From the cover of my fourth book, The Point of Pointless Work
Ali Almossawi
Currently, Staff Product Design Engineer at Laurel. Previously, Engineering + Design Manager at Apple.
I help people think clearly.
I fell in love with coding at 13, and engineering became my main focus from then on. At 17, I walked into a watch store in England, in an orange shirt with a tear in it, to buy my dad an Omega with money I'd saved up from my website and apps. When the man asked for my PIN, I was so nervous I couldn't remember it. I went to the bank and came back with cash.
I spent seven years at Apple, where I led engineering and design teams in its AI/ML and Security organizations. I fell in love with data visualization at MIT, and that led to many years and many projects at the MIT Media Lab, Sony, Mozilla, and now Laurel.
I fell in love with writing as a way to get my ideas across, and that led to four books that have reached 3.5+ million readers across 23 languages, and 64 longform essays that go out to 7,000 readers. A memoir and a nonfiction book are in the works.
I ran a design agency for three years. I learned how to bind books, and bound tiny books for readers. I researched the chocolate industry, and nearly launched a chocolate company with my wife. And I learned everything I could about AI agents, and now build with them every day.
I read a line from Dickens once: “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.” Much of my attention has always gone to growing people. I've mentored dozens of designers, engineers, and researchers through office hours and the MIT Alumni Advisors Hub, and I interview applicants to MIT each admissions season.
For inquiries about Bad Choices, contact Seth Fishman. For inquiries about the print editions of Bad Arguments or Loaded Language, contact Karen Giangreco. For everything else, ali@almossawi.com.
The first thing I ever bought was a watch for my dad.
Product and Design Work
Laurel Signal
As a product co-lead. A platform that unlocks for legal and accounting firms the ability to see where and how their time is spent and how effective their AI usage has been. Take a look.
Work Priorities
As a manager. An internal tool my team at Apple designed and shipped. It drove the most significant behavioral change in how teams managed their bugs. Take a look.
Check Yo Shelf
As a solo builder. A 0-to-1 side project that turns a photo of a bookshelf into a searchable catalog, shipped as an iOS app in three weeks and then rebuilt for the web. Take a look.
People I've worked with
One of the best leaders I've come across. Ali is not only dedicated to his work as an engineer and manager, but he also brings this genuine empathy and vision that make him a standout. Ali has an incredible knack for solving tough problems creatively and has this inspiring ability to think outside the box. He’s easy to work with, down-to-earth, and really cares about his team’s growth and well-being.
Software Engineering Manager, Apple
I worked with Ali on UX/UI efforts for machine learning infrastructure. Impressed across the board with [Ali's] ability to distill deep technical issues with concise questions that drove everyone to alignment. I heartily recommend Ali to be a part of any organization or project that requires a critical thinker who cares and implements clean, well‑designed solutions that solve key problems.
Engineering Program Manager, Apple
Books and writing
The Critical Thinker Newsletter
Practical ideas every other Thursday to help you become a better critical thinker. 60+ longform essays. Launched in June 2023. Subscribe now.
An Illustrated Book of Loaded Language
Learn to hear what's left unsaid in the subtle ways news headlines and various other forms of language influence our thinking. Published November 2021. Order the print edition.
An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments
A book on critical thinking (reached 3.5+ million) that explains a set of common errors in reasoning, described by Hope Jahren as “a book every scientist should have.” Read it online or in print!
Bad Choices
An illustrated book acquired by Penguin Random House at auction, described by Vint Cerf as “one of the more clever ways of introducing computational thinking to the general public.” Take a look.
Hans in the Land of Bards
The opening part of a novella about an absentminded tailor and his quick-witted accomplice struggle to escape a land where things aren't always what they seem. Take a look.
The Point of Pointless Work
A reflection on five years in publishing, and the transformative power of hobbies. A book I wrote for my mailing list, published by Cormorant Press. Take a look.
Alone with the Alone
A beautiful printed book and a set of ten timeless cards with thought-provoking quotes to live by. Take a look.
Amaranta
A picture book for grown-ups that explores separation anxiety and empathy. Still a work in progress. The original preview / The interactive version.
Data visualization work
Work Intelligence Reporting
Interactive visualizations for legal and accounting firms that borrow the elegance of pen-on-paper. I'll be adding more of my work from Laurel here as it becomes public.
Developer Experience Tools
Visualizations in WebGL, functional interactives, and developer products used across the entire AI/ML org, built over a span of 7 years. My Apple work is proprietary.
MetricsGraphics.js
A D3-based library that's optimized for visualizing and laying out time-series data in a principled way—600,000 hits, 7,100 GitHub stars, top 1% of most-starred projects. Take a look.
Firefox Hardware Report
The first ever public report of the hardware used by Firefox users. The report's data can be used by developers to improve the experience of Web users. Take a look.
The Big Five US Trade Book Publishers and Their Imprints
A darling of the publishing industry. Editors and VPs from all major publishers have contributed edits to it. Referenced in Publishers Weekly. Take a look.
Communicating with Data
An interactive deconstruction of a network speed trap graphic for potential use in a realtime data science model. Take a look.
Guidelines for Time-Series
An interactive deconstruction of the nuances of a ubiquitous chart type—the line chart. Take a look.
The Web We Want: Firefox 29
A real-time visualization of the global community that powers Mozilla, visited by 10 million visitors. My contributions were designing and coding the map and stats page. Take a look.
Flying Over Data in VR
What would visualizing geographic data in virtual reality look like? Would it be compelling? Would it be insightful? A little experiment using the open-source tools A‑Frame and D3. Take a look.
How Maintainable is Firefox?
By appealing to the explanatory powers of five practical measures of architectural complexity, this work explores the quality of the Firefox codebase. Take a look.
See ArchiveHide Archive
Pantheon
A project by the Macro Connections group at the Media Lab that I had the good fortune of co-developing and designing. Pantheon visualizes global culture using cultural icons of note. Take a look.
Technical Debt in Firefox and Chromium
A quantitative comparison of two complex software systems, using prose and a visual inspired by a story from Greek mythology. Take a look.
How Educated are World Leaders?
A descriptive visualization of the education levels of world leaders, from 1950 or thereabouts to the present day. Visited by 100,000 visitors. Take a look.
Bahrain: Two Years On
Shortlisted in the 2013 Information is Beautiful Awards, this visualization impartially depicts the casualties of the conflict in Bahrain, abstracted to take the form of a palm tree. Take a look.
Evolution of the Firefox Codebase
A visualization that presents a set of metrics for all releases of Firefox that are indicative of quality and allows one to inspect them through one of several views. Take a look.
The Observatory of Economic Complexity
A tool by Alex Simoes and the Macro Connections group at the MIT Media Lab that I had the good fortune of designing the first version of. Take a look.
Experiments and side projects
The Seating Habits of MIT Students
A recreation of my first data visualization, from 2011, showing where my classmates in MIT’s 15.514 course liked to sit. Take a look.
Substack Dapper Stats
Substack has stats. But does it have dapper stats? Classify your topics and get stats and visualizations for your Substack publication. Take a look.
Can I Pick Your Brain Real Quick?
An interactive guide to Silicon Valley vernacular through 100 playing cards. Tap, flip, and share! Learn more.
Goat & Bear
Animated, musical shorts on logical fallacies, cognitive biases, and critical thinking. Learn more.
Press, features, publications, smaller works, and older experiments moved here.
Brief biographical statement Ali Almossawi is the bestselling author of An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments, as well as An Illustrated Book of Loaded Language, Bad Choices, and The Point of Pointless Work. His books have reached 3.5 million readers, been translated into 23 languages, and sold over 400,000 copies in print. An alumnus of MIT and Carnegie Mellon, he led design and engineering teams at Apple, and has held roles at Sony and currently at Laurel.
Download headshot 1, or headshot 2 (no copyright, public domain).
