Assem Bentahar

Hi, I'm Assem Bentahar, a design director with 15 years of experience in product, web and brand design, and the founder of Semas Studio. I led design for UNCF's TechHub and Ernest E. Just platforms, for Possip and Productions.com, both funded by the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund, and for LearnMatch, an app with 2.5M+ downloads.

Available to relocate to Europe.

Google for Startups Black Founders Fund ×2 · Comenius EduMedia Seal · City of Helsinki pilot · USCIS-approved O-1A petition

UNCF TechHub and Ernest E. Just Life Science Society

2021 to 2024 · Platform · Design System · Permissions

Two platform programs for the United Negro College Fund, 967 screens on one shared system. A professional network with five member roles, a summit builder, targeted announcements, a federal grants directory and 38 transactional email templates. The work later merged into HBCUv, UNCF's digital learning platform.

Case study coming

TechHub candidate manager: pipeline counts above a list of candidates, each tagged with a member role.
Ernest E. Just announcement form: recipients narrowed by audience, interest, skill and proficiency.
TechHub summit builder: one day of the timetable with session times, format and speaker type.
Ernest E. Just onboarding: choosing one of six member roles.

Possip

2017 to 2019 · Platform · Design System · Operations

One text a week from every parent. I designed the machine that let a small team turn those replies into the same weekly report, at the same quality, for every school: a comment queue, a four-axis sorting system, an escalation form and a section-by-section report, plus a district view for the administrators who renew the contract. Possip won the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund in its inaugural 2020 cohort.

Case study coming

Possip weekly report: seven named sections with completion status, one marked incomplete.
Possip comment queue: one parent comment with its position in the queue and four sorting axes.
Possip escalation form: a parent comment restated as a summary, a response level and a proposed solution.
Possip district dashboard: participation figures for the district above responses per school.

Productions.com

2020 to 2024 · Marketplace · Design System · Five audiences

A marketplace for film and television production with five kinds of user: production companies, crew, vendors, grant funders and community groups. Where money and trust change hands I used patterns people already know. The real work was one component system that let a small team serve five audiences without building five products, the same system that later carried the UNCF platforms. Productions.com won the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund in the same 2020 cohort.

Case study coming

Productions.com hiring pipeline: candidate cards in four stage columns, with a banner showing staff working inside a client account.
Productions.com team settings: inviting a member and choosing a role, with what each role can do written out.
Productions.com crew community: pending members and invitations above a member list with positions.
Productions.com vendor profile: a catering business with opening hours, payment options, price band and rating.

LearnMatch

2018 · Mobile · Product · Brand

A three-month engagement for Vision Education in Austria: the interface and app icon for a gamified language app localized into 35+ languages. Learning is framed as a football season, with playing time, points and a league table. 2.5M+ downloads, the Comenius EduMedia Seal in 2020, and the same interface still in production seven years later.

Case study coming

LearnMatch question screen: an audio prompt with four picture answers and a ten-step progress bar.
LearnMatch home: course cards, live matches and a timeline showing points just earned.
LearnMatch profile: playing time, points and league shown on a football shirt card.
LearnMatch league table: players ranked by points with a promotion threshold.

Superhood

2018 to 2021 · Mobile · Product · Illustration

Design and illustration identity for a Helsinki neighborhood platform: a branded banner system, the posting flow from camera to publish, and the rules for reporting and comments. Superhood was piloted by the City of Helsinki in four districts in 2023 and is live in 63 cities across Finland and Germany.

Case study coming

Superhood banner system: five branded banner categories, each with its own colour, icon and voice.
Superhood posting flow: every screen from camera to publish, including drafts and creating a new hood.
Superhood reporting: two versions of the report sheet compared, with default and pressed states.
Superhood type corrections: a redrawn capital G and normalised numeral heights in Circular.

Practice

Alongside client work I build my own design tooling: custom Claude skills, a review canvas for AI-generated interfaces, and pipelines that capture a live page and rebuild it on a new set of design tokens. I use them in production work every week.

Recognition

Earned by products I led design for.

15 years · Founder and Design Director, Semas Studio · USCIS-approved O-1A petition, 2020 · English and Arabic · Available to relocate to Europe