Hala Chat
Categories
Product Design, UI/UX
Client
Public Investment Fund
Scope
UI Direction, UI Design, Responsive Design, Design System, Theming, Selected UX
Year
2024
Agency
VML
Team
Omar Badr, Amanda Pinto, Kassem Hamdar, Maha El Khoury, Sofia Papadopoulou
Every room changes the conversation.
A coffee break invites a different conversation from a formal meeting room. The people may be the same, but the space around them changes how they speak.
Hala Chat asked a similar question: what should conversation feel like inside an organization of more than 3,000 people?
Built from scratch for PIF, Hala brings conversations that once lived across separate tools into one place, from one-to-one chats and project groups to communities, calls, personal spaces and AI.
First layer: mood.
PIF greens kept Hala familiar, while beige and orange added warmth and made the environment feel more approachable. Orange also became a cue for moments of creation.
Second layer: personality beyond color.
Spacing, softer corners, clear threads, presence states and subtle motion carried that same feeling into the interface.
The test became simple: Take the color away. Does it still feel like Hala?
One conversation, wherever work happens.
Hala was designed across mobile, tablet and desktop, keeping the same conversational model while adapting navigation and layout to each screen.
It also needed to live inside other PIF products. Using a token-based theme system, color could adapt to the surrounding platform while typography, spacing, components and behavior stayed consistent.
Different contexts. The same invitation to connect.
Make conversation easy to start, and easy to grow.
A floating + became the starting point for new chats, groups, personal spaces, AI conversations and communities.
Communities helped employees connect beyond existing teams, while AI could turn conversations into actions such as creating tasks, setting reminders or scheduling meetings.
Hala was designed not only around conversations people already had, but around making new ones easier to begin.
A place built not just to hold conversations, but to help more of them happen.
