I can explain, I promise. My journey has been a bit wild, so buckle up. I’m Chioma, and I’m a user experience designer at Moniepoint. I haven’t always been a user experience designer, though. I found my way here by continuously exploring the things that fascinate me, and here’s a look at what it’s been like.

That time when I quit being a doctor.

I started my design journey after I had completed my medical housemanship. I graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Lagos and immediately started my housemanship. If you’re familiar with medical school, you know graduating is a highlight. Getting free of med school work and finally beginning to practice was typically the goal, but not exactly for me.

Yup, that's me. And you don't want to see what I was looking at

Without a flair for being a doctor, I had just been going through the motions for quite a while, and every passing moment brought me closer to doing what I wanted. When I finalised my one-year housemanship training, I took the bold step and quit medicine.

It was time to do the things I wanted.

The winded journey to user experience design

As you can imagine, neither of my parents was particularly happy with my decision to leave my medical career behind. There’s little else as pleasing to an African parent as a doctor-daughter. However, I was dead set on finding things I actually enjoyed and exploring them.

My first shot at design was interior design. I got certifications for it and worked as an interior designer. I consider this my first step into design, but it didn’t quite land. I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I hoped, and in Nigeria, the interior design industry isn’t very standardised. So, I decided to find something else.

It was at this point that my brother introduced me to product design. He noticed my flair for design and thought it could be explored more fully in this field. And boy, was he right! A few months into my journey as a designer, I learned about the Moniepoint women-in-tech internship and decided to give it a shot. You can imagine how that went.

Exploring web design at Moniepoint

I joined the team as a User Experience designer. Still, over the past year, my role has let me focus more on designing web experiences, especially for the Marketing and Communications teams. This happened in such a random way. When I joined Moniepoint in 2022 as a Women in Tech intern, our structure meant that we had requirements from different departments/ teams.

Adrian, the SVP of Design, would assign different projects to different team members. We had this brief from the Marketing team, so he just placed me and someone else on a website project, and we did that. Then when the next marketing request came in, my previous experience with it meant that I was the better option to work on it. 

From then, I found myself being nominated for more marketing websites, and that's how I found myself here—creating many web experiences for websites and mobile.

Full circle moments - the 2023 women-in-tech website

I absolutely enjoyed designing the current women in tech website, and working on it was such a full-circle moment for me. It was exciting because it was one of the first projects I was entrusted with. I had just been an intern in the same program and had gotten accepted to join the team full-time, so I was still a relatively new designer in the company.

Being one of my first projects, it felt like I had a point to prove—not just to myself but to everyone who would come across the website. It was my way of showing what I was capable of and fully exploring my creativity. I was saying to everyone who came across it, “Hey! It’s possible to try different things and succeed, no matter your background.”

With product design, you have a set design system, and the product has to look a particular way every time. You are, therefore, always conforming to the design system, which can be mechanical and boring. With website design, however, I can be as free and creative as I want to be, and this is my favourite part about designing web experiences.

What my process looks like

I get briefs describing what needs to be done and what we’re trying to accomplish. The Comms team, for example, gives me a backstory, target audience, what the audience likes, and what they are trying to communicate. 

When I was tasked with designing the website for the Informal Economy report, I took everything the Comms team gave me in the brief, brainstormed, did a lot of research and then drew up wireframes.

I put everything together and designed a couple of options that fit the goal they were trying to achieve. I then took it back to the stakeholders, who gave me their feedback while I gave mine based on my findings during the research phase.

Then, I created a prototype. That included hooking up the website with interactions because people like seeing things that move well. That’s important because it helps to visualise how the website flows when users go through it and how things work together. Once that is done, we work with the engineering team to ensure everything is tidied up and looks good before launching.

Design considerations at Moniepoint

As a part of the design team at Moniepoint, there are a few things we always make a priority. One important thing is ensuring that text is legible on mobile. People should be able to read what’s on the page without difficulty, or else, what’s the point of having a website at all?

That forms a part of the larger considerations we make around accessibility. From the use of colours to the CTAs and buttons, everything is optimised to provide the user with the best experience. 

When I’m not designing, I’m designing.

I’m supposed to close this out with what I do for fun, but I honestly don’t think I’m a fun person. When I’m not designing web experiences, I like to do 3D designs. Doing 3D designs calms me down, so I immerse myself in it when I need to decompress.

I also love to read. If you like horror slash, thriller slash mysteries, and Stephen King, then you’re my kind of person.

The journey ahead

Today, I’m all about expanding my knowledge and improving my skills. My parents have seen that this is something I love and am good at, and that’s brought them to my side again. User experience design is expansive and I wish I had started off way earlier, but I’m applying myself to trying new things and being better at it everyday.

If you’d like to work with a team where you get to create meaningful things, we’ve got a space for you. Visit our careers page.