About
Otobong Okoko
I’m a Senior Product Designer who builds what I design. My work spans user research, interaction design, and frontend development - from enterprise HR platforms across 20 countries to customer-facing experiences for 50M+ users.
I specialize in high-complexity, high-stakes domains: fintech, enterprise SaaS, and customer experience at scale. The common thread across my work is turning messy organizational problems into clean, measurable outcomes.
Philosophy
How I think about design
Context beats comprehensiveness. Every project I’ve shipped reinforces the same lesson: users don’t need more information. They need the right information at the right moment.
I approach problems as a systems thinker. Before opening Figma, I map constraints, stakeholder dynamics, and the organizational forces that will shape adoption. The best design solution is worthless if it can’t survive contact with the organization.
Being a designer who codes compresses the feedback loop from weeks to hours. Design decisions get tested in real code immediately. Stakeholder reviews happen on working prototypes, not static screens. What I design is what ships.
Career
Experience
Zalando SE
2021 - 2023Led design for customer care tools serving 50M+ customers across 29 European markets. Shipped contextual self-help (45% fewer contacts, €3.2M saved) and guided chatbot (48% automation, €4.11M saved).
United Bank for Africa
2020 - 2021Led design of 12-module enterprise HR platform across 20 African countries. Replaced 7 fragmented systems, saving $960K annually. Built UBA's first design system and elevated design maturity from Level 1 to Level 3.
Sterling Bank PLC
2016 - 2020Designed and built the frontend for Nigeria's first digital lending platform. $263M disbursed, zero defaults. Won Central Bank of Nigeria's Innovative Bank of the Year (2019).