Designing for Nigerians: Usable’s first meetup of 2017
Design Naija to grow the Naira. — Funfere Koroye
Happy New Year everyone. This is a quick update on the first Usable meetup for the year 2017.
Change is a common mantra in Nigeria, and Kene and his UX team, showing that they are socially aware, decided to change things a bit this year. For one, wine was served and we got to use a corkscrew designed in Nigeria by a Nigerian to open it (more on this later). Also, away from the format regular attendees are familiar with, we listened to product presentations before the speaker’s.
Isé logun … (Work is the antidote…)
First on stage were the blues (cos they wore a blue vest and I watch soccer) from Findworka.com, led by their founder and CEO, Dele Bakare. Findworka.com is a new startup that connects digital workers with people that want freelancers. They have a web platform where the digitally skilled (developers, designers etc.) and those in need of their services can sign up, interact, get stuff done and everybody ends up happy.
Notable features on Findworka.com include chat functionality, a customized payment platform that aims to discourage foul play, search, and a 15% commission that is less than what Freelancer and Fiverr collect (according to them).
Anyways, they came for feedback and they got some. Notable among them is an encouragement to further embrace the mobile first approach.
Next up.
The UX team at CcHub started working on a redesign of their website and decided to present it to the house for feedback. We were made to understand that design decisions on the new website were informed by extensive research. Also, for those of you who know, Kene has always told he’s working on the website for past three years or so — he’s working on it for real this time.
Ni méta méta. (In threes)
In comes Funfere Koroye, the energetic and down-to-earth biker and product developer who makes physical products (I see change). He has a bachelor’s degree in industrial design and a master’s in product design. Now he and his dad are patiently waiting for product design to be a big thing in Nigeria — his dad is currently having the laugh, so to speak.
During his interesting and very eventful presentation (you can view the presentation slides here), the product designer generally talked about designing physical products, going beyond the pixel. To him, we must always think about the user and be ready to follow good process. He took us through a really engaging presentation where he talked about ethnographic research, product design, and its importance.
Funfere believes that the popular cry to “buy Naija to grow the Naira” is misguided because Nigerians, like most humans, will buy products they like and find useful. So, a good path to economic prosperity is for Nigerian companies to pay more attention to designing for the Nigerian market, then the market will embrace the products.
Funfere and his company designed a wine opener named Méta (three), after he noticed the pain people went through to open their wine bottles. He explained the design process that finally brought about the prototype with slides that contained illustrations.
He demonstrated the usability of the corkscrew to us and, although he was also in a bit of pain while showing us, I guess we can pardon him as the product is only just taking shape.
It’s a wrap. There is more to tell, but this was meant to be brief and mouth-watering. The best way to get the full package is to attend the meetups.
Let’s part ways with these important updates about Usable:
1) Checkout the thank you piece Kene wrote last December.
2) Click here to browse through Usable’s thread of activities for 2016.
3) Usable has launched a Medium publication. Visit usable on Medium.
4) Because we only meet 11 times a year, Usable is looking to add gap activities this year to serve as refreshers and opportunities to learn.
5) Usable will build this year, with the help of the community. It starts with POST and it’s hosted GitHub. Checkout usableUX on GitHub.
6) The last email I received from Usable was sent using MailChimp. This means less stress for Kene.
