VIVIAN NAVELE
I'm Vivian, Senior Product Designer and design lead at Affinity Africa. I design fintech products though I began my career studying dietetics.
Growing up in a Dutch-Ghanaian home and living across multiple cities shaped my curiosity about human behavior; not just what people should do, but why they actually do what they do. Healthcare taught me that knowing what’s good for people and getting them to act on it are two different problems.
I now carry that perspective into fintech, designing financial products and systems that align human behavior with better financial outcomes.
I joined Affinity before it was public, fewer than 13,000 customers, mostly reached through agents. For the next few years, largely as a solo designer, I worked across the fintech stack, spanning consumer products, business banking, payments infrastructure, operational tools and core banking systems.
13,000
Customers when I joined
140,000+
App users today
$200M
In total deposits
How I think about design
My favourite part of the job is untangling complexity into something that actually makes sense to a real person. A big part of how I think about design is autonomy, giving users what they need to make informed decisions, without overwhelming them. Fintech can feel intimidating from the outside, so wherever there's room, I try to bring some warmth and even a little fun to it.
😎
Outside work, you'll find me dancing, swimming, or watching a horror film I'll definitely regret at 2am.
I'm Vivian, Senior Product Designer and design lead at Affinity Africa. I design fintech products though I began my career studying dietetics.
Growing up in a Dutch-Ghanaian home and living across multiple cities shaped my curiosity about human behavior; not just what people should do, but why they actually do what they do. Healthcare taught me that knowing what’s good for people and getting them to act on it are two different problems.
I now carry that perspective into fintech, designing financial products and systems that align human behavior with better financial outcomes.
I joined Affinity before it was public, fewer than 13,000 customers, mostly reached through agents. For the next few years, largely as a solo designer, I worked across the fintech stack, spanning consumer products, business banking, payments infrastructure, operational tools and core banking systems.
13,000
Customers when I joined
140,000+
App users today
$200M
In total deposits
How I think about design
My favourite part of the job is untangling complexity into something that actually makes sense to a real person. A big part of how I think about design is autonomy, giving users what they need to make informed decisions, without overwhelming them. Fintech can feel intimidating from the outside, so wherever there's room, I try to bring some warmth and even a little fun to it.
😎
Outside work, you'll find me dancing, swimming, or watching a horror film I'll definitely regret at 2am.
I'm Vivian, Senior Product Designer and design lead at Affinity Africa. I design fintech products though I began my career studying dietetics.
Growing up in a Dutch-Ghanaian home and living across multiple cities shaped my curiosity about human behavior; not just what people should do, but why they actually do what they do. Healthcare taught me that knowing what’s good for people and getting them to act on it are two different problems.
I now carry that perspective into fintech, designing financial products and systems that align human behavior with better financial outcomes.
I joined Affinity before it was public, fewer than 13,000 customers, mostly reached through agents. For the next few years, largely as a solo designer, I worked across the fintech stack, spanning consumer products, business banking, payments infrastructure, operational tools and core banking systems.
13,000
Customers when I joined
140,000+
App users today
$200M
In total deposits
How I think about design
My favourite part of the job is untangling complexity into something that actually makes sense to a real person. A big part of how I think about design is autonomy, giving users what they need to make informed decisions, without overwhelming them. Fintech can feel intimidating from the outside, so wherever there's room, I try to bring some warmth and even a little fun to it.
😎
Outside work, you'll find me dancing, swimming, or watching a horror film I'll definitely regret at 2am.
