Makkah · Makkah Province
UI/UX Design in Makkah
An RTL interface is not an LTR interface flipped. Numbers stay left-to-right inside Arabic sentences, icons carry direction, progress runs the other way, and form flows read differently. Mirroring a design and calling it Arabic support is how products get abandoned at step two.
UI/UX design in Makkah means designing interfaces that work for bilingual users on the devices they actually own, tested with real people before you build. IITWares runs research, prototyping and interface design for Makkah products, with Arabic RTL flows designed independently rather than mirrored.
| Deliverables | Research, IA, prototypes, UI, design system |
|---|---|
| Directions | LTR and RTL designed independently |
| Testing | Moderated sessions with users in Makkah |
| Handover | Figma sources, tokens, component documentation |
| Area served | Makkah, Makkah Province and the wider Kingdom |
| Languages | Arabic and English, delivered natively |
| Agency | IITWares — Jeddah, founded 2010 |
Local context
UI/UX Design in Makkah, specifically
Almost every commercial activity in Makkah connects to pilgrimage: hotels, Umrah operators, transport, catering, retail and real estate around the Haram. Demand is intensely seasonal and the audience is global, arriving in dozens of languages on unfamiliar networks and older devices.
Makkah is the holiest city in Islam and the destination for millions of Hajj and Umrah pilgrims each year, which changes the brief. The sectors that dominate here — hajj & umrah services, hotels & hospitality, transport & ground handling — buy differently from the national average, and the work has to reflect that rather than ignore it.
Makkah traffic is seasonal, international and multilingual. Pages have to load on weak roaming connections and answer booking questions immediately, because a pilgrim comparing three Umrah operators will not wait four seconds for a hero image.
The short version: we do not run a ui/ux design template and change the city name. The market research, the language split and the priority queries are set from Makkah outward.
Pilgrimage-economy buying
What this looks like in Makkah
Demand in Makkah arrives in waves and from everywhere. The audience is international, arriving in a dozen languages on roaming connections and older devices, comparing three operators at once, and deciding in minutes. Revenue concentrates into short, unforgiving windows where nothing can be broken.
You are usually selling to operators, hotel groups, transport companies and institutional bodies.
Worth knowing: A season is lost in a week. Everything must be tested before the window, not during it.
A site serving Makkah is used by people on unfamiliar networks, on borrowed and older devices, often in a language they read but do not speak. Every unnecessary kilobyte is a real cost, and every ambiguous label becomes a support call at the worst possible moment.
What we would do first in Makkah
Through a pilgrimage lens
Pilgrimage operators in Makkah serve guests who booked from another country, in another language, often months ago and often through an intermediary. The site has to hold up for the person comparing three operators at midnight and for the agent reselling you in Jakarta or Istanbul.
On the ground that means working around Al-Masjid al-Haram, Makkah Royal Clock Tower, Jabal al-Nour, alongside institutions such as Umm Al-Qura University, King Abdullah Medical City, and against a pipeline shaped by Masar Destination. Clients here often operate across Jeddah, Taif, Madinah as well, and the same site has to serve all of it.
Scope
What ui/ux design includes
User research. Interviews and observation with real users in Makkah, not personas invented in a workshop.
Bidirectional interface design. LTR and RTL designed as siblings, with numerals, icons and motion handled correctly.
Interactive prototypes. Clickable in both languages, tested on real devices before development starts.
Design system. Components, tokens and documentation your developers can build from directly.
How it works
How we run it
- 01Research
Talk to real users in Makkah. Everything downstream depends on this being honest.
- 02Define
Problems ranked by how much revenue they cost, not by how annoying they are.
- 03Prototype
Fast, rough, bilingual, and put in front of people early.
- 04Test
Watch people fail, then fix the design rather than blaming the user.
- 05Systemise
Tokens and components handed to engineering with documentation.
Coverage
Who we do this for in Makkah
Sectors
- Hajj & Umrah services
- Hotels & hospitality
- Transport & ground handling
- Retail
- Real estate
- Catering
Districts and areas
- Al Aziziyah
- Ajyad
- Al Shisha
- Al Awali
- Al Nuzha
- Al Rusaifah
- Al Zahir
- Al Kakiyah
- Al Hindawiyah
Delivery is remote-first from Jeddah, so every part of Makkah and Makkah Province is served on the same terms.
Relevant work
Work in sectors that matter in Makkah
Ministry of Hajj and Umrah. Arabic platform. Delivered in Makkah.
King Abdullah Medical City. Digital work for the medical city. Delivered in Makkah.
Umm Al-Qura University. Digital work for the university. Delivered in Makkah.
Wadi Makkah. Digital work for the innovation company. Delivered in Makkah.
Work delivered in Makkah: Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, Umm Al-Qura University, King Abdullah Medical City, Wadi Makkah.
Works well with
Related services in Makkah
Questions
UI/UX Design in Makkah — FAQs
Do you test with users in Makkah?
Yes. Remote moderated sessions with participants from your actual market, recorded so your team can watch the failures rather than read about them.
Do you hand over a design system?
Yes — tokens, components and documentation in Figma, structured so developers can implement without guessing.
How does UX work with development?
We prototype ahead of engineering and stay involved through build. Designs that are handed over and never revisited drift, and the drift always lands on the user.
How many languages should a Makkah operator's website support?
Arabic and English always. Beyond that, follow your actual bookings — Urdu, Turkish, Indonesian, Malay and French each pay for themselves if that market is a meaningful share of your guests, and cost you if it is not.
Why does UI/UX Design in Makkah need a different approach?
Makkah traffic is seasonal, international and multilingual. Pages have to load on weak roaming connections and answer booking questions immediately, because a pilgrim comparing three Umrah operators will not wait four seconds for a hero image. Almost every commercial activity in Makkah connects to pilgrimage: hotels, Umrah operators, transport, catering, retail and real estate around the Haram. A page built for a national audience misses both of those, which is why we scope ui/ux design work in Makkah from the local market outward.
Do you work with hajj & umrah services businesses in Makkah?
Yes — hajj & umrah services is one of the largest sectors in Makkah, alongside hotels & hospitality and transport & ground handling. We also work across government, education, healthcare and professional services in Makkah Province.
Also available in
UI/UX Design in other Saudi cities
Tell us what you are trying to achieve in Makkah. We reply within one business day, in Arabic or English, with a straight answer about whether we are the right studio for it.
Start a project