From form-first to ledger-import-first onboarding.
2021 – 2023 · Role: Head of Design · Alerzo · Team: Cross-functional team at Alerzo · Scope: Onboarding and the shared design system
Context
Veedez is Alerzo's suite of tools for small and micro businesses, built for merchants in the informal economy.
Many owners were running on pen-and-paper ledgers, which meant lost revenue and blind spots in their stock.
It is meant to be an all-in-one operating system for Nigerian businesses, unifying inventory, payments and bookkeeping in one human-centric interface, and it manages the whole lifecycle from stocking an item to the moment a customer pays by POS, USSD or bank transfer.
Challenge
Paper friction: merchants like “Mama Joy” had no clear idea of their gross or net profit. Everything lived in paper ledgers, reconciled by hand.
The replenishment struggle: ordering stock meant travelling to warehouses, which cost time and transport money.
Visibility blindness: Veedez could see aggregated data, but individual merchant performance was a black box, which limited personalised support.
Discovery
Twenty-two shop-along sessions and ledger audits with micro-merchants in Ibadan and Lagos markets reframed onboarding: instead of asking merchants to fill in forms, Veedez starts by importing the ledger they already keep.
The most common question was “How much did I actually make today?” Merchants wanted financial clarity more than a sales tool. The real need was business literacy, delivered through intuitive design.
Approach
Kill the everything-dashboard — Early concepts packed every feature into one dashboard and overwhelmed people.
Modular navigation — Users choose the tools they need, from just bookkeeping to the full marketplace suite.
Mobile first — Merchants are constantly on the move and need to run the business from their phone.
Craft
Import the ledger, skip the forms — Merchants already kept a paper ledger, so onboarding now starts by importing it instead of asking them to fill in forms. Week-one activation went up.
Built on the shared system — Uses the same modular design system as AlerzoShop and AlerzoPay.
Offline first — Every core function works offline and syncs when connectivity returns.
Voice-assisted onboarding — Voice prompts in Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa during critical setup steps, for merchants with lower literacy.
The Daily Snapshot — One glance shows total sales, profit margin and low-stock alerts, designed to be understood in under five seconds.
Result
Merchants described going from feeling at a loss to feeling in control of their daily profits. Veedez became part of a partnership with Mastercard and USAID.
Impact
10,000+ — Small businesses supported
22 — Shop-along sessions and ledger audits
2 — Markets studied: Ibadan and Lagos
Reflection
The best decisions acknowledged real constraints: unreliable power, shared devices and the constant hustle of informal commerce. When you design for emerging markets, empathy is the foundation.
Tools
Figma
Field research
Design systems
How it came together
Onboarding, reframed
Before: forms first: Open the app; Fill in forms about the business; Start using Veedez. After: start from their ledger: Open the app; Import the ledger they already keep; Start using Veedez.
I’m , a Senior Product Designer and Design Engineer. Ten years across fintech, healthtech, commerce and logistics, from user research to production code.
I studied graphic design, led a product design team at Alerzo, and now design and build private capital software at DealStack.
My best ideas come from where products are actually used: market stalls in Lagos and Ibadan, a fund administrator’s spreadsheets, a bank’s support queue. I turn what I find there into clear, calm systems.
Then I help build them. At DealStack I coded about 90% of our design system in React, so what ships is what was designed.
User research
Interviews, field studies, usability and tree testing. I learn from what people do, not only what they say, and turn it into product decisions.
User interviews · Usability testing · Field research · Journey mapping · Analytics
Product design and systems
End-to-end product design for complex B2B and fintech software: clear flows, sound information architecture and design systems that scale.
Interaction design · Information architecture · Design systems · Prototyping · Accessibility (WCAG 2.1)
Design engineering
I prototype and build in React and TypeScript, so designs are tested against real data and what ships matches what was designed.
Recommendations from my LinkedIn profile, from a manager, a fellow designer and the marketers I’ve shipped with.
“Ayodeji’s commitment to excellence is evident in every project he undertakes. He consistently delivers high-quality designs that exceed expectations, making him an invaluable team member.”
“Working alongside Ayo was truly inspiring. His leadership in product design, coupled with his ability to bridge design and engineering, elevates the entire team’s output.”
AAAbdul-Lateef AkinyemiSenior Product Designer
“Ayodeji is an exceptional team player who brings creativity and strategic thinking to every collaboration. His ability to translate complex problems into elegant solutions is remarkable.”
“Ayo is a creative mind who consistently pushes boundaries. His design work is not just visually stunning but strategically sound, always keeping the end user in focus.”
POPromise OsigweMarketing Communications
Beyond the day job.
Mentoring, speaking, and a few companies and products of my own.
Speaking
Tech Rise Africa, to 1,000 people. DSGN Discussions, to 400+. On design leadership, product systems and creative practice.
Companies I’ve founded, and products I build in my own time.
Empocreat (The EOC) builds digital products, brands and experiences with clarity and purpose. I founded it in 2016 and have directed creative strategy for 20+ brand and product projects across fintech, education, consumer tech and e-commerce.
MoveMoni compares exchange rates and fees across international money-transfer providers in real time, so people can see who is cheapest for their route before they send. Users save 3–5% on average on international transfers.
Clariti is a personal finance companion that helps people track spending, budget smarter and take control of their money in one simple app. It started inside MoveMoni and now stands on its own.
A free, educational world map built on the Equal Earth projection. It folds into a globe, shows what Mercator distorts, and lets you compare countries at their real size. Made for classrooms first, after the UN General Assembly voted in September 2026 to encourage equal-area maps.
Cleap turns a product’s code, database, infrastructure and integrations into one live, zoomable map, so people who build products without reading code can still see how everything fits together.
An open benchmark for one question: given a piece of code, how good is a plain-English description of it? Labels are scored on accuracy, specificity and whether someone who can’t read code would actually understand them. It grew out of Cleap and is at the scaffold stage: a seed set of samples and the scoring pipeline, with real model runs still to come.
