Uxcel Assessment

Top 1%

Verified Designer

This report certifies that Samuel Anwakang has passed the Verified Designer Assessment and ranks in the Top 1% of designers worldwide.

Uxcel Assessment

Top 1%

Verified Designer

This report certifies that Samuel Anwakang has passed the Verified Designer Assessment and ranks in the Top 1% of designers worldwide.

Designing high-impact systems across AI, fintech, operations, content, manufacturing, and aerospace technology.

SaaS/Enterprise UX

User Research

Concept modeling and Testing

Systems design

Product strategy

Design systems

Visual design

CRO

A/B testing

Interaction design

Information architecture

Content Auditing

Flow analysis

User journey mapping/Story boarding

Object-Oriented UX

UI Optimization

Documentation & Story telling

UX/UI/Product Design

Control System Interface Design

Human–Machine Interface (HMI) Design

Mission-Critical Interface Design

I’m Samuel Anwakang…

…a Product Designer with 11+ years designing digital products across fintech, consumer applications, aerospace & defence, AI, enterprise operations, and education.

My work sits at the intersection of systems thinking, behavioral design, and product strategy, translating complexity into experiences people can understand, trust, and use effectively.

Over the years, I’ve worked on products used by operational teams, financial platforms, schools, maintenance organizations, and millions of learners across Africa. My experience spans consumer products, enterprise systems, AI-powered workflows, and mission-critical interfaces involving human–automation interaction.

I’m especially drawn to products operating in technically demanding environments, where usability has measurable operational, behavioral, or strategic impact.

What drives me

I’m deeply interested in how people interact with complexity, especially in environments where clarity, trust, speed, and decision quality matter.

Much of my work focuses on reducing friction, improving comprehension, and helping users operate confidently within dense systems.

I believe the best products reduce cognitive burden, clarify decisions, and help people move with confidence, especially when complexity is unavoidable.

That philosophy has shaped the way I approach everything from financial systems and enterprise operations to learning platforms and advanced control interfaces.

Experience across complex product ecosystems

I've designed products spanning consumer applications, enterprise SaaS, fintech, AI, education, legal technology, and aerospace, working across both high-volume user experiences and complex operational systems.

CRO Metrics: Designed and optimized consumer-facing digital experiences through experimentation and conversion rate optimization for leading digital products.

Sysserve: Redesigned the tenant complaint workflow, reducing interaction cost from 76 to 14 points and helping shift 90%+ of complaints from calls and SMS into the digital platform.

Afrilearn: Led the design of key products across the education ecosystem, including the Learn-to-Earn mobile app, School Management System, and corporate website.

Delight Finance: Conceived and designed Delight an AI-assisted financial governance platform introducing structured budgeting, intelligent automation, and conversational financial execution.

The Exploration Company: Collaborated on human–machine interface concepts supporting operator awareness and mission-critical aerospace workflows.

Designing Systems People Can Trust

From consumer-facing digital experiences and eCommerce to enterprise SaaS, fintech, AI, education, and human–machine interfaces, I've spent the last decade designing products where clarity, reliability, and usability directly influence both user outcomes and business success.

I enjoy untangling complexity, whether that's simplifying consumer journeys to improve conversion, redesigning enterprise workflows, architecting financial products, creating AI interaction models, or designing interfaces for safety-critical environments. My approach combines research, systems thinking, and iterative experimentation to build products that people trust, enjoy using, and teams can confidently scale.

Beyond product delivery, I enjoy helping teams grow by mentoring designers, refining design practices, and fostering strong cross-functional collaboration where design contributes strategically to product direction.

Life

I write songs and sing a lot, and I love to play the guitar and keyboards.

I walk for an average of 10km daily and ride on Spotify at work, but above all, I love to hang out with friends and teammates on the beach, in bars, in the cinema, or at our houses.

I feel grateful to be husband to a wonderful woman and dad to three happy boys.

Proven effectiveness

I’ve created and delivered successful product experiences at every scale and stage.

The Exploration Company

Feb 2026 - July 2026

Germany

Aerospace & Defence

Manufacturing

Human-machine interaction design

Senior Product Designer(Ux Lead)

Led UX strategy, systems architecture, and product design for mission-critical internal platforms supporting spacecraft design, manufacturing, mission operations, and engineering coordination across cross-functional aerospace teams
Partnering with product managers, software engineers, systems engineers, and operational stakeholders to design high-complexity tools that translate dense technical workflows into scalable operational systems

KEY CONTRIBUTIONS
Established engineering-oriented handoff standards across product teams by delivering implementation-ready design specifications, including production-usable CSS variable architectures, Tailwind utility mappings, tokenized spacing systems, component state logic, and responsive behavior documentation directly consumable by engineers with minimal translation overhead.
Architected and scaled a shared cross-platform design system and UI infrastructure used across Cosmos UI and Test Bench software, enabling consistent implementation patterns, improving frontend scalability, accelerating delivery, reducing design–development ambiguity across engineering products
Led UX design for Cosmos UI, a structured operational interface system for engineering-heavy environments, focusing on scalable component logic, deterministic interaction behavior, and implementation-aligned design patterns for rapid frontend execution
Co-designed the Nyx Crew capsule control interface with NASA's Astronaut Lee Morin, focusing on safety-critical human–machine interaction, operational clarity, and real-time decision support
Redesign of mission control software, improving usability, cognitive clarity, operational responsiveness in high-pressure environments
Migrated hazard management workflows from spreadsheets into integrated tooling, reducing manual effort by ~30–50%, improving traceability and system reliability
Designed an internal task management system for engineering operations, improving tracking visibility/completion efficiency by ~25–40%.
Built advanced engineering data filtering systems, reducing retrieval time by ~50%
Redesigned configuration document workflows with improved branching/versioning, increasing engineering iteration efficiency by ~30–50%
Designed a node-based workflow builder for operational process mapping, improving comprehension and iteration speed by ~35–55%
Improved export control tracking and labeling systems, reducing classification ambiguity and increasing operational efficiency by ~25–40%

Worked cross-functionally to lead product design for the second version of Edukoya's Learning platform. Was responsible for guiding user research, creating user journey canvas, defining journey maps, and designing the desig.

CRO Metrics

2025 - Present

United States

United States

Marketing

Senior UX Designer

Designed and executed A/B testing experiments, full-page redesigns, and conversion-focused web experiences for global organizations including Samsung, UNICEF, American Girl, Home Chef, Brother, Talkspace, and other enterprise brands across e-commerce, healthcare, SaaS, media, nonprofit, and consumer products.
Translated experimentation hypotheses into implementation-ready Figma designs by balancing business goals, user behavior insights, brand consistency, WCAG accessibility standards, responsive design, and engineering feasibility.
Partnered closely with product strategists, developers, and client stakeholders to define experimentation roadmaps, establish success metrics (KPIs), and transform business objectives into measurable user experience improvements.
Worked within established design systems while creating scalable components and reusable interface patterns that accelerated experimentation without compromising design consistency.
Managed multiple concurrent enterprise client engagements in a fast-paced, fully remote environment, consistently delivering high-quality design solutions across overlapping project timelines.

Afrilearn

2023 - Present

Nigeria

Nigeria

Education

Gaming

Game designer + Product design Lead

Led the end-to-end design of the world’s first AI-powered "learn-to-earn" app for K1–12 learners, unifying five complex systems: e-learning, crypto, fintech, school management, and gaming into a seamless product experience, used by 3million+ learners and teachers across Africa, North America, UK, EU, and Asia.
Designed core gameplay mechanics using the full West African curriculum as a learning engine, fostering habit-forming educational engagement through play.
Built a B2B School Management Web App featuring AI-powered assessments, secure payment integration, attendance tracking, and Africa’s most comprehensive K–12 content library.
Designed high-performing conversion funnels for Afrilearn’s School Management Software and Gaming App, increasing signups and product adoption:

- For Schools: Simplified the onboarding journey for school admins and teachers through a multi-step funnel with progressive disclosure, achieving a >40% form completion rate from paid campaigns.

- For Learners: Designed a gamified referral and sharing system that let users broadcast high scores and request help on tough challenges, leading to organic growth through social sharing and in-game rewards, driving a 30% increase in adoption.
Delivered end-to-end product strategy, from research and user flows to wireframes, prototypes, Usability testing, A/B testing and UI, while collaborating remotely with cross-functional teams (engineers, educators, animators, stakeholders, including UNICEF).
Designed Afrilearn’s public website and brand identity to reinforce market positioning and launch strategy.
Achieved a 100% conversion rate during the 2023 STEAM Fest showcase, securing a full pre-launch waitlist.
Worked in a fully remote, async-first team using tools like Figma, Notion, Zoom, and Clickup, Google Docs, to manage collaboration, feedback, and handoffs across time zones

Sysserve

2019 - 2022

Nigeria

Nigeria

CMMS

SaaS / Enterprise

Product Design Lead + Head Of Design

DESIGN DIRECTOR

Founding designer and design lead for Instanta, Sysserve’s flagship suite of 12 B2B maintenance management SaaS products (web and mobile), used by multinational banks, international airlines, fleet operators, and the British Government.
Planned and executed the full design lifecycle: design strategy, research, experience architecture, interface design, design system development, documentation, and team training.
Drove a +40% increase in new client adoption within 6 months, a 57.6% YoY client growth, and enabled a 60% average price increase across all products without impacting churn, contributing to 56% average annual revenue growth.
Led quantitative and qualitative research, competitor analysis, flow audits, service design, object-oriented IA, multi-round usability testing, and brand integration.
Redesigned Sysserve’s tenant complaint system to drive portal adoption, converting over 90% of SMS/call complaints into digital submissions by simplifying the flow, reducing interaction cost from 76 to 14 points, and boosting operational efficiency.
Built and maintained a robust design system and mentored junior designers across teams.  

Tools & Methods:
Slack, Figma, Jira, Notion, Miro, Maze, Google Meet, Google Analytics, Google Forms, Google Sheets, heuristic evaluation, usability testing, OOUX, style guides, atomic design.

Founding designer and design lead for Instanta, Sysserve’s flagship suite of 12 B2B maintenance management SaaS products (web and mobile), used by multinational banks, international airlines, fleet operators, and the British Government.
Planned and executed the full design lifecycle: design strategy, research, experience architecture, interface design, design system development, documentation, and team training.
Drove a +40% increase in new client adoption within 6 months, a 57.6% YoY client growth, and enabled a 60% average price increase across all products without impacting churn, contributing to 56% average annual revenue growth.
Led quantitative and qualitative research, competitor analysis, flow audits, service design, object-oriented IA, multi-round usability testing, and brand integration.
Redesigned Sysserve’s tenant complaint system to drive portal adoption, converting over 90% of SMS/call complaints into digital submissions by simplifying the flow, reducing interaction cost from 76 to 14 points, and boosting operational efficiency.
Built and maintained a robust design system and mentored junior designers across teams.  
Tools & Methods:

Slack, Figma, Jira, Notion, Miro, Maze, Google Meet, Google Analytics, Google Forms, Google Sheets, heuristic evaluation, usability testing, OOUX, style guides, atomic design.
Planned and executed the full design lifecycle: design strategy, research, experience architecture, interface design, design system development, documentation, and team training.
Drove a +40% increase in new client adoption within 6 months, a 57.6% YoY client growth, and enabled a 60% average price increase across all products without impacting churn, contributing to 56% average annual revenue growth.
Led quantitative and qualitative research, competitor analysis, flow audits, service design, object-oriented IA, multi-round usability testing, and brand integration.
Redesigned Sysserve’s tenant complaint system to drive portal adoption, converting over 90% of SMS/call complaints into digital submissions by simplifying the flow, reducing interaction cost from 76 to 14 points, and boosting operational efficiency.
Built and maintained a robust design system and mentored junior designers across teams.  

Tools & Methods:
Slack, Figma, Jira, Notion, Miro, Maze, Google Meet, Google Analytics, Google Forms, Google Sheets, heuristic evaluation, usability testing, OOUX, style guides, atomic design.

Edukoya

2022 - 2023

Nigeria

Education

Nigeria

EdTech

Product Design Lead

Dealdey

2018 - 2019

Nigeria

Nigeria

Ecommerce

UX Design Lead + Creative Director

I joined Dealdey to improve the user experience on the eCommerce website that features attractive product and service deals. This was my second experience in eCommerce.

Led UX and product design. Functioned as a creative director and assembled and led a cross functional team of designers, content experts, sales representatives, BI personnel, and social media marketers and we delivered an approved corporate identity design within 66% percent of the stipulated time.

I joined Dealdey to improve the user experience on the eCommerce website that features attractive product and service deals. This was my second experience in eCommerce.

SOME OF THE THINGS I DID:

Enabled customers to find high-demand items faster, and increasing the order of these items by over 23% in one month by reorganizing our site IA based on data analysis, to optimize usability by exposing more product and service categories.

Utilized data from business intelligence and marketing to identify weaknesses in the IA of the eCommerce website and recommended and

When data indicated that users seldom used the card payment option at the checkout stage of their journey, I recommended and created a more intuitive checkout design that led to a 20% increase in card payments within the first week of deployment.

Pushed for a complete corporate identity rebrand when we decided to change our business model, and was tasked with the responsibility of seeing it through within three weeks. I assembled and led a cross functional team of designers, content experts, sales representatives, BI personnel, and social media marketers and we delivered a vibrant, and happy corporate identity design within two weeks.

Alongside my UI/UX role, I assisted with graphic design work for the marketing campaigns when the business was downsized due to funding

Constantly shared valuable research materials like books and articles with my team members. This helped us grow as well as improve the overall skill level and understanding required for effective productivity amongst everyone.

LidStack

2015 - 2019

Nigeria

Product designer

These were my foundation days in product design where my team and I experimented with several projects in Agriculture, Edtech, and E-commerce.

I designed the mobile app and websites of a Shopify-like platform to enable low-capital small and medium-scale businesses in Nigeria to manage their business operations(procurements, inventory, orders, budgets, and online stores) easily.

Trusted by teammates, leaders, and clients

"

As a senior product designer, Samuel has consistently exceeded expectations and delivered exceptional results on every project he has led. I worked with him at Edukoya. His exceptional creativity, attention to detail, and strong understanding of user experience make him a valuable asset to any team. His ability to translate complex design concepts into intuitive and aesthetically pleasing products is truly impressive.

Omolade Odetare

Product owner

Leanspace.io

"

Sammy is very hard-working and pays excellent attention to details.

Anthony Ogundipe

SENIOR software engineer

SeamlessHR

"

I had the pleasure of working with Sam as a member of my team at Edukoya. In his role as a product design leader, Sam consistently impressed me with his intelligence and ability to challenge the status quo, viewing design from a unique perspective, and bringing a fresh and innovative approach to every project. His solutions are always creative and effective.

A strong leader, able to inspire and motivate his team members to achieve their best work. He had this natural ability to build strong working relationships with cross-functional partners at Edukoya. I highly recommend Sam for any product design leadership role.

Victory Matibiri

Product Advisor

411Gen

"

I had the pleasure of working with Samuel for 6 months as our Senior UI/UX Designer on a complex data management platform at The Exploration Company. He played a key role in building our design system and designing several important features.

Samuel combines strong autonomy with a sharp understanding of complex problems, and consistently turned that complexity into clear, effective design solutions. I’d highly recommend him to any team looking for a thoughtful and highly capable designer.

Jules Chevassut

Technical Product Owner

The Exploration Company

"

The entire team and management of Muva Innovations Ltd and Shoproom Ltd especially thank Samuel for his superb and excellent work delivery. Though, at first, we didn’t quite understand his intuitive questioning of our design concept, it ended up helping us fine-tune grey areas in our concept. Working with him was smooth and very productive.

Helen Ekwoaba

COO And Co-founder

Muva Innovations

"

Samuel is a product designer who pays great attention to product details with a strong focus on solving user problems in delivering the best possible experience.

Jerry Okebgue

CEO And Co-founder

Sysserve

"

Implementing Samuel's work forces you to think of the "whys" and understand the meaning behind every single pixel. You are forced to focus on both the graphical correctness of what you are building as well as delivering the best user experience possible. I called him Mr 1 pixel.

Ikechukuw Ekwe

Senior frontend engineer

Sysserve

"

Samuel Anwakang, is first a creative professional before anything else. I worked with him on a project and I haven’t let him go since, his work ethics are admirable, second to none I have ever experienced before.

He would give advice that would inadvertently birth new ideas, and deliver any project before due dates, the warmness of his spirit is contagious and safe.

I am a fan.

Chidebere Onwuzurike

Ceo and co-founder

Dexter Technologies

"

Samuel’s superpower as a designer is his attention to detail and ownership of the problem. He is a fantastic design leader - continually going above and beyond for the customer, his team, and the business. A rare find for every customer-centric ambitious team.

In my experience

Ayomide Aregbede

SENIOR software engineer

Community.com

"

One of the many things I admire about Samuel is how he thinks, he sees it as a bridge between users and business growth. Beyond design, he always connects with the people using the product, understands the market, and ties everything back to growth. He doesn’t stop until the solution really works. And through it all, he remains humble, consistent, and a person of good character.

I can boldly say that working with Samuel has been one of the best decisions we ever made. He’s not only a brilliant designer but someone who helps turn ideas into products that truly make a difference.

Isaac Oladipupo

CEO/Co-founder

Afrilearn

Inspired by the best

Whatever we admire, we eventually become.

Don Norman

Design principles and best practices

"We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be."

I'm not ashamed to say that NNgroup.com is my design bible. From heuristics to principles and methods, they provide me with the most comprehensive repository of human-centered thinking resources on the internet.

Google

Design principles

I admire Google's design systems, patterns, and standards. I have based some of my most successful design projects on them.

The one thing that stands out to me with Google apps and websites is that they make things clear, legible, organized, understandable, and reachable.

And they are consistent with it. I love it

Canva

Inclusivity and User-centered mindset

Canva is a design platform with a big heart.

They empower everyone, regardless of design experience, to create professional-looking designs.

Canva is the first product I have seen that was designed with a mother's instincts - to carry everyone along.

Steve Kruge

Usability standards and user patterns

“If you want a great site, you’ve got to test. After you’ve worked on a site for even a few weeks, you can’t see it freshly anymore. You know too much. The only way to find out if it really works is to test it.”

Kruger's thoughts and non-conformist attitude to paradigms significantly fed my critical thinking tendencies.

Apple

Innovative Attitude

I admire Apple's excellent attitude.

Have you noticed that when you use a MacBook or an iPhone, the system just gets out of your way? Cool right?

But there's one more key experience I've had interacting with Apple products: They have tried to anticipate even the most insignificant of my intents and prepared for me. Impressive!

They inspired me to think more deeply and slowly about my users' journeys.

Keep it simple, stupid!

For me, WhatsApp is the icon of design simplicity. Even the most illiterate in Africa could use it with very little learning. All they had to know was what you already knew: Texting. I admire that.

Forget all these other stuff that came later, including Meta.

WhatsApp has been a major standard for some of the most successful communication features I have designed for enterprise software(where UX is usually not valued).

Amy Jo Kim

Creating user journeys

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

Was introduced to Amy by my former CPO at Edukoya when we were trying to define our 14-day customer journey map. What I learned from listening to her has helped me approximate closer to getting things right at the beginning. Been following her since then.

Tony Ulwik

Innovative thinking, product discovery, and market research

"Innovators don’t create markets; they create products to serve markets. Thus, the market must be defined and validated in the innovation equation before moving to needs discovery and product definition."

Tony's JTBD and ODI approach to product discovery is Key to how I evaluate products and features I have to build. He has literally removed the BS and guess work from design thinking and innovation.

Bolt App

User-centered design thinking

Uber had a whole year's head start in Nigeria, yet lost to Bolt, due to bad UX design. (I wrote about this on Medium).

Bolt taught me 2 lessons:

knowing your users before designing anything.
If you are located in an advanced part of the world, but want to to sell to the entire world, employ a very geographically divers team to balance your user expectations for those regions. Uber thought the whole world was California.

Looking forward to…

My next steps

Designing high-impact systems across AI, fintech, operations, content, manufacturing, and aerospace technology.