Tomi Odusanya: The problem-solving creative leading Growth Design at the first Nigerian Y combinator-backed company — #006
I like to call myself a problem solver. At the core of it, I am a Creative. I enjoy making interfaces on the internet... Interestingly, I accidentally found them on Twitter and applied.
Hi, thank you for joining us for another edition of our interview with African Creatives. In this edition, I spoke with Tomi Odusanya, a problem-solving creative who enjoys making interfaces on the internet and currently leads the growth design team at the first Nigerian Y combinator-backed company. He shares what led him to design and how he went from being an intern to leading a team.
If you are curious to know what drives the work he does, the major challenges he faces and how he navigates them, his favourite projects, how he spends his day, the people that inspire him and the people and brands he would love to work with, you should continue reading. You will definitely love and enjoy reading this!
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Tomi Odusanya. I like to call myself a problem solver. At the centre of it all, I am a Creative. I enjoy making interfaces on the internet and I currently lead the growth design team at Paystack, an offline and online payment company based in Africa with our HQ in Lagos.
Something interesting about me is that I am currently on a hair growth journey — I am almost 2 years into my hair growth journey. I am ambidextrous. I can write with both hands. If I want to write something in a book, I write with my left hand but if I want to write anywhere else, I write with my right hand.
How did you get started with design? What led you to design?
As a child, I was very curious. I would dismantle and put things together. I was always interested in fixing things and my father played a part in that because he has a similar trait so when I was to study in the university, I studied electrical electronics engineering at the University of Lagos (UNILAG). When I got into the university, I started exploring my creative side more. I had the opportunity to do an internship during my 400 level in an engineering company where I got to realize that was not what I wanted to do or pursue as a career. I started looking for an alternative and tried different things.
My first journey into design was when I wanted to make cartoons. I started learning Adobe After Effects to animate cartoon characters and during this period I realised I needed to first design the characters before animating them so I picked up Adobe Illustrator. Before this, during a 6 months ASUU strike we had when I was in my second year, I was playing around with different things and remember watching breaking bad; I think that's the greatest show but that’s by the way. I started learning to code during this period because I was free and had nothing to do. I picked up HTML and CSS but my learning was scattered because I didn't have proper guidance. After that, I continued learning Adobe After Effects and Illustrator but after a while, I stumbled on UI design because UI animation needed to be done with After Effects. Figma was not a thing then, they were still in the very early stage.
By the time I was done with uni, I had a good friend of mine who was trying to build a startup. We got talking and I told him I could design so I started working with him. He had a MacBook I could use and I found out there was a tool called Sketch for Mac that was perfect for designing UI. He would lend me his MacBook which I would use to design for him. After a while, I applied to several internships and got into about two of them. One of them allowed me to learn both UI design and web development on the job and I had better guidance. So all the other things I had learned in the past now came together at that point of the internship. I was learning at a very fast pace and everything was just moving on smoothly for me.
What has the journey been like going from being an intern to leading a design team?
Paystack was one of the internships I applied for and to be honest, getting into Paystack was a “Hard work meet opportunity” situation. Interestingly, I accidentally found them on Twitter. I saw the internship opening while scrolling through Twitter and we were given a take-home assignment to design a solution for a problem — I can’t remember the particular problem we were asked to address. Because I had helped my friend design his app, I had some UI design experience. You could tell I wanted the internship because I was using a very old window laptop at the time and my friend’s MacBook was not available for me to use so I had to find a way to install the macOS on my windows laptop that was slow, so just imagine what that was like. I submitted my application a few minutes before the deadline. To my surprise, I got an email that I had gone through to the next stage and that was it. I have been at Paystack since then. This November makes it five years since I have been at Paystack.
How would you describe what you do to a 5-year-old?
I would use LEGO as a reference because a 5-year-old should be able to relate to that. I would say that the same way they make/build things with LEGO blocks, is the way I make things that help people receive and send money.
What is your day-to-day routine? What does a typical day look like for you?
Using Monday for example, I get set for work and usually have a couple of meetings in the morning. With a new sprint about to start, I have spent the previous week grooming and sorting my tasks and deliverables so I would populate Jira on Monday and have meetings with stakeholders and the designers on the team. I would have sessions with multiple people across the team to ensure everyone has a clear sense of what success is. After this, I would have one or two more meetings with stakeholders that have sent in design requests to be sure that we are on the same page and set the rest of the team up for success.
After this is clear, I start working on tasks like designing and writing codes.
What do you enjoy most about what you do? What is the most satisfying thing about your job?
I enjoy cross-function collaboration. The most interesting project I have worked on in my time at Paystack is the one that required that I work with people in other teams like backend engineer, marketing and across other teams.
What is the best career investment you have made as a creative?
It has to be side-loading my windows laptop with a macOS to finish the task that got me into Paystack. It was a very painful and rigorous process. In another sense, I would say applying myself. I initially joined Paystack as a product designer but in my first two years, I did branding, graphic design, website design and all sorts. Directly and indirectly, these experiences helped me stand out as a designer.
I also regularly take courses to learn new things. I remember when I was hungry to learn and would stay up at night to watch Chris Do. I would stay up at night to stream the sessions because they would take them off YouTube immediately after they ended the stream so that they could add them to their paid courses.
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What are the challenges you face in your day-to-day activities?
The area of design I focus on at Paystack is public-facing so there is always the pressure to do better and improve on previous projects. The bar is always high.
Another one is scale. You can watch a lot of YouTube videos or read about it but you can't really get it until you are at the point where you really need to scale.
How do you navigate these challenges?
I think it's a mixture of different things like learning new techniques on how to generate ideas. For example, I used to struggle with ideating so I started using a technique where I write down keywords and have something like a word cloud. Initially, I just jump into wireframes but at some point, I began to design with pen and paper first.
Also, I try as much as I can to collaborate because I feel like it is the shortest cut to improving. Collaborating with someone with more experience helps to learn things faster and reduces the time you would originally use to learn these things if you were to learn them on your own.
Another thing I try to do is talk to other problem-solvers who are not necessarily designers. For example, interacting with someone in biz op or product management can be very insightful.
I also try to learn random things and new technologies even though I may not apply them at work immediately, I still learn them.
What is your creative process and workflow?
The Nigerian word is WURUWURU because I am still trying to form a proper process. Sometimes I start with designing with words, like the word cloud thing I mentioned earlier, and sometimes I would spend 70% of the time thinking about the problem and when the deadline is approaching, I would miraculously get the inspiration I need.
I do the typical things like wireframing, designing and prototyping but the most important part before designing and pushing pixel is where I have not really formed.
What are the essential gadgets, tools and software you use for work daily?
For gadgets, I use my phone, I currently use a MacBook and don't need to sideload a windows laptop with a macOS anymore, haha. My airpod is also important because music is a very important part of my work.
For software, I use VS Code to write codes and use Figma to design. I use Jira for work project management and obsidian for personal projects.
How did the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown impact you and the work you do as a creative?
The pandemic made the world a smaller place. Though we were already remote before the pandemic, we had to go fully remote when the pandemic hit.
The pandemic came with burnout for me. Also, we had more people join the company during this period so having to manage a larger team was kind of tough at the time.
How do you handle creative blocks and client rejections when working as a creative?
To be honest, I think these are separate and similar problems — you'll always encounter this in your creative journey.
With creative blocks, I don't have one method. I'm always eager to learn how people navigate this bit. When I'm trying to expand on a creative idea — I've used word clouds in the past to help with ideation. I've also tried taking walks when I get stuck. Right now, I honestly just close my laptop and sleep — there's a scientific study that backs this somewhere, most times when I wake up and I face the same problem, I'm able to figure out a solution
Client work, there are three buckets of working with partners — Define/Understand the problem, Solve the problem and Solve the problem elegantly. 85% of the time when there's a problem, it's because the designer hasn't done a good job at understanding the problem — depending on the client, you sometimes need to work harder to get them to define the problem.
Since design can be opinionated, partners and designers always clash at bucket 3. You honestly need interpersonal skills to navigate this bit. You also need to know when to take feedback and when to back out of an argument.
What is the task you don't enjoy doing but you have to do?
Right now, I don't enjoy scrum management — sprint planning, setting up sprint boards, Jira, argh. In hindsight, it’s funny that I've been able to get better at this. I've read the book — Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the time, binged YouTube and more importantly gotten better by doing the work. I still don't enjoy it, but I'm able to get the job done. Agile is actually interesting because I find that I can also apply it to areas of my life outside work.
What are the most exciting projects you have worked on?
Everything I do is a hit but if I have to choose, I would go with Paystack Music, Paystack Terminal, Jand Comic, and TheSubtext.
Paystack Music is a monthly curation of music we share on our team. Music is a very integral part of our work. So we had the idea to share what we were listening to with people outside of our company. It was a collaborative project with many people coming together to bring it to life.
Paystack Terminal is another Paystack project I am very proud of.
Jand Comic was a purely creative project. It was a project for an illustrator who wanted an online directory to share comics. It was an end-to-end project for me. The work I did cut across design, frontend, and backend.
TheSubtext was also an interesting project.
What keeps you motivated to keep creating?
There's a hustle culture in Nigeria and that keeps me going. Also, the people I see on the internet doing great work keep me going. I am fascinated by other creatives and I am motivated to keep working when I look at the impact of their work.
What do you do for fun? How do you relax?
The sad truth is that I don't do a lot outside of the internet. I enjoy playing FIFA, I can beat a lot of people in FIFA. Away from that, I depend on my friendship community, I get on a call with them or visit them when I am not working. I want to start travelling and exploring too.
Who are the creatives that inspire you?
It's a long list I will try to list as many as I can remember.
Locally, I would say Ogbeni Seyi, Opemipo, Ted, Kaz, and my colleagues.
Internationally, I am inspired by BDC, Jonnie Hallman, Nick Jones, and Aristo Benoist.
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Who are the people you would love to work with or collaborate with?
A team comprising of me, BDC, Aristo Benoist, and Ogbeni Seyi/Kaz would really slap.
What brands would you love to work with?
Google’s Chrome team — I would really love to shape the future of the internet.
I would also love to work with Spotify.
What would you be doing if you were not a designer?
I would probably be running an educational channel. I would be a teacher.
What advice do you have for someone who is at the early stage of their creative journey?
I would say shamelessly make things. Just create. The creative brain is a muscle, just keep flexing the muscle. Keep creating and get feedback too.
While money is a good motivator, it should not be the first motivator because if you're solving problems money will come. It doesn't make sense if you're not trying to be better but just chasing the bag. If you actively keep creating, money will come.
Whose story would you love to read about?
Ted, Seyi, Kolapo, or Kachi.
Do you have anything you would like to plug in or promote?
I just want to say End Police Brutality.
Also, my friend Kachi has this weekly publication called Whatspopping, check it out.
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