START.EXE - PLAYER PROFILE

London-based interaction and product designer with experience across web, mobile and AI products. Currently Founding Designer at Sailrides, a live ride-comparison platform spanning 24 countries, owning everything from the design system to shipped production screens.

PLAYER 1
KELVIN AKAKPO
CLASS
UI/UX & PRODUCT DESIGNER
HP
♥♥♥♥♥ 100/100
LOCATION
LONDON, UK
XP
4 YEARS
CURRENT QUEST
FOUNDING DESIGNER, SAILRIDES
LINKEDIN
MY WORK [LEVEL SELECT]

MY WORK

Five projects. Pick one to read how it was actually made, what broke, and what changed after.

ABOUT.SYS - CHARACTER SHEET

CHARACTER SHEET

London-based interaction and product designer with experience across web, mobile and AI products.

Right now I am Founding Designer at Sailrides, working with a founder-engineer and a PM.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

CORE PRINCIPLE

Exceptional design bridges the gap between human intent and machine execution. It makes a product's affordances obvious through clear signifiers, a logical conceptual model, and instant, informative feedback. It does not force people to think or read a manual. It creates an intuitive, error-resistant environment where the user always feels in control.

The goal: I design so people can think less about the tool and more about the work.

FILES

MISSION_STATEMENT.TXT

I feel strongly that the baton has been passed to me. It is my turn to make something wonderful, to make my contribution to humanity and the human experience. I do not just want to live and let life happen. I want to make a dent and leave my mark. While I uncover my divine assignment, I make sure there is greatness in everything I do by living and crafting with a great deal of care and love.

CRAFT_MINDSET.TXT

Quality comes through reps. Designers need hands on clay: touching the work, testing it, building it, not just talking about it. Opinions carry authority when they are backed by execution.

SAVED_QUOTES.DAT

People express appreciation to the rest of humanity by making something wonderful and putting it out there. You never meet them, you never shake their hands, but making something with a great deal of care and love, something's transmitted.

Paraphrased from Steve Jobs, 2007

Life gets much broader once you realise that everything around you was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and that you can change it, influence it, and build things other people use.

Paraphrased from Steve Jobs, 1994

STATS

UI / UX DESIGN95
DESIGN SYSTEMS92
PROTOTYPING90
INFO ARCHITECTURE90
VISUAL DESIGN88
AI / ML IN UX86
TENDENCY TO GIVE UP0%
DOWN TO EAT FOOD100%
TIME IN CINEMAOVERLOAD

OPEN TO

UI/UX and product design roles in London.

INVENTORY

  • EDUCATIONMA Creative Enterprise, Distinction, University of East London
  • EDUCATIONBSc Management Information Systems, Ashesi University
  • CERTIFICATIONGrow with Google, UX Design
  • FIELD KITFigma, Figma Make, Adobe XD, Notion, PostHog
  • AI TOOLKITClaude for rapid prototyping and research, Claude Design for AI-assisted design and ideation
EXPERIENCE.LOG - RUN HISTORY

RUN HISTORY

Where the work happened, and what came out of it.

  1. Founding Product Designer, SailridesOct 2025 to present

    Early-stage ride-comparison platform live in 24 countries. Sole designer, with no design lead above me.

    • Grew daily active users from 30 to 200 (Oct 2026) through design work across the whole product.
    • Built the design system from scratch, including tokens, a reusable component library and documentation, giving the product one consistent foundation across 24 countries.
    • Cut primary navigation from 5 destinations to 4 using PostHog behavioural data. Users stopped using the home screen as a waypoint.
    • Rescued a failing Trotro transit search flow, taking users from unable to start a journey to completing one in the next test round. I replaced official route labels with landmark-based, spoken-direction copy after testing showed users read the interface as a static signpost.
    • Upgraded Trotro routing with step-by-step multi-leg instructions, stop names that open in Google Maps, direct-route badges for zero-transfer trips and crowdsourced fare feedback to help calibrate algorithmic pricing.
    • Designed Mashup, a multi-modal trip planner that combines car rides, trotros and short walks within a budget. It shows cost estimates, journey times, walking distances, transfer counts and boarding and alighting instructions.
    • Designed Sail Mini, an embeddable B2B booking widget.
    • Ran moderated and unmoderated usability testing to validate decisions before build.
  2. Product Designer, FormCheck2026 to present

    AI-powered gym form analysis web app, co-designed with an engineer.

    • Reduced cognitive load during live workouts by designing a simplified real-time AI feedback system.
    • Ran a heuristic evaluation before launch, then moderated and unmoderated usability testing with real users.
  3. Product Designer and Design Engineer, Moons2026 to present

    Native iOS subscription tracker built in SwiftUI. Founded by Mike Lawson, who built the first prototype. I joined at the early prototype stage and helped grow it into a production app.

    • Shipped 25+ UI/UX refinements and bug fixes to production, writing the SwiftUI changes myself with Claude Code.
    • Ran waitlist user testing and ranked issues by severity and fit with the app’s goal, which produced a focused fix list.
    • Replaced a broken brand-asset flow with a unified brand-icon pipeline, giving the app one consistent, scalable way to handle brand icons.
    • Designed and built scroll-pinned header navigation and resolved cramped form ergonomics directly in the codebase.
  4. Freelance and Project-Based Product Designer2022 to present
    • Elara Development (B2B real estate consultancy). Flattened the information architecture from 3 levels to 1, improving navigation clarity and contributing to client acquisition.
    • Oasis Collective (events). Designed end-to-end event experience flows and sold 1,000+ tickets across five events.
    • UniGhana (university search). Improved onboarding and search, increasing application completion rates.
    • Disrupt and Brainstorm Africa. Led product design for SME clients and delivered UX improvements across multiple projects.
  5. Design Exercise, Apple Human Interface GuidelinesSept 2025

    Interview stage, not an employed or invited designer role.

    • Redesigned the Airbnb iOS app for landscape mode using Apple HIG principles as part of an interview process. The design was reviewed by Apple’s HIG team.
  6. Lead Product Designer and Researcher, Black Star Sports2024 to 2025

    Master’s capstone.

    • Led the full human-centred design process, from market research and competitive analysis through product strategy and go-to-market planning, and presented to stakeholders.
  7. Design Workshop InstructorJan 2019 to Dec 2019
    • Facilitated design thinking workshops for 27 students. The school saw an 80% reduction in exam malpractice.

EDUCATION

AI.SYS - DESIGNING WITH AI

DESIGNING WITH AI

Six rules I hold to when the product has a model inside it. AI should support human understanding and decision-making, not replace it.

01_MAKE_AI_UNDERSTANDABLE.DAT

Give people a clear mental model. Show why a result appeared, how confident the system is, and what it drew on. No black boxes.

02_KEEP_THE_HUMAN_IN_CONTROL.DAT

Let the model suggest options and take the repetitive work. Every decision stays reviewable and overridable. Agency is not negotiable.

03_DESIGN_FOR_ERROR.DAT

Assume the model will be wrong sometimes. Make mistakes easy to spot, simple to correct, and give the interface a fallback that still works.

04_FOCUS_ON_THE_TASK.DAT

Ask what problem we are helping someone solve, not where AI could be added. The technology is the means, never the brief.

05_AI_AS_COLLABORATOR.DAT

People bring context, ethics, creativity and judgement. The model brings speed, pattern recognition and recall. Design the pairing, like a knowledgeable assistant who is easy to correct.

06_INTENT_AND_TRUST.DAT

AI experiences are not always static or predictable. People still have to feel certain the system is moving them toward what they actually asked for.

C:\ CONTACT

C:\ CONTACT

KELVIN-OS [Version 95.0.4]
(c) 1995-2026 Kelvin Akakpo. All rights reserved.

C:\> contact --new
Open to junior and mid-level product design roles in London. Messages go straight to kelvinakakpo11@gmail.com.

awaiting input...

Psst... Retro mode is wayyy cooler! 🕹️✨