagining my own version.

How I found product design

That curiosity eventually led me to study IT, explore software development and learn to code. Somewhere along the way, I became just as interested in people’s experience of technology as I was in the technology itself.

That’s what led me to UX and product design.

The process felt familiar: start with an idea, question it, change it and try again. But design also taught me something I hadn’t really considered as a kid: what made sense to me wasn’t necessarily what would make sense to someone else.

My childhood ideas had one user: me. If they worked in my head, that was enough. Design taught me to take those ideas out of my imagination, put them in front of people, and let what I learned shape the next version.

How I think today

Today, I enjoy taking something complicated or unclear and finding ways to make it simpler and more natural to use. My background in IT and coding still influences how I think. I’m interested in both what people experience on the screen and what is happening behind it.

I still find myself asking the same question:

What if this worked differently?