Victor EmokpareVictor EmokpareProduct designer
Victor in a white T-shirt in a restaurant full of hanging flowers
Out for lunch
Victor in a red cap with two friends
Design friends
Victor on a sofa in a pink and white striped shirt and blue jeans
Off the clock
Victor in sunglasses and a palm-print shirt on a beach
By the sea
Victor with bleached hair, in a white T-shirt
Blond phase
Victor sitting in a garden in a cap and olive overshirt
In the garden

Hi, I'm Victor.

I was born in Nigeria and studied meteorology at university. It wasn't an easy course: physics, mathematics and chemistry, all to make sense of systems you can't see directly. You learn to read charts and data, spot patterns and work out what's driving what. That's where I found my love for complexity.

During my degree I found fashion design . I learned the craft and went on to run a bespoke fashion business for five years. That love of making things is what led me to product design.

Like a lot of designers, I started out obsessed with craft, fascinated by how much has to go right for a complex system to hold together. Interfaces and design systems were what teams relied on me for. The more products I worked on, including ThriftNest, which I co-founded, the more I leaned towards strategy: what to build, for whom and why. That's how I fell for complex SaaS products, full of roles, rules and data. Meteorology all over again, just with software.

Luckily, I then joined a product studio that works mostly on complex SaaS and enterprise products. Today that's my job: making complicated products easy to use, and easy to build. It's also why I'm learning business analysis : to get the requirements as right as the screens.

Design philosophy

A few beliefs have stuck with me along the way.

  1. 01

    Systems before screens.

    Roles, rules and failure states decide whether a product works. I settle those first, and the interface gets simpler because of it.

  2. 02

    Guide, don't overwhelm.

    At every step, people should know where they are, what just happened and what their next action will change, without memorising the product.

  3. 03

    Design for the build, not the review.

    A design isn't finished when it looks right. It has to fit the build and hold up in real use, so I design the states, edge cases and handoff too.

Outside work

At home

Family

My wife and our daughter. The most important part of the story, and the one I don't need to turn into a design lesson.

In the gym

The gym

A regular reminder that progress is mostly repetition.

On the mat

Taekwondo

I'm a red belter, and I train with my daughter on weekends.

On repeat

I'm a music addict, and there's nearly always something playing. Pick a record from the crate and it goes on the deck. 1 of 3Hover to load when sunday comes aroundMarlon Funaki Open in Spotify ↗

Now listening
The crate

Message board

Before you go, leave a note. Pick a blue, write something and pin it to the board. Click a note to read it, or drag it somewhere else.

Connect

Still curious. Still learning. Still trying to make things easier to understand.

You can find me on LinkedIn , Instagram and X , or email me .