Most designers pick a side — the user's champion or the business's soldier. I've never understood the split. I'm Kyendereta, a senior product designer in Nairobi, and I do both. Deliberately.
Shipping real products — dating apps, legal brands, community platforms
Designers across Africa in the community I founded
Podcast episodes of honest design conversation
Product Designer at Meetamore, an EQ-based dating app
I've kept this short on purpose. A few projects, told properly, instead of twenty thumbnails you'll never click. Where a project was a concept rather than a shipped product, I say so.
A dating app built on EQ instead of appearance-first matching. Research into real human behaviour, translated into an interface people trust with something as fragile as connection.
Read the case studyI needed honest design mentorship and it didn't exist — so I built it. A podcast and community that grew to 3,400+ designers across Africa. Product thinking at human scale, sustained over years.
Read the story
A full concept redesign for a New York mass tort firm: homepage, design system, and the reasoning behind every decision. No borrowed numbers — just the thinking, shown in daylight.
See the thinkingNobody tells designers from the word go that we're doing this for the business too. So we learn the skill without learning what it's for, and we fumble. We can't sell ourselves because we don't know what we bring to the table — and somewhere out there a designer is charging five thousand shillings for a website, training a whole market not to know the worth of design. Not here. Empathy is still my infrastructure — understand the person deeply enough and the business results stop being a separate conversation. But be clear about what you're buying. Results.
Nobody handed me this career. When I was starting out I went looking for mentorship — someone a few steps ahead who would tell me the truth about the work — and I couldn't find it. Not in my city, not in any form I could reach. Courses taught tools. What I needed was conversation.
So I made it myself. In late 2023 I started recording candid conversations with designers further along than me and putting them out there. That became Kenyan Design Konversations — 3,400+ designers across Africa now, 80+ episodes, a team, systems, a live event. Built from a gap I lived inside.
Here's the thing I had to learn the hard way, and the thing I'll argue about anywhere: we're taught that we design for users. True. But nobody tells us we're doing this for the business too. So we learn the skill without knowing what it's for, we fumble, we can't sell ourselves — and then someone charges five thousand shillings for a website. That's not humility. That's a designer who was never told their worth, training clients not to know it either. I design for the person using the product and the business paying for it, and I can tell you exactly what you're getting for the money. That's the whole job.
I live and work in Nairobi. Kenyans call it shamba la mawe — a stone farm. Money doesn't grow easy here. But every event I wanted to attend, every opportunity I kept seeing — the location was always Nairobi. So I moved, and I adapted. You learn how to talk to people, how to be around people. It's a skill like any other, and it's mine now.
I'm self-taught, with a Google UX Design Certificate somewhere in a drawer, still learning in public — the community makes sure of that. These days I'm building toward a picture I can see clearly even if I can't fully describe it yet: the designer known for bringing results, the house in my head, and being the person who mentored somebody — even informally. Especially informally.
"Chantelle has a unique ability to translate complex user needs and business requirements into intuitive, elegant interfaces. Her attention to detail during wireframe handoffs made our engineering team's work incredibly smooth. Any team would be lucky to have such a thoughtful and user-centric designer."
— Frank Nwankwo, Product Manager, Meetamore"She was our first design hire, and her impact on the company went far beyond simply making screens look good. She helped us define the product itself… Her work elevated the quality of the product to a point where investors and stakeholders could clearly see the vision becoming real. That directly helped us build momentum and secure additional funding."
— Isaak Hayes, Founding team, Meetamore"KDK was the first to truly believe in me… not just as a writer, but as an emerging industry leader. That trust meant everything. It's been more than a collaboration — it's been a partnership rooted in mutual respect and shared vision."
— Marianne, Senior UI/UX Designer & KDK podcast guest"KDK has been such a game-changer for me! I've learned so many practical design principles from the community, which honestly helped in my design workflow. If you want an amazing and supportive creative space to level up, KDK is the place to be."
— Immaculate, designer & KDK memberI'm open to select senior product design roles, consulting on research-led product work, and conversations that begin with "we have this problem" rather than "we need some screens." I read everything. If it's a real problem, I'll reply properly.
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