Giini John Scott — Senior Product Designer & Design Lead

I design products millions trust with their money

Tier-1 banking at KCB. Generative AI on Microsoft Copilot. Digital identity at Smile ID. 8+ years turning high-stakes complexity into products people actually use — and teams that ship faster.

Open to Senior Product Designer & Design Lead roles
8+ yrsB2C, fintech & enterprise product design
5×Revenue growth on Tendepay in year one
40%Product-adoption gains within 6 months
WCAG 2.1Accessibility programs, NVDA & JAWS tested

The story

Every product I've shipped answers the same question: will people trust this with what matters most?

It started in Nairobi — designing savings for a Tier-1 bank, where a progress bar had to survive a 3G connection and a promise had to survive the fine print. That work opened doors: merchant platforms across four countries, digital identity for a continent coming online, AI interaction patterns for Microsoft Copilot. Different industries, one craft — turning high-stakes complexity into products people use without thinking twice.

Selected work

Three products, three different bets on trust — each told end-to-end.

Behance ↗
FinTech · Live · 5 markets Millions of users · −20% support inquiries

01KCB Goal AccountModernizing savings for East Africa

View case study
B2B · Payments 1,120+ businesses · 5× MRR

02Tendepay360° merchant economy

View case study
Gamification · Web app Optimistic UI · Custom rules engine

03KADI!Cultural game mechanics

View case study

What I bring

  • FinTech at ScaleGoal-based savings for a Tier-1 bank, live in 5 markets — millions of users, −20% support inquiries
  • Generative-AI UXMicrosoft Copilot — enterprise AI patterns balancing trust, transparency & delight
  • Digital Identity & KYCSmile ID — Africa's leading identity verification, fraud-detection & compliance platform
  • Design LeadershipLed & mentored a 4-person team at Burn; design direction, critiques & strategy across distributed teams
  • Accessibility & Inclusive UXWCAG 2.1 programs at Andela — +25% compliance, tested with NVDA & JAWS
  • Design SystemsFront-loaded visual language lifting development velocity 40% and cutting rework 30%
← All work

KCB Bank — Goal Account

Modernizing savings for the East African market

Transitioning KCB's digital banking from a transactional utility to a goal-oriented financial partner — live for millions of users across five countries.

Role

Senior Product Designer — Lead Research, UX/UI, Strategy

Platform

iOS & Android — KCB Mobile App, live on both stores

Scale

Millions of users · Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, South Sudan

Domain

Tier 1 banking · Goal-based savings

01 — Challenge

Beyond the balance

Despite being a Tier 1 bank, KCB saw a gap in active savings. Users transferred money through the app but lacked motivation to save. Three frictions defined the problem:

  • Low visibility. Users felt no sense of control over their savings progress.
  • Rigidity. Traditional accounts ignored the variable income patterns of the informal sector.
  • Cultural friction. Standard banking didn't celebrate milestone goals — land purchase, school fees, emergency cushions.

02 — Research

Three pillars of insight

Business & stakeholder strategy. Across 7 key business units, the core tension was liquidity (user access) vs. retention (bank stability). I designed a flexible-withdrawal mechanism with real-time interest-impact transparency — informed consent that satisfied both sides.

User psychology. Interviews with 7 users over 11 days revealed the "savings vs. sacrifice" gap: saving felt like a loss of current funds. I pivoted the UI from a text-heavy ledger to a visual progress journey with milestone celebrations at 25 / 50 / 75% — immediate psychological rewards for small wins.

Regional nuance. In East Africa saving is often communal or intermittent. A flexible top-up system lets users contribute any amount, any time, without penalty — critical for the gig and informal economy.

Context over universalism: what works for a European banking app doesn't work for a Tier 1 bank in Africa.

03 — Execution

From Figma to millions

Engineering. Optimized for low-bandwidth conditions and older devices — progress-bar animations tuned for 3G, edge cases mapped for network timeouts mid-top-up and multi-currency displays.

Product. Collaborated with PMs to define the MVP: individual goals shipped first, social/group savings deferred — a stable, high-performance release over feature breadth. Research data defended decisions that prioritized long-term trust over conversion tricks.

Compliance is the UI. Acting as the bridge between Legal and the user, I transformed dense regulatory text into a human-readable onboarding flow — interest rates and terms without fine-print anxiety.

04 — Impact

Scaled results

−20%Goal-related customer support inquiries, via self-service withdrawals and edits
5 marketsA primary driver of KCB's digital deposit growth across the region
↑ LoginsVisual milestones significantly increased engagement as users checked progress "health"

The design set a new benchmark for goal-based banking in the East African fintech ecosystem — proof that empathy-led design is the best business strategy.

Trust is the primary interface: in banking, clarity about one's money matters more than slick animations.

Previous

KADI!

Next

Tendepay
← All work

Kocela — Tendepay

From cash chaos to a 360° digital economy

An end-to-end mobile and web experience giving Kenyan merchants real-time control of their operations — from concept to handoff in six months.

Role

Senior Product Designer — UX Strategy, IA & UI lead

Timeline

6 months, concept to handoff

Status

Live on Google Play, App Store & web

Impact

1,120+ businesses · 100K+ users · Ksh 2M MRR

01 — Context

The visibility gap

In 2021, while consumer payments were digitizing, Kenya's small merchants were drowning in manual administrative labor. No real-time view of income and expenses meant:

  • Revenue leakage — theft and pilferage from lack of oversight.
  • Reconciliation hell — fragmented providers forced hours of paper and Excel-based matching.
  • Growth stagnation — owners unknowingly diverted business funds into personal spending.

The brief: design an experience that puts merchants in control with a 360° view of operations. Two personas anchored the work — Piyush, a CFO managing bulk payments, and Jackie, a micro-merchant needing simple invoicing.

02 — Leadership

A "handshaking" culture

With Product, I translated business objectives into a prioritized roadmap through weekly alignment sessions — ensuring the digitized petty-cash feature served both users and the goal of onboarding 500+ businesses.

With Engineering, I initiated early technical-feasibility reviews, sharing low-fidelity wireframes before high-fidelity handoff. Back-end constraints surfaced early, cutting potential rework by ~30% and shortening time-to-market.

03 — Trade-offs

High-stakes calls under deadline

Design system vs. speed. Developers needed to build immediately, but we lacked a unified visual language. I made the call to front-load a design system, delaying high-fidelity mocks by a week — and increasing development velocity by 40% in the project's second half.

Web-first in a mobile market. Kenya is mobile-centric, but reconciliation is a high-cognitive-load task. I negotiated a pivot to a web-first dashboard to handle data density that would have been unusable on a phone.

Front-loading the design system cost one week — and bought a 40% velocity gain.

04 — Impact

Control, clarity, cost

The final ecosystem: digitized petty cash to eliminate leakage, a consolidated single source of truth across payment providers, and automated reconciliation matching payments to orders instantly.

1,120+Active businesses vs. a target of 500
Ksh 2MMonthly recurring revenue vs. a Ksh 220K target — 9× over
100K+Users directly on the app, fully automated and real-time

Retrospective. With a longer runway I would add A/B-tested dashboard layouts, offline modes for low-connectivity areas, Swahili-first language support, and AI-driven cash-flow forecasting — moving the product from reactive tool to proactive business partner.

Previous

KCB Goal Account

Next

KADI!
← All work

KADI! — Independent product

Digitalizing cultural high-engagement mechanics

Capturing the "chaotic joy" of a beloved Kenyan street card game in a scalable, high-performance web experience — and a blueprint for commercial gamification.

Role

Lead Product Designer — end-to-end design & strategy

Type

Hobby project, ongoing iteration

Focus

Mobile UX · Game loops · Gamification logic

Status

Playable web app, WIP

01 — Problem

Translating "vibe" into UX

Physical card games run on social cues and speed. Digitizing KADI! meant preserving the hook while solving:

  • The lobby barrier — joining a game should be as fast as pulling up a chair.
  • Information density — hand, opponent count, discard pile, and turn status on a 6-inch screen.
  • The "jump" mechanic — timing is everything; latency and hierarchy decide competitive integrity.

02 — Design

A dynamic state machine, not a static board

Low-friction lobbies. Unique game IDs (e.g. 8JOJ) bypass account creation entirely, mirroring the drop-in nature of street play.

Three-layer hierarchy. Opponent status on top (card count only), the "arena" of turn requests and discards in the middle, and a fanned, thumb-optimized hand at the bottom — strict cognitive-load management for fast play.

Optimistic UI. Real-time multiplayer over mobile data risks desync, so discards move instantly on-screen before server confirmation — the "snappy" feel essential to game satisfaction.

Customizable rules engine. KADI! has dozens of regional variations, so players toggle house rules ("Bomb ni Bomb", 1-card finish) at game creation — user-driven customizability by design.

03 — Why it matters

A commercial gamification blueprint

KADI! is a technical and psychological testbed for high-value actions and dopamine loops: adver-gaming lobbies where brands sponsor decks, fintech-literacy game modes, and quick-action UI patterns transferable to e-commerce checkouts and social engagement features.

The "pick vs. discard" loop is fundamentally a decision-making framework — the same psychology that powers checkout flows.

Next. AI opponents whose "thinking" states communicate intent, plus haptic and color-blind-safe cues so the high-speed thrill stays accessible to everyone.

Previous

Tendepay

Next

KCB Goal Account