Meet the Persona: Ernest Ojeh
In this edition of Persona, we catch up UX Specialist from Delta State, Ernest Ojeh. At Konga, Ernest worked on the recently launched KongaPay.
Persona: Tell us a bit about yourself.
Ernest Ojeh: Okay! I’m self taught designer.
Self taught?
EO:Yeah, Self taught . So I never went to school, I did go to school of course but I didn’t go to school for designers. I was exposed to tech at a very young age.
How old were you?
I was about a 10, let’s say 12. I used to have gadgets when I was young, I got my first computer in 2001. So I been exposed to tech, I was trying to tinker and tweak stuff at a very young age , I tried my hands at programming for a while.
Where are you from? What’s your hometown?
I’m from Delta State.
Did you grow up in Lagos?
Yeah! I was born in Lagos. I grew up in Lagos. I’ve only been to Delta a few times, maybe about twice or thrice.
Interesting, so you went to secondary school in Lagos right?
Yes I did. I went to Federal Government College, Ijanikin, Lagos. Spent my university days in Akure at the Federal University of Technology. I actually studied something completely different, I studied Urban & Regional Planning. I can tell you it has nothing to do what I am doing right now.
What role would you say your childhood and your growing up played in leading you down the path that you’ve reached right now? Hmm! First of all it taught me to go with your passion, anything that you’re really passionate about. When I started, I never knew I would end up doing this as a career or doing it as a day job, it was just a hobby. So, when I was in school it was just a side projects, I used to do it for free then for people. I never saw it as a job, I just enjoyed doing it. So, having into the opportunity to turn it into continue career, it just shows that if you’re passionate about something you then you can always make a way. Also if what you’re passionate about, creates value for other people then you’ll always make a way.
What’s a regular day at Konga like for you?
From when I joined, we’ve been trying to push out a product, which is KongaPay. So a regular day would be shuffling roles between UI design, to a little bit of front-end development, to meeting with the UX team to discuss a design direction; for instance if we have several mockups for how we want something to look, we’d be discussing the ideal way to go. I’d be talking to product managers to know what plans they have and what developers need to do. My role here spreads across building for web and mobile apps and some design in between. We’re building Android apps and we’re building iOS apps, so after I design the screens, I‘d be exporting assets for the developers for both platforms. Then I’d be checking to see how it looks on both devices, and talking to the developers if they have challenges. So I’m just all over the place.
Part of your time is spent sitting at a desk and part of your time is spent not at a desk but discussing the users and what’s going to be happening. That’s interesting. Can I ask what tools you use in these processes?
I design primarily in Sketch, but before starting the design I like to use pen and paper to sketch, I think there is less friction, you don’t have to think too much or open a laptop, you just pull out paper and sketch. Even before pen and paper and design I like to prototype, so I use Proto.io to create interacrive prototypes that I run on devices to get feedback before getting into the full design process. For user testing we use Lookback get feedback from the testing stage. When I’m exporting assets to developers I use Zeplin, there is a plugin for Sketch that I have, once the design is done I can export all my screens to Zeplin. You don’t need to go back and forth with the developers saying “Export this at 2x or 1x”. Once the screens are exported to Zeplin the developers can export what they want from there, they can see dimensions , check sizes and colors. If i have two shapes, once the developer simply does a mouseover they can see the distance between the two shapes and the dimensions, so they don’t need to keep asking you about everything. They have a strong community on facebook and a good support system too, it’s a very good tool and I’ve had no issues with Zeplin.
Do you design everyday?
I would say yes. Even if I’m not in Sketch, maybe I’m using paper or I’m making prototypes, I’m still in the whole design process so I would say yes.
What is that like? Do you ever feel drained of creative juices? Yes I do. When I used to freelance, I might have days where I don’t work. I would try to work but nothing comes out. These days that rarely happens, mostly because I’m at a day job now as opposed to freelancing, so it’s not really up to me to say “oh I don’t feel like working today”.
If what you’re passionate about, creates value for other people then you’ll always make a way.
Is the hustle rewarding?
Yes, I would say it’s rewarding, not just in pay but also getting to see the impact of what building is making on people. For instance the KongaPay launch we did yesterday, the excitement that we got online from people that were waiting for the product, they were sending me messages on Twitter saying, “I want to integrate it now!” “How do I integrate it?” “Where do I download the app?” Seeing that kind of feedback from people, that’s compensation.
That’s good to hear. Speaking of hustles, I’m dying to know about Prowork, tell us about how Prowork was born.
Prowork was born at a hackathon, Startup Weekend Lagos in 2011. It was me, Opeyemi Obembe, Francis Onwumere and Eze Ude. After Startup Weekend it was just me, Francis and Ope that continued the project. During Startup Weekend we built the product, it was a MVP(Minimum Viable Product), then after the hackathon we got interest from people saying that the product was really good and that we should continue working on it. Then we decided to take it up as a full time thing. Prowork is a project management web app, it’s on web, it’s on mobile even SMS and Blackberry it was really extensive. It was positioned as a project management tool for emerging markets. It was everywhere, on the phones, even when you did not have internet you would get SMSes. There was integration with many other existing tools, it was pretty extensive and we had some adoption, there were people using it. We applied for incubators, startup accelerator programs and we ran it for 2 or 3 years before I left.
Were you guys trying to solve a problem with collaboration? Why Prowork in particular?
Before Prowork, I and Ope were in school and Francis was working in Ibadan, but we used to work together on projects. There was this issue we had, there was no way to easily collaborate and track the progress we were making on the things we were working on. That was the main reason why we chose to build that. It was a problem we had and it was a tool we built and use ourselves.
You’re one of the few Nigerian creatives who has actually built his own website, why did you chose to do that?
I’ve always had a personal website, the first website I built was actually my personal website. So I’ve had a personal website since 2004, and I’ve always had one iteration or the other, I keep changing the look and feel of it. Too bad I don’t have a timeline of all those old designs, but I’m sure if I search I’ll find something. I feel it’s just the Internet and being a designer, at this point i don’t think there should be tags like “Nigerian designer”, “Ghanaian designer”, we’re all on the Internet, we’re all online. You can see what people in the US are doing, they can see what you’re doing. There’s just no standard. I started putting my stuff out there to boost my own confidence, I would see what other people are doing and I’d look at it and say ‘ah ok I think can do this’. Back then what I used to do is go to CSS review sites and post my portfolio for them to review, and it’s things like that that motivated me to keep putting my work out there. Since if I put it out there and get positive feedback, it inspires me to keep pushing and it boosts my confidence.
Do you feel that you have any responsibility to contribute to something much larger than yourself? In terms of the design world or something that you see in the world that you are not comfortable with, but you know that even if there’s a fire going on somewhere and you’re not a fireman, you could still do something to help.
I think deeply about that everyday. Some weeks ago I spoke at a panel in UX Lagos at CCHub and Kene Udeze asked that I join them; they’re thinking starting a design class for people that are interested in taking up design as a career. He asked me if i was interested and I said ‘sure’, I don’t think twice about stuff like that, because I know that there are a lot of problems that we have that can be fixed with design thinking. There are a lot.
You see some people online, when Facebook is building bots, they are also thinking ‘oh I think I need to build a chatbot as well’, while there are pressing issues around them.
Would you care to name a few for us? Perhaps the ones that annoy you the most, the ones that stick in your craw the most.
The first thing that pops into my head right now is traffic. This one is going back to my Urban & Regional Planning, I think that the traffic in Lagos can be properly managed with a built route. That’s just one idea though. Even our buildings for instance, with the kind of heat we have in Lagos, the designs of our buildings should evolve to cater to that need for coolness. I was going by a street sometime back and I saw a building that barely had any windows, they were really really small. I was wondering to myself that, this country is very hot, there is really no power you have to turn on a generator to cool yourself in your house so why are your windows so small? Basic things like that. Even in the other aspects of design in architecture it shouldn’t alway be about aesthetics, there should be more thought given to it like ‘What is the wind like in that area?’ ‘What’s the level of sunlight’, things like that.
Tell me about 3D printing, you saw this in Lagos?
It was Startup Weekend this year, the was an idea from a guy that built something for measuring the amount of fuel that goes into your car, so that when you’re not cheated when fuel is sold to you. I think there are problems that are peculiar to Lagos that we can solve with this kind of thinking. Niche kind of things that we can easily solve, and we don’t have to wait for the government or big companies to solve them, you can just look around and see a problem and try to solve it. You may not necessarily build these things, you can come up with an idea and try to expand the idea a bit with sketches or try case studies, things that any designer can do. It doesn’t have to be a well built product, it can just be a process of how I think I can simplify ‘bla bla bla’.
These are probably some of the things that you want to do in the next few years right? Is there anything else that you would like to get involved in?
For me the aim of whatever I’m doing has always been the impact, how people are going to take these things or how to simplify people’s lives. For instance KongaPay, the impact is huge, really huge, you can now walk into a store, bring out your phone, and type in a code to pay for something, it’s all very seamless. So I hope to work on products that simplify people’s lives, as I’ve said before Nigeria has a lot of problems that need solving and sometimes I think tech people in Nigeria are distracted by what is going on in Silicon Valley. You see some people online, when Facebook is building bots, they are also thinking ‘oh I think I need to build a chatbot as well’, while there are pressing issues around you.
That are not necessarily solved by chatbots.
Yeah, chatbots are the least of your issues, we don’t have electricity and you’re busy building chatbots. I just want to evolve to that point where it’s more than just design that I’m doing, I’m like a problem-solver all-round. I’ve seen some interesting things people are doing, some startups have people coming in and seeing actual problems and solving them. Instead of just building something because it’s ‘cool’. I remember when social networking sites were like the cool thing, everyone was like ‘oh I’ll build a social networking site’, and I’m always thinking ‘find an actual problem and solve it, not trying to to clone something that already exists’.
Do you see yourself contributing to these kind of issues?
Yes, I have some ideas I’m thinking of pushing online. Pushing out case studies to get ideas from people, these case studies I’m thinking of some of them are physical products, some of them are web-based. I’m thinking about creating prototypes and writing some stories about them and letting people discuss just to raise awareness about some of these problems that we face. I’ve seen some people build very interesting things with hardware products, 3D printing and all that. I think that’s an interesting direction to go to, because not all problems can be solved by building apps and in Nigeria we have a lot of problems like that, problems waiting for solutions and I think it’s designers that are burdened with that task of fixing those things.
How do you find inspiration and where do you go to?
Well if I’m designing UI, when it’s time to design the UI, I check similar stuff. I want to work on a website for instance, I would go to Dribbble to see similar things to the direction I want go, there’s pttrns, MaterialUp for Android designs and that’s it.
What blogs, books and podcasts do you follow?
There’s Seanwes that I listen to, that one is really good if you’re using your design skills for income, if you’re a freelancer or you have your own business. It’s hosted by Shawn Mckay, very cool guy. The podcast doesn’t have anything to do with design it’s more about business and productivity but it helps build that professional business mindset. I listen to Design Details, I think that’s like my best podcast right now. Design Details is nice, Immutable is nice also, it’s also hosted by Bryn Jackson & Sam Soffes.
I’m on Designer News a lot, I’m also on Product Hunt a lot, I try to keep up with stuff people are building. UX Onboarding is another nice site. Oh and there are two nice sites I discovered recently Ways We Work and People Over Heroes, they try to see the day to day lives of people in our field in the US and in other countries. It just helps you know that you’re not alone in all this.
Do you have any advice that you’d give to people just starting out in this industry?
The advice I would give is, if you want to do your own thing, try working for a company first, so that you get familiar with the processes involved in doing these things. Working on your own can be cool and all and you’d learn a lot also even when working in a small team, but if you’ve worked for a big organization you would see end-to-end how these things are broken down. How we go into the field to get feedback, the amount of effort that goes into research, you’d come to value why some of these things are important. Try getting experience in an established company before going on your own.
Contributed by freelance design consultant, Adetunji Openiyi for Persona, check him out Twitter.
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