Hi! I’m Stephanie, a UX designer and builder in South Africa.
I specialise in high-trust mobile products. With 7 years in Fintech and 3 years in Marketplaces, I lead design & strategy that balances strict compliance with user ease. I bring a founder’s mindset and a deep personal investment in finance to the mission of financial freedom.
Currently working in the travel sector at a Dutch Scale-up as UX Lead (remote) and vibe-coding my own consumer apps.
*Where I add value
*My product philosophy
*Where I add value *My product philosophy
The Insight: In high-value marketplaces, fear is the biggest conversion blocker.
My Approach: I design "Trust Signals"—using transparency and verification to convert curious browsers into confident transactors.De-risking conversion
Case study #1 Designing trust for high-value bookings
The Insight: Onboarding is a balance of friction vs. security. I design KYC flows that convert.
My Approach: I use progressive disclosure to make heavy sensitive data and uploads feel like a seamless part of the value exchange.High complexity, low friction
The Insight: Users aren't just high net worth or low income. They are proactive, reactive, or anxious.
My Approach: I build tools that adapt to Financial Maturity, guiding users from "Saving" to "Investing" to "Wealth Building”.Behaviour over numbers
Case studies
#1 Designing trust for high-value bookings
A collection of small A/B tests to reduce "Fear of Loss" in high-stakes asset marketplaces.
#2 Designing for financial confidence: Beyond the balance sheet
A product discovery study on cashflow behaviours to improve financial inclusion in a country with low financial literacy.
#3 Reducing friction in high-data onboarding for scholarships
Helping students gain scholarships with empowering and simple tools to build the best application (KYC conversion) .
Recent ExplorationsBuilding at the edge of design + AI
I've gotten my hands dirty — using AI across research, prototyping, and roadmap automation, and eventually vibe-coding my own app all the way to the App Store. The craft hasn't changed. The pace of what's possible has.
Shipped productBuilding a native iOS app from zero to 1st subscriber
PepTalk is a live App Store app — designed, built, and launched solo using AI-assisted development. No dev team. No agency.
Product operationsAutomating tech spec and dev handoff
Agentic workflows that turn a meeting recording into a structured Notion project, technical spec, codebase risk flags, and translation outputs.
Rapid MVP prototypingFrom API schema to working prototype, fast
Used the PM's API schema and existing design system to build a functional backoffice prototype in Lovable — compressing weeks of iteration into one sprint.
