About | Ghazi Khan

Beyond the workBeing human

What makes us human, and what makes each of us unique, is the thing I keep circling. Philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and travel are different ways into the same question: why do people do what they do? Some of the best ideas about connection, simplicity, and care don't come from tech at all. They come from paying attention to people, and that helps as much with the teams I work alongside as with the people I design for.

It feels more important now, not less. AI is a powerful tool, and what matters is using it consciously and precisely, on the right problem, not just fast. The real edge is stepping back to see the whole picture, and to ask the basic questions again, about ethics, about empathy, about what we owe the person on the other side. Stay curious about people, and the rest tends to follow.

How I got hereIt started with a detour

I started in engineering. All formulas and optimization, where everyone applied the same method and got the same answer. It left me cold. There was very little room for curiosity, play, or doing things differently.

Then I wandered into design, and the work turned into watching real people. Studying how students used the ATMs on campus (I had never seen one before college). Testing which gadgets pulled a driver's eyes off the road: an old iPod, a touchscreen, a keyboard. Small things. But a few seconds decided whether a line kept moving, and a few glances decided whether someone got home safe. Still problems to solve, but now the answer depended on the person, and each one had room for a creative fix.

What I do now balances all three: the structure of an engineer, the creativity of a designer, and the psychology behind what makes us human. That's why I'm drawn to products that have grown too complicated. Untangling them takes every one.

See the work → Resume

On my mindWhat I'm exploring now

Designing the AI collaboration

Most people use AI like a search engine: ask, take the answer, move on. I design the collaboration itself like a product, so AI takes on the draining parts and buys back the thing that is hardest to protect: time to think. See the Prompt Design study → Read the field notes →

The right question, at the right time

Good design is good questions, and most of them are about timing. Ask one too late and the whole design has to bend around it. Asking the right question, or reframing the problem, is often worth more than a fast answer, and it is where the real work starts.

Mentorship as the right context, not more information

Growing designers by surfacing the right information at the right moment, with the why behind a decision instead of an overload, then naming the growth areas and letting people choose how they grow.

FoundationsWhere the thread started

Before any of it was a job, I chased the same instinct, people, data, and systems, just for the love of the problem.

EA Sports · FIFA

Volunteer

I played so much FIFA that I volunteered to analyze real athlete data and help make the game feel truer to life.

University of Michigan

Research · 2006–2010

Studied how people really use everyday machines, from campus ATMs to in-car touchscreens, and designed for how they actually behave, not how the manual assumes.

Mostly, I'm curious about people