Design & Development
UI design in Qatar
The visual system — type, colour, spacing and components — applied consistently.
White text: 10.6:1, passes AAOne change, and every component follows.
7
projects shipped across Qatar and the GCC
Design, search visibility and pipeline — built together, in English and Arabic.
Definition
What UI design covers, and what a design system is
UI design (user interface design) is the visual layer of a site: type, colour, spacing, icons and the components they make up, such as buttons, fields and cards. Done properly it produces a design system: named decisions (tokens), reusable components with every state they can be in, and rules for when to use each, rather than a folder of one-off screens.
It is not the site's structure, which is UX design and comes first, nor your brand identity, which it takes as its starting point. Try the system above: change the brand colour once and every component follows.
Why it matters
Why a system beats a set of screens
Screens designed one at a time drift: a second shade of blue, a third button style, a form unlike the others. Every page costs as much as the first, and visitors read the inconsistency as carelessness, the opposite of what a buyer wants from a contractor, a clinic or a law firm. A system fixes each decision once.
Decisions made once
Each colour, size and spacing step is decided once and named, so it cannot drift from page to page.
The tenth page is cheaper
It is built from parts already made and checked, so it costs less than the first and looks like the rest.
It holds in two languages
Components built for Arabic and English from the start don't break when the text runs a different length.
Colour can carry meaning
On Bushra Pharmacy's site one colour is reserved for the actions that move a patient forward, so it always means act now.
The cost over time
Why a design system costs less over the life of a site
The first build is the smallest part of what a site costs; the changes after it are where a system pays.
Screen by screen
- Every new page is new designButtons, spacing and headings are decided again each time, so page ten costs what page one did.
- A colour change is a huntA new brand colour means searching every page by hand, and something is always missed.
- Handover starts with guessingA new developer has to take forty pages apart to understand them before changing anything.
With a system
- New pages are assemblyBuilt from tested parts, often by your own team in the content system, without a developer.
- A change is one editChange the token once and every component follows, in both languages.
- Handover takes daysA developer reads the rules and extends the system instead of reverse-engineering it.
A worked example
An example: one system for a stone-cladding brand
An example brand, the one in the demo above, not a client: a Doha contractor with a deep teal logo.
Colour
Teal becomes the brand token. White text on it passes WCAG 2.2 AA, so it can carry buttons; a lighter teal stays for backgrounds.
Type
One Latin and one Arabic typeface, each with its own sizes. The Arabic is set larger and looser, and never letter-spaced.
Components and their states
Two buttons, a phone field, a badge and a project card, each with focused, pressed, disabled and error states.
The Arabic check
The button «اطلب عرض سعر» and the card title «واجهة فيلا، الوعب» are tested until both languages fit without cropping.
The rule
Teal means act now, so nothing decorative may use it.
Six months later
A new Interiors page is built from the existing card, buttons and field, and matches the site on its first day.
How to tell
Signs a site was designed one screen at a time
Check your own site in ten minutes, on your phone, with no technical knowledge.
- Count the button stylesOpen five pages. More than two or three styles means each page was designed on its own.
- Read it outsidePale grey text vanishes in Doha sunlight. WCAG 2.2 asks for at least 4.5 to 1 contrast for body text.
- Tap with your thumbLinks packed close together, or icons smaller than a fingertip, cause mis-taps that lose phone enquiries.
- Switch to ArabicA fallback font, words cut off inside buttons, or arrows still pointing the English way mean the Arabic was added later.
- Press Tab on a laptopIf you cannot see where you are on the page, the focus state was removed and keyboard users are stuck.
- Fill in a form wronglyA good error says what to fix and keeps what you typed. Without one, the form clears and the customer leaves.
What UI design includes with us
Design tokens for colour, type, spacing and corners, each named and reused
Components with every state: hover, focus, disabled, error and loading
Arabic and English layouts designed together, with room for both lengths
An Arabic typeface chosen and set for Arabic, not borrowed from the Latin
Contrast and tap sizes checked against WCAG 2.2 as each part is designed
Rules for colour and emphasis, so the main action always looks the same
The system documented in the site and its code, so any developer can extend it
Common questions
What do we own at the end?
Everything that was built. The live site, its code and its content are yours, and the domain and hosting are in your own name. The design system comes with it as built: colours, type sizes, spacing and components, defined once in the code and documented in the site, so any developer can see which parts exist and how to use them.
Can you work with our existing brand?
Yes. The system is built around your logo, colours and tone rather than replacing them, and where the brand works against the site we say so. The common case is a brand colour too light to carry white text, so buttons are hard to read outdoors. The usual fix keeps the original for large areas and adds a darker shade of it for text and buttons.
What does UI design cost?
It is part of the website project, not a separate line. Websites start from QAR 8,000 as a one-off project with Arabic and English included, and from QAR 15,000 with enquiry tracking, a sales pipeline and booking or payments. The price moves with the number of distinct page types and components, not pages: once a project card exists, the fortieth project costs almost nothing.
Does a small site need a design system?
Yes, in a small form. A six-page site still has buttons, fields, cards, headings and a menu, and each can drift. For a small site the system might be a dozen components and a short list of tokens. The decisions have to be made anyway, so writing them down costs little, and the saving shows the first time you add a page or change a colour.
Will our site look like a template?
No. A template is a design system someone else made for nobody in particular: you inherit all its decisions, including the ones that do not fit your business, and competitors may use the same one. A system built for you starts from your brand, your content and the actions your customers take, in both languages, so every part in it exists because your site needs it.
How do we add pages later?
Most new pages need no designer and no developer. Your team adds a page from the existing blocks in the content system, such as a new project or service, and it inherits the colours, type and spacing in both languages. A genuinely new kind of page, such as a booking flow, is new work, but it is built from existing parts. Ask how it is priced before you sign.
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