ABOUT
Kivuko, meaning "bridge" in Swahili, has the main aim of uniting and "bridging the gap" between corporate clients and creative talents in the fields of design, programming and marketing within Kenya. The initial focus is Nairobi, Kenya, with an aim to expand to East Africa in the future.
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The key objective of the project is to increase awareness of creative talent in Kenya and ensure fair pay for these professionals.
Project Length: 6 months and ongoing.
INSPIRATION
Through living and working in Nairobi, my partner, Rachel Mzengi and I, were aware of the creative talents on offer in Kenya. We were also highly aware that these talents were not well known, not being utilised and most importantly, not being paid a fair rate for their profession.
With technology on the rise in East Africa, and especially the number of Kenyan’s on the internet, it made sense to solve these problems through a digital product.
THE TEAM
Brigite Marques
Joint Founder & CEO
Head of UX Design and Research
Rachel Mzengi
Joint Founder & CEO
Head of Business and Marketing
CURRENT SITUATION
CREATIVES
There is a growing amount of creative and tech professionals in Nairobi, Kenya, our target market.
MARKETING
Techies & creatives do not know how to market their work and therefore are not able to find a wide variety of clients.
WOM
People rely on word of mouth recommendations or local recruiting sites but these do not have a wide selection of professions.
PAYMENT
There is no market rate for the work they do [the majority of work is done at lower than the standard rate]
TECHNOLOGY
Technology use in East Africa is on the rise with "50% of Kenya’s now online, mostly (and possibly only) mobile-first Internet users.”
RESEARCH
Several research interviews were carried out with professional and aspiring programmers, marketers and designers in the regions of Kenya and Tanzania.
METHODS
Interviews - face to face.
Surveys - google surveys.
Focus groups - with a prototype.
INSIGHTS
The interviews provided the insight of the Kivuko USPs (Unique Selling Points):
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1
The need for quality professionals on the site, differentiating it from sites such as Behance and Dribbble.
2
The need for fair pay to the professionals in order for the industries to grow.
3
The need for the skills of creative professionals to be known by a larger audience.
PERSONAS
PROTOTYPING & USER TESTING
I am a firm believer in user testing and iteration for projects. I believe it is the most important aspect and also one of the most exciting. The reason for this being, knowing you are one step closer to delivering the customer with a truly beneficial product. This, in my opinion, is the entire purpose of any design.
DESIGN SPRINT
An intense and extremely productive design sprint week was carried out amongst the team. The contents of which can be seen in the slideshow below:
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Identifying how we might solve particular problems the target audience may face. Some of the “how might we’s” uncovered were duplicates, confirming to us that these pain point areas are most definitely our MVP (Minimal Viable Product) for the platform.
Next came rapid concept sketching, these were later pitched to a larger group and the best concepts voted for. A user flow of the chosen concept was then produced as seen in the sketches below.
A user journey was created from our primary target persona (two personas exist currently). This enabled us to see the highs and lows of the user’s journey and where our "how might we" scenarios can fit in.
A prototype of the first concept was created and animated with Principle. This was then tested with a range of different potential users. The results were then gathered, iterations made and a second version of the prototype created. Results were once again gathered and iterations made. All these can be seen below.
The most recent prototype is the 3rd iteration of our website created on Principle. Below you can see the prototype previous to the branding of Kivuko.
1 How Might We
2 Concept Sketches
3 User Journey
4 Prototyping
BRANDING
Working on the branding of Kivuko was a knowledge filled project for me, I very much enjoyed exploring the possible names for the platform. Exploring the cultural connotations behind each possibility, ensuring the name fitted to our core values and the exciting part of going on to develop a logo encompassing these aspects.
During the branding course, with Matthew Waldman, I also had the pleasure of being selected for the copywriting team for our demo brand guidelines. These were created before each group went on to create guidelines for their particular project.
PRODUCT SAMPLES
WEBSITE
MOBILE APP
With the staggering percentage of Kenyans online via affordable smartphone devices, we were aware it is important to pay attention to the mobile version of Kivuko.
Play the video to explore the newly developed mobile application created on Sketch and animated with Invision or interact with it here!
