Dojah
2020–24Senior Product Designer · YC W22 · Identity Verification
Overview
I led the redesign of Dojah's core web application, Africa's first end-to-end identity verification platform (YC W22). Across two stints between 2021 and 2022 I worked with engineers, PMs, and data scientists to restructure the dashboard, surface compliance, and cut integration time. The redesign cut onboarding time by more than 50%, developer integration time by 60%, and grew organic traffic by 91%.
The challenge
Dojah served two audiences in one product. Developers came in to integrate identity APIs. They cared about keys, environments, and docs. Compliance and operations users came in to verify customers, run lookups, and manage AML risk. They cared about workflows, not endpoints. The dashboard treated both audiences identically, and both audiences struggled.
Developers couldn't find their API keys. Operations users skipped critical compliance tasks because they were buried under product screens. Everyone got Sandbox and Live confused, hit the wrong endpoint, then opened a support ticket.
The reframe
The six problems Dojah's users complained about weren't six problems. They were one: the dashboard's information architecture was designed for the org chart, not the job. Engineering features lived under “Apps”. Compliance lived under “Settings”. Sandbox and Live were a single dropdown most users never noticed.
Once I saw the IA as the root cause, every fix lined up against the same north star: every feature should live where the job actually starts.
Key decisions
Restructure the IA into jobs, not features
I regrouped the dashboard into four navigation areas (Main, No-code Tools, Widgets, Settings) organised by what the user was trying to do, not by what the engineering team had shipped. Tradeoff: a few advanced features ended up one click deeper than before. Win: support tickets about “where is X” dropped sharply.
Quick Actions: a to-do list inside the dashboard
Compliance and verification tasks kept getting skipped because they didn't have a home. I added a Quick Actions tab that surfaced legal and verification requirements as a prioritised list. Tradeoff: another tab to maintain and to teach. Win: users completed compliance tasks they'd been avoiding for weeks, and the company unblocked dozens of stalled integrations.
The Sandbox/Live modal
Sandbox vs. Live confusion was the single highest-volume support ticket. I designed a dismissible modal with a 5-second countdown reminding users which environment they were in, plus a “never remind me again” option for power users. Tradeoff: one extra interaction on every login. Win: the support ticket category nearly disappeared.
Easy Lookup: cut a 6-step flow to 2
Looking up a customer by regulatory ID used to require six clicks across three screens. I cut it to a single focused form with the critical fields only and a results display optimised for scanning. 40% reduction in time spent on customer lookups, and the most-used flow on the dashboard stopped being the most-complained-about.
Impact
50%+ reduction in onboarding and compliance time.
60% reduction in developer integration time.
40% reduction in time spent on customer lookups via Easy Lookup.
+91% organic traffic growth (paired with marketing on the rebrand launch).
Significant drop in support tickets across IA and API visibility categories.
Smooth user adoption: one-time welcome screen highlighting key updates plus a targeted email campaign with marketing.
Reflection
Dojah taught me that “navigation” is a polite word for “information architecture is broken”. Users don't complain about IA. They complain about features being hard to find, tasks being skipped, environments being confused. Six different complaints, one root cause.
The hardest part of the work wasn't the design. It was convincing engineering and PM leadership that a redesign of the menu was actually a redesign of the product's mental model, and worth four months of focus.