SKILLS
Research, Design, Prototyping
MY ROLE
I owned product design for Gathr, a Nigerian crowdfunding platform, defining the core flows and key decisions, verification, payouts, account types alongside the full UI across web and admin. The goal was to build something that felt effortless to use but rigorous enough to trust with people's money.
*Due to non-disclosure policies, I have omitted and obfuscated company confidential information in this case study
FINDING OPPORTUNITIES TO DELIGHT USERS
A Nigerian crowdfunding platform designed to make raising and giving money feel fast, transparent, and trustworthy — tackling the skepticism around online giving in the Nigerian market.
DESIGNING A DELIGHTFUL EXPERIENCE
A lot of creators have a cause but freeze up when it's time to write about it, so I added AI-assisted campaign writing to give them a starting point instead of a blinking cursor. Checkout was built on Paystack, a payment rail people already trust, rather than asking them to hand their card info to something unfamiliar. Also, to make giving feel effortless, Gathr's fee was moved to withdrawal only so when someone hits "donate," 100% of it goes exactly where they meant it to go, no guilt tax at checkout.
DESIGN
The process started with understanding why people hesitate to give online in Nigeria, skepticism around where the money actually goes was the real problem to solve, not just "make a donation button."
It was less "design the app" and more "design the conditions that make someone comfortable handing over money to a stranger's cause," with the interface as the final layer, not the starting point.
FINAL ITERATION
The design leaned toward warm but structured: clean typography, generous spacing, and a restrained color system that let campaign imagery and creator stories do the emotional work instead of the UI competing for attention.
Donation flows were kept short by design, with progress and impact framed visually at every step, so giving felt like participating in something moving forward rather than filling out a form.
IMPACT
Delivered the complete design system needed to take Gathr from concept to build. The product decisions made during design moving the fee to withdrawal-only, requiring BVN/NIN verification pre-launch campaign, and structuring three distinct account types, became core business logic baked into the MVP itself, not just visual choices layered on top.
As Gathr moves further into development and eventually launches, the next layer of impact: user adoption, campaigns funded, conversion on donation flow, will come from real usage data. Happy to fold that in once it exists.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Building Gathr reinforced that in a space like crowdfunding, the hardest design problems aren't visual, they're structural decisions about trust and money that have to get resolved before the UI can do its job. Fee placement, verification timing, and account structure ended up mattering more to the final experience than any individual screen.