KADI!
About the project
A Kenyan street card game, built for the phone in your hand #
Capturing the chaotic joy of a beloved street card game in a fast, scalable web app. Also a testbed for engagement mechanics that transfer to commercial products.
- Role
- Lead Product Designer. End-to-end design and strategy
- Type
- Independent product, ongoing iteration
- Focus
- Mobile UX, game loops, rules logic
- Status
- Playable web app, work in progress
Turning a vibe into an interface #
- The lobby barrier. Joining should be as fast as pulling up a chair.
- Information density. Your hand, your opponents, the discard pile and whose turn it is, on a six-inch screen.
- The jump mechanic. Latency and hierarchy decide whether the game feels fair.
A state machine, not a static board #
Low-friction lobbies. Four-character game codes (like 8JOJ) skip account creation entirely.
Three-layer hierarchy. Opponent status on top, the arena in the middle, a fanned thumb-friendly hand at the bottom.
Optimistic UI. Discards move on screen before the server confirms, so play feels snappy on mobile data.
Custom rules engine. Players toggle house rules at game creation. Regional variation is a feature.
A blueprint for engagement #
KADI! is a testbed for high-value actions and engagement loops: sponsored decks, financial-literacy game modes, and quick-action patterns that transfer to checkout flows.
The pick-or-discard loop is a decision framework. The same psychology powers a checkout.