Akhmad Shakirov

About me

Growing up in different countries and cultures, and now living in the USA, exposed me to a wide range of perspectives that influence my approach to user experience, it taught me an empathy towards the user, not manipulation, but a means to foster connection, having player's expectations in mind, and clearly communicating game's message. I carry that lesson across my work.

I started in web UX/UI design, where I learned to think clearly about user needs, readability, and flow. But video games have always been my first love, since childhood they’ve been a medium that amazed me with their interactivity, storytelling, and design in a way no other art form can. That passion eventually inspired my shift into game development, where I tried many roles from animation to level-design, before finding my place in technical game design, a role that lets me directly shape the player’s experience.

To know me better: I enjoy all kinds of games, you will see complete genre festival in my library. Some of my favorite games: Deus Ex, Dishonored, Disco Elysium, Inscryption, Sifu.

In my free time I enjoy practicing art , painting with oil, drawing with charcoal and drawing pixel-art and animation, my top movies: Scott Piligrim Versus the World, Blade Runner and Full Metal Jacket. I used to read books, but now very rarely, my latest book was DUNE, I used to be big comics geek, but now I only read graphic novels that are complete, my current top is Hellboy.

My favorite place to visit, each time that I come to new city is Art Museum, we have good Art Museum in Houston that I visit regularly, but I was blown away by Chicago Art Museum, never seen so much Claude Monet.