The Ordinary Group
UX South Africa
Red & Yellow
Born in South Africa to a Kenyan family, Alfi is dyslexic, struggled through school and university, and left the University of Pretoria without finishing his degree. Everything since has been self-taught, the subject of his TEDx Pretoria talk.
The way into design came through people: job shadowing at Absa, freelance work, then UX at King James Digital for Visa, MultiChoice, Allan Gray and Sasfin. Then came Absa’s Banking App design system and first lotto experience, the first design system at IoT.nxt with energy management for more than 4,000 government buildings, and product discovery for Yoco’s card machines.
Alongside the day job came teaching: instructor in residence at The Sensemakers Club, curriculum for Shaper’s youth employability programme, guest lectures at Mitra Academy and a seat on Red & Yellow’s industry advisory council. In 2023 that became The Ordinary Group, building the missing infrastructure between education and employment.
At Growth Notes, Alfi does all of it at once: field research with members and mentors, prototypes, and the platform itself, from database to deployed product.
