Mayowa Falola — Senior UX Designer

Overview

What is Clannit?

Clannit is a community and estate management platform serving residents, security teams, facility managers and estate administrators across Nigerian residential communities.

I joined as Senior UX Designer to lead design from zero — no existing product, no design system, no prior research. My mandate was to design an intuitive multi-role platform that served five very different user types and launch it within a tight timeline.

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Platform Type

B2C / B2B2C · Community Management · Mobile App + Web Dashboard

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Primary Users

Estate residents, security officers, facility managers, finance admins and master admins

Problem

Managing an estate is
chaotic without the right tool

Estate management in Nigeria is largely manual — WhatsApp groups for announcements, spreadsheets for dues, phone calls for gate access. Residents were frustrated, managers were overwhelmed, and nothing was documented.

"Managing 1,284 residents across WhatsApp, Excel and phone calls is not management — it's chaos. We needed one place where everything lived."

No Single Source of Truth

Every function — security, finance, communications, events — lived in a separate tool or group chat, with no unified view.

Manual Dues Collection

Collection rates hovered below 30% because there was no automated reminder system or transparent payment history.

Security Blind Spots

Gate officers had no digital visitor log. Estate managers had no real-time security alerts. Incidents went untracked.

Research

Five roles, one product —
understanding everyone

I conducted discovery research across all five user roles — residents, security officers, facility managers, finance admins, and master admins — running 18 interviews and observing on-site estate operations at two residential estates in Lagos.

FA

Funmi Adekunle

Estate Resident

"I just want to pay my dues, book a visitor pass, and know when there's a community event. I shouldn't need three WhatsApp groups and a phone call to do that."

Mobile-firstBusy professionalTime-pressured

CO

Chidi Okafor

Estate Manager

"I manage 1,200 residents, a security team and a finance committee. I need to see everything in one place — who paid, who hasn't, what incidents happened this week."

Multi-role oversightAccountability-focusedDesktop-primary

Key findings: Residents used an average of 3.4 separate tools/chats to manage estate interactions. Estate managers spent 6+ hours per week on dues reminders alone. Security incidents had a 0% digital documentation rate.

Process

Designing for five audiences at once

01

Role Mapping & Journey Design

Mapped the end-to-end journey for all 5 user roles — finding the intersection of overlapping needs (e.g. a visitor pass involves both resident and security officer) to design unified flows.

02

Information Architecture

Designed a role-based navigation system — each user type sees only what's relevant to their function, reducing cognitive load without hiding shared data from managers who need full visibility.

03

Mobile-first Resident App

Designed the resident mobile app first — the highest frequency touchpoint — before scaling patterns up to the web admin dashboard. This ensured simplicity-first thinking throughout.

04

Design System from Scratch

Built Clannit's entire design system — colour, typography, component library, icon set — establishing visual consistency across mobile and web from day one.

05

Beta Testing with Real Estates

Ran closed beta with 2 Lagos estates (380 residents). Collected structured feedback across all roles, iterating on the gate management flow, invoice system and notifications before public launch.

Solution

One platform for every community stakeholder

Clannit consolidates every estate management function into a single platform — with role-specific interfaces for each user type, so residents see what they need and admins control what matters.

Clannit Master Admin — Domain Health scores across Security, Finance, Operations and Community in one view

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Master Admin Dashboard

A command centre showing member count, collection rate, security health, and active alarms — all in real time with health scores per domain.

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Visitor & Gate Management

Digital visitor codes replace phone calls. Gate officers verify, log and admit visitors from a single screen, with full audit history.

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Finance & Collections

Automated invoice generation and payment tracking raised collection rates with full outstanding visibility and resident payment history.

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Community Communications

Estate-wide broadcasts, emergency alerts, and event RSVPs in a single hub — replacing WhatsApp group chaos entirely.

Outcomes

A platform that communities actually use

The launch of Clannit exceeded every target. Adoption was driven by genuine utility — users recommended it to neighbouring estates without any paid acquisition.

50KDownloads in first quarter

40%User engagement increase

30%Customer satisfaction lift

"Before Clannit, I was sending reminders manually every month. Now the system handles collections, sends alerts, and I just review the dashboard every morning."

— Estate Manager, early Clannit adopter

Learnings

What this project taught me

Multi-role products need a strong IA foundation. Without clear role-based navigation from the start, features pile up into an unusable mess. Architecture decisions made at week one echo through the entire product.
Mobile-first enforces the right discipline. Designing the resident app before the admin dashboard forced us to prioritise ruthlessly — every feature had to earn its place on a small screen first.
Replacing informal systems is a behaviour change problem. The real competition wasn't another app — it was WhatsApp. Adoption required making Clannit faster and easier than what users already knew.
Building from zero is both harder and more rewarding. No legacy constraints meant we could design the right system — but it required enormous discipline to avoid feature bloat from day one.

Clannit — Community ManagementSolution