About

David Ng'ethe
Mwaura.

Designer, AI/data practitioner, and experimental builder. Based in Nairobi.

Selectively available for design, data, and prototype-stage product work. Q3 2026.
DNM

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.

  1. 2024 — present
    Independent practice Various clients · Nairobi
  2. 2022 — 2024
    Design lead Andela · remote
  3. 2019 — 2022
    Senior product designer Sokowatch / Wasoko
  4. 2017 — 2019
    Designer Bitlab Hub · Nairobi
01 · Metamorphosis

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 →
02 · Gnosis

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 →
03 · Tinker

Experiments, digital and physical. A working notebook — including the dead ends. All four states stay visible: active, paused, complete, abandoned.

Enter Tinker →
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