UI/UX is the best-paid design specialism in Kenya and the one most commonly misunderstood. A great many people describe themselves as UI/UX designers on the strength of some app screens in Figma, and are then surprised when interviews go nowhere.
The gap is that UI and UX are two jobs. Knowing which one you are doing, and being able to show both, is most of the battle.
The difference, stated plainly
- UX (user experience) is deciding what the product should do and in what order. Research, user flows, information architecture, testing. Mostly thinking, writing and diagramming.
- UI (user interface) is how it looks and feels. Layout, type, colour, components, states, motion. Mostly visual craft.
A beautiful interface over a badly thought-out flow is a nice-looking failure. A brilliant flow rendered in ugly, inconsistent screens does not get approved. Employers hiring one designer want somebody who can do enough of both.
How to tell which you lean towards
Given a banking app that people find confusing: if your instinct is to interview five users and map where they get lost, you lean UX. If it is to redraw the screens with a proper type scale, you lean UI. Neither is better. Both need the other.
Learn UX first, however tempting the screens are
Starting with the visuals produces portfolios full of pretty screens that answer no question. Starting with UX means every screen you later design has a reason to exist.
The UX Design course runs to 35 lessons and covers research, personas, journey mapping, information architecture and usability testing — the vocabulary you will be expected to use in an interview.
Then learn Figma properly
Figma is the industry default, it runs in a browser, and its free tier is genuinely enough to work professionally. If you learn one tool, learn this one.
Figma for UI/UX Design covers 21 lessons. Pay particular attention to components, auto layout and shared styles — those three are what separate a designer a development team enjoys working with from one they do not.
Adobe XD as a second tool
Some Kenyan agencies still run on Adobe XD, especially those already inside a Creative Cloud subscription. UI Design with Adobe XD covers it in 23 lessons. Learn it second, not first.
Visual fundamentals still apply
UI is graphic design applied to screens. Spacing, hierarchy, type and colour behave the same way they do in print, plus states and constraints. If your screens feel amateur but you cannot say why, the missing piece is usually fundamentals rather than Figma skill — Graphic Design Foundations fills that gap.
The portfolio that actually works: case studies
UI/UX hiring runs on case studies, not galleries. Three good case studies beat thirty screens. Each one should walk through:
- The problem. Who was struggling, with what, and how you know.
- The research. Even five interviews with real people counts, and beats none.
- The thinking. Flows, sketches, the options you rejected and why.
- The design. Final screens, with the reasoning attached.
- The outcome. What changed. If it was never built, say what you would measure.
What to make case studies about
Use services you actually use and can observe other people using. A matatu fare app, a hospital booking flow, a county government service portal, a SACCO member dashboard, a school fees payment page. Local problems demonstrate local understanding, which is exactly what a Kenyan employer is hiring for.
How to Build A Portfolio covers presentation and structure in 16 lessons.
Work with developers, not at them
The complaint developers make about designers, everywhere, is the same: designs that ignore how the thing gets built. You do not need to code, but understanding the medium changes what you draw.
An afternoon on the HTML and CSS Crash Course is enough to grasp why some layouts are trivial and others are expensive. It is the highest-return few hours a designer can spend.
Where the jobs are
- Nairobi product companies — fintech especially — hire product designers and pay at the top of the local design market.
- Agencies hire designers who can do UI, UX and some visual work at once.
- Remote international roles are unusually accessible in this discipline, because the work is portfolio-judged and delivered in a browser.
Check BrighterMonday, Fuzu and LinkedIn for advertised roles, and look at the careers pages of Kenyan fintechs directly.
A six-month route
- Months 1–2: UX Design, finished properly.
- Month 3: Figma, plus rebuilding a familiar app screen by screen.
- Month 4: Fundamentals, and a redesign of something you use daily.
- Months 5–6: Three full case studies, published.
All of it is free. Create a free account to save progress and earn a verifiable certificate, and start with UX Design today.
