David Ng'ethe
Mwaura.
Designer, AI/data practitioner, and experimental builder. Based in Nairobi.
I'm a designer and AI/data practitioner. Half my work is for clients — usually small teams trying to do something new — and half is mine, in the open, on this site.
Most projects start with a small, concrete question and grow only as the question earns it. I write up what I learn. The writing is mostly for me, but I publish it because I find sites where someone shows their working more useful than ones that show only the conclusion.
My practice spans three modes. Metamorphosis is design and iterative development — client work and personal projects where the surface looks settled but the decisions underneath almost never were on the first try. Gnosis is AI and data analytics — notes from inside data work with cooperatives, archives, and small teams. Tinker is experiments, digital and physical, documented in progress including the dead ends.
Experience
- 2024 — present Independent practice Various clients · Nairobi
- 2022 — 2024 Design lead Andela · remote
- 2019 — 2022 Senior product designer Sokowatch / Wasoko
- 2017 — 2019 Designer Bitlab Hub · Nairobi
Practices
Design and iterative development. Things become other things — usually four or five drafts in. Client work and personal projects where the process is part of the output.
Enter Metamorphosis →AI and data analytics. Knowing as a working method. Case studies with cooperatives, archives, and small teams. Notes on what was tractable and what wasn't.
Enter Gnosis →Experiments, digital and physical. A working notebook — including the dead ends. All four states stay visible: active, paused, complete, abandoned.
Enter Tinker →Elsewhere
- Email hello@ngethemwaura.com
- Are.na are.na/dnw
- GitHub github.com/dnw
- LinkedIn in/ngethemwaura
Colophon
- Typeface
- Inter Tight (variable), JetBrains Mono (variable)
- Framework
- Astro 5, deployed on Cloudflare Pages
- CMS
- Payload CMS v3, self-hosted in Docker
- Database
- Cloudflare D1 (read), SQLite (CMS)
- Media
- Cloudflare R2