For the love of technology, for the sake of people.
I started designing at 15, working alongside my dad in our family-run printing press. I still feel nostalgia
when I hear what seems like the clanking sound of our old Gestetner 211 or the smell of fresh ink!
These memories from early on hooked me on the magic of making ideas tangible from simple yet profound
processes, and taught me how design can move people and shape stories.
Since then, design and designing has meant much more, it became my life. What began as a creative outlet
quickly became a problem-solving skill, one I have honed over the years.
I consider my “moat” to be the breadth of perspective I have in seeing human behaviour through design across
several industries, context, and stories. Over the past eight years, I designed brand identities and digital
experiences
that helped businesses showcase value and guide their customers through empathetic journeys to help them solve
everyday problems with technology.
I also led teams to build products that tackle some impactful challenges; from designing 3D-printed drone
prototypes to deliver emergency medical supplies in rural Nigeria, to developing a consumer-led Open Banking
access
framework for over 13million digitally-excluded users using feature phones.
In 2021 I co-founded
Spire, raising $100k in pre-seed funding to democratize UX Research and Product Testing for startups and solo
entreprenuers.
Product Managers, Software Engineers, Designers, etc., could collect contextual visual product feedback from
their customers, and test ideas rapidly at a fraction of the cost of setting up full-fledged research teams.
Spire provided a suite of software-as-a-service tools, from participant and user/customer recruitment to
research analysis and insight.
My pursuit of life's purpose
I have found my life’s purpose to be at the nexus of using my skills, and the the opportunities that abound,
to solve the world's biggest challenges. All of my experiences over the years have provided me with the
opportunity in both big and small ways to do so, and I intend to continue pushing the boundaries around me to
do more.
Today my focus is expanding from digital products to the skies. I’m pursuing an MSc in Safety and Human
Factors in Aviation at Cranfield University, exploring how human-AI systems can boost situational awareness,
support cognitive offloading, and improve predictive safety in future flight systems. My current obsession is
a Deep Learning project to model a multimodal workload assessment system that fuses physiological, task,
and performance data to evaluate pilots’ real-time cognitive states. I consider it an early step toward
adaptive flight-deck monitoring.
I am open to research collaboration, and assistance. Please reach me at hello[a]charlesnjoku[dot]com.
Community...
I could say I was self-taught for majority of my career, but that would be telling only half of the story.
Being part of, and supported by, several communities was instrumental in the many ways I have grown as a
designer.
I am part of several community initiatives, and contribute my quota in helping the ecosystem mature as well as
continue to inspire and mentor others.
