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Indigo Design System

From operational chaos to structured clarity: Designing a unified system for Africa’s growing property management market

My Role

Strategy, Planning, Visual & Product Design, Prototyping

Team

Bolu Obisanya, Product Designer

and other Stakeholders; Engineering, Product,

Year

2025

As the sole designer on the team, I led the product’s early design direction — from initial research to high-fidelity mockups and developer handoff. My primary focus was building a robust application with a design system that could support rapid iterations across core modules such as onboarding, property management, and maintenance support.

Context

Building the Foundation for a Scalable Property Management Experience

Indigo is a property management web platform built for landlords, agents, and tenants across Africa. As part of the founding team, I was responsible for designing a unified and scalable design system that supports Indigo’s MVP features while laying the foundation for long-term growth.

 

We aimed to simplify fragmented processes — from onboarding tenants to tracking payments and managing repairs — all within a single dashboard tailored to different user roles.

Problem

An opportunity to standardize fragmented property workflows

Property managers and landlords often rely on spreadsheets, messaging apps, and manual reminders to handle tenants, payments, and maintenance issues. This results in missed deadlines, lost records, and poor tenant experiences.

 

We needed a modular design system that could:

Support role-based views (e.g., Tenant vs. Landlord)

Scale with features like ticketing, payments, and unit onboarding

Reduce visual noise while preserving functionality for power users

I started by working closely with the CEO (a property manager himself) and Full Stack developers, to map out real-world workflows. We focused on understanding:

Research insight

Taking stock of issues through familiar frameworks

How landlords onboard new tenants

Pain points in rent collection and tracking

How maintenance issues are reported and resolved

The communication gap between stakeholders

This research informed the Information Architecture, User Roles, and MVP Scope.

System architecture & role mapping

Aligning product architecture with real-world roles

We designed Indigo around three primary user types — each with its own visual priorities, permissions, and workflows:

Landlords/Agents — Manage properties, track income, approve tickets

Tenants — View leases, make payments, report issues

Admins — Monitor platform activity and resolve escalations

Design system creation

Building a system to drive consistency and scale

With limited engineering bandwidth, our design system had to be practical — not theoretical. I focused on clarity, reusability, and visual hierarchy across components.

Design Principles

Contextual Clarity — Every element serves the user's immediate goal

Scalable Consistency — Components adapt across device sizes and user roles

Performance Minded — Optimized for 3G networks prevalent in target markets

Accessibility First — WCAG 2.1 AA compliance from day one

Foundations

Typography — Clean sans-serif system for high readability

Spacing & Grid — 8pt grid system for visual consistency

Color — Primary, secondary, tertiary, quartenary, accent, neutral.

COLOR RAMP SNAPSHOT

Components

Action buttons, badges, status indicators

Text fields, forms for KYC, rent, and issue reporting

Tab systems and modals for multistep actions

TEXT FIELD COMPONENT SNAPSHOT

Looking back

Measuring success through velocity and clarity

Outcomes

As we move past MVP, the Indigo design system is evolving to support scale while keeping clarity and usability front and center.

Systemized components led to faster development across features

Stakeholder dashboards improved visibility and reduced support tickets

Pilot testers rated the UX “clear, fast, and professional”

What’s next?

As we move past MVP, the Indigo design system is evolving to support scale while keeping clarity and usability front and center.

Smart financial insights for landlords

AI-driven rent and occupancy forecasts

Multi-channel messaging components for tenant engagement

Up Next: Jojolo Mobile App

Home

Indigo Design System

From operational chaos to structured clarity: Designing a unified system for Africa’s growing property management market

My Role

Strategy, Planning, Visual & Product Design, Prototyping

Team

Bolu Obisanya, Product Designer

and other Stakeholders; Engineering, Product,

Year

2025

As the sole designer on the team, I led the product’s early design direction — from initial research to high-fidelity mockups and developer handoff. My primary focus was building a robust application with a design system that could support rapid iterations across core modules such as onboarding, property management, and maintenance support.

Context

Building the Foundation for a Scalable Property Management Experience

Indigo is a property management web platform built for landlords, agents, and tenants across Africa. As part of the founding team, I was responsible for designing a unified and scalable design system that supports Indigo’s MVP features while laying the foundation for long-term growth.

 

We aimed to simplify fragmented processes — from onboarding tenants to tracking payments and managing repairs — all within a single dashboard tailored to different user roles.

Problem

An opportunity to standardize fragmented property workflows

Property managers and landlords often rely on spreadsheets, messaging apps, and manual reminders to handle tenants, payments, and maintenance issues. This results in missed deadlines, lost records, and poor tenant experiences.

 

We needed a modular design system that could:

Support role-based views (e.g., Tenant vs. Landlord)

Scale with features like ticketing, payments, and unit onboarding

Reduce visual noise while preserving functionality for power users

I started by working closely with the CEO (a property manager himself) and Full Stack developers, to map out real-world workflows. We focused on understanding:

Research insight

Taking stock of issues through familiar frameworks

How landlords onboard new tenants

Pain points in rent collection and tracking

How maintenance issues are reported and resolved

The communication gap between stakeholders

This research informed the Information Architecture, User Roles, and MVP Scope.

System architecture & role mapping

Aligning product architecture with real-world roles

We designed Indigo around three primary user types — each with its own visual priorities, permissions, and workflows:

Landlords/Agents — Manage properties, track income, approve tickets

Tenants — View leases, make payments, report issues

Admins — Monitor platform activity and resolve escalations

Design system creation

Building a system to drive consistency and scale

With limited engineering bandwidth, our design system had to be practical — not theoretical. I focused on clarity, reusability, and visual hierarchy across components.

Design Principles

Contextual Clarity — Every element serves the user's immediate goal

Scalable Consistency — Components adapt across device sizes and user roles

Performance Minded — Optimized for 3G networks prevalent in target markets

Accessibility First — WCAG 2.1 AA compliance from day one

Foundations

Typography — Clean sans-serif system for high readability

Spacing & Grid — 8pt grid system for visual consistency

Color — Primary, secondary, tertiary, quartenary, accent, neutral.

COLOR RAMP SNAPSHOT

Components

Action buttons, badges, status indicators

Text fields, forms for KYC, rent, and issue reporting

Tab systems and modals for multistep actions

TEXT FIELD COMPONENT SNAPSHOT

Looking back

Measuring success through velocity and clarity

Outcomes

As we move past MVP, the Indigo design system is evolving to support scale while keeping clarity and usability front and center.

Systemized components led to faster development across features

Stakeholder dashboards improved visibility and reduced support tickets

Pilot testers rated the UX “clear, fast, and professional”

What’s next?

As we move past MVP, the Indigo design system is evolving to support scale while keeping clarity and usability front and center.

Smart financial insights for landlords

AI-driven rent and occupancy forecasts

Multi-channel messaging components for tenant engagement

Up Next: Jojolo Mobile App

Home

Indigo Design System

From operational chaos to structured clarity: Designing a unified system for Africa’s growing property management market

My Role

Strategy, Planning, Visual & Product Design, Prototyping

Team

Bolu Obisanya, Product Designer

and other Stakeholders; Engineering, Product,

Year

2025

As the sole designer on the team, I led the product’s early design direction — from initial research to high-fidelity mockups and developer handoff. My primary focus was building a robust application with a design system that could support rapid iterations across core modules such as onboarding, property management, and maintenance support.

Context

Building the Foundation for a Scalable Property Management Experience

Indigo is a property management web platform built for landlords, agents, and tenants across Africa. As part of the founding team, I was responsible for designing a unified and scalable design system that supports Indigo’s MVP features while laying the foundation for long-term growth.

 

We aimed to simplify fragmented processes — from onboarding tenants to tracking payments and managing repairs — all within a single dashboard tailored to different user roles.

Problem

An opportunity to standardize fragmented property workflows

Property managers and landlords often rely on spreadsheets, messaging apps, and manual reminders to handle tenants, payments, and maintenance issues. This results in missed deadlines, lost records, and poor tenant experiences.

 

We needed a modular design system that could:

Support role-based views (e.g., Tenant vs. Landlord)

Scale with features like ticketing, payments, and unit onboarding

Reduce visual noise while preserving functionality for power users

Research insight

Taking stock of issues through familiar frameworks

I started by working closely with the CEO (a property manager himself) and Full Stack developers, to map out real-world workflows. We focused on understanding:

How landlords onboard new tenants

Pain points in rent collection and tracking

How maintenance issues are reported and resolved

The communication gap between stakeholders

This research informed the Information Architecture, User Roles, and MVP Scope.

System architecture & role mapping

Aligning product architecture with real-world roles

We designed Indigo around three primary user types — each with its own visual priorities, permissions, and workflows:

Landlords/Agents — Manage properties, track income, approve tickets

Tenants — View leases, make payments, report issues

Admins — Monitor platform activity and resolve escalations

Design system creation

Building a system to drive consistency and scale

With limited engineering bandwidth, our design system had to be practical — not theoretical. I focused on clarity, reusability, and visual hierarchy across components.

Design Principles

Contextual Clarity — Every element serves the user's immediate goal

Scalable Consistency — Components adapt across device sizes and user roles

Performance Minded — Optimized for 3G networks prevalent in target markets

Accessibility First — WCAG 2.1 AA compliance from day one

Foundations

Typography — Clean sans-serif system for high readability

Spacing & Grid — 8pt grid system for visual consistency

Color — Primary, secondary, tertiary, quartenary, accent, neutral.

COLOR RAMP SNAPSHOT

Components

Action buttons, badges, status indicators

Text fields, forms for KYC, rent, and issue reporting

Tab systems and modals for multistep actions

TEXT FIELD COMPONENT SNAPSHOT

Looking back

Measuring success through velocity and clarity

Outcomes

As we move past MVP, the Indigo design system is evolving to support scale while keeping clarity and usability front and center.

Systemized components led to faster development across features

Stakeholder dashboards improved visibility and reduced support tickets

Pilot testers rated the UX “clear, fast, and professional”

What’s next?

As we move past MVP, the Indigo design system is evolving to support scale while keeping clarity and usability front and center.

Smart financial insights for landlords

AI-driven rent and occupancy forecasts

Multi-channel messaging components for tenant engagement

Up Next: Jojolo Mobile App