About Me

I sit at the intersection of technology and business. Using design thinking techniques, I have worked with different organizations to understand their technological needs and identified strategies that would allow them to make the best of technology. My specialty is product design - figuring out the problem by engaging the different stakeholders, working with the development team to quickly prototype & test the solution, and taking the product to market and growing its usage.

Contact Details

Kennedy Kirui
hello[at]kirui[.]co[.]ke

Education

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT)

BSc. Computer Technology • December 2011

One dusty and sunny afternoon in the far away lands of Juja a JKUAT lecturer arrived at an epiphany; you can create something new by combining two different things! For a long time, it had felt that their computer Science curriculum leaned heavily on the science part. On the other hand, their information technology curriculum just had too much technology. Computer technology was born on that day and I was in the fourth cohort of students to be admitted for the course. The rest is history....

Work

kirui.co.ke

Freelance Product Designer • January 2017- Present

Freelance product designer specializing in the development of digital products. I combine human-centred design and the lean startup methodology to help different companies think through the product design process. I am leveraging on my experience designing and piloting products for corporates and large organizations over the past four years to help organizations quickly and cheaply launch and test their products.

How do you start developing a product without spending insane amounts of money on market research? How do you quickly and cheaply develop and validate ideas? How do you set up your team to ensure that they build products that the customers will love? How do you use usage data to improve your products? How do you capture and utilize user feedback to improve your product? These are some of the questions I can help you and your product team wrap your head around.

iHub

Director of Consultancy Services • May 2016- December 2016

iHub, Nairobi's premier innovation hub, through the consultancy unit enables different organizations to leverage its immense talent pool to implement business solutions. The consultancy unit at the iHub is made up of scrum masters, researchers, design thinkers, UX & UI designers, system architects, and web & mobile application developers. The consultancy unit offers market research services, digital product design, development, and support by leveraging the immense talent at its disposal.

As the director of the unit, my primary responsibilities was business development, team management (recruiting, capacity building, retention), and took lead on product development for our customers. I also acted as the main customer satisfaction agent ensuring that we delivered quality products and that our clients were happy. Within the wider organization, as part of the leadership team, I was involved in defining the company strategy and making sure that it is executed well.

iHub

Consulting Lead • September 2013 - April 2016

As the Consulting Lead my primary role was identifying & nurturing talent, business development, developing a strategy to ensure continued growth, and facilitating the execution of projects. I played an important role in the ideation process as it was always the most critical part of the project. This is based on my understanding that a significant number of things are unclear at the beginning.

I also took the lead in developing and implementing processes that would ensure we consistently delivered quality projects. We ended up with a software consultancy team that combined human-centred design principles and agile software practices to deliver software. Within the period I was heading the unit, it grew from a fringe department at the iHub to one of the main strategic units that were driving the iHub. The team grew from one to five full-time employees and seven consultants who were used 60% each month.

kirui.co.ke

Freelance Software Developer & Project Manager • December 2012 - August 2013

Software development with a focus was on back end development and API development & integration. Complimented existing teams to offer the necessary capacity needed and also took on projects in collaboration with other freelancers. Managed projects for organizations with existing teams or outsourced development.

Verviant Consulting Services

Web Developer • January 2012 - November 2012

Verviant provides custom software solutions ranging from web applications, desktop applications to mobile applications. My role involved software design, implementation, testing, debugging and deployment.