Gathr
— 2026Gathr is a crowdfunding platform built for Nigeria and the broader African market, designed to make fundraising and giving more accessible through local payment rails and familiar trust dynamics. I was the Sole Product Designer, owning the product design end-to-end from user flows and UX strategy to final UI and developer handoff. Within the first week of launch, Gathr facilitated ₦197,230+ in donations across 5 live campaigns and 10 donations.
01 — The problem
Crowdfunding in Nigeria lacked a trusted, locally built experience
Campaign organizers struggled with creating, managing, and tracking fundraisers, while donors needed confidence that campaigns were legitimate before giving. Gathr aimed to solve both sides by bringing campaign discovery, verification, donations, campaign management, and withdrawals into one streamlined platform.
02 — Design decisions
A visual system built around trust, warmth, and simplicity
Gathr’s visual direction was designed to make crowdfunding feel trustworthy, and easy to navigate. We used a dark green as the primary color to create a sense of stability and trust while still feeling connected to growth and community, important qualities for a platform handling people’s money and personal stories. Familjen Grotesk for a distinctive brand personality, and Inter for clear, readable UI text. We also used rounded corners throughout the interface to soften the experience. Rather than making the platform feel overly institutional, the softer shapes create a more welcoming and human feel, which is particularly important for a product centered around people asking for and giving help.
03— Research & Product Decisions
Turning user needs into useful features
The research phase focused on understanding the key challenges across the crowdfunding journey, from creating a campaign to building trust and managing donations. This led to features designed to reduce friction and help users complete important tasks faster. One example was AI-assisted campaign creation. Instead of asking users to write a campaign description and story from scratch, Gathr lets them enter a campaign title and category, then use “Generate with AI” to create the initial content. The creator can then review and edit the generated content before publishing. This approach was about reducing the blank-page problem for campaign creators while keeping them in control of their story.
04 — Solution
Designing trust into the entire crowdfunding journey
Gathr was designed as an end-to-end crowdfunding experience, connecting campaign creation, donor discovery, verification, donations, campaign management, analytics, and withdrawals in one platform. The experience was structured to make it easier for people to raise funds while giving donors the information and trust signals needed to support a campaign confidently. As the product expanded, trust became a core part of the experience, with dedicated verification, campaign review, and fraud-prevention processes supporting the user-facing crowdfunding journey.
05 — Going forward
Expanding Gathr beyond traditional crowdfunding
The next phase of Gathr is focused on making the platform more flexible, engaging, and accessible. This includes exploring crypto donations, introducing cashback or rewards for donors who lock their funds for a specific period, and designing a dedicated mobile experience to make donating and managing campaigns easier on the go. These additions would extend Gathr from a traditional crowdfunding platform into a broader financial experience, giving users more ways to donate, manage, and get value from their funds.
06 — Key learnings
Trust has to be designed into the experience
Working on Gathr strengthened my understanding of how financial products are designed around trust, security, transparency, and the movement of money. I gained practical exposure to concepts such as donations, balances, withdrawals, verification, transaction flows, and platform fees. It also helped me understand how financial considerations influence UX decisions—from making transactions clear and trustworthy to designing experiences that give users confidence when their money is involved. Most importantly, Gathr expanded my product-design knowledge beyond interfaces and into the financial systems and user behaviours behind the product.