Context
Impacc builds technology for social enterprises targeting communities living on less than $2 a day — the global "base of the pyramid." Their franchise model connects micro-entrepreneurs to essential goods and services: clean energy, sanitation, nutrition, and financial products. The franchisee app was the operating system for this entire network — the tool every field agent and franchise operator used every day.
The problem
The existing franchise management system was a patchwork of WhatsApp messages, paper ledgers, and disconnected spreadsheets. Field agents had no reliable way to track inventory, log sales, or report upward — and headquarters had no real-time visibility into how franchisees were performing across geographies.
- Users were first-time smartphone owners in many cases — digital literacy could not be assumed
- Connectivity was unreliable or absent in rural franchise zones — offline-first was non-negotiable
- The same app had to work for a mama-mboga in Nairobi, a solar agent in Addis Ababa, and a sanitation franchisee in Kampala
- Low-end Android devices with limited RAM and storage were the dominant hardware
- Three languages in scope across four countries: English, Amharic, Swahili
"Our franchisees don't have desks. They operate in the field, often in areas with no data signal, making decisions that directly affect their household income."
— Impacc Operations Lead · Discovery interview, 2022Design process
Field research
In-person interviews with franchise operators and field agents in Kenya and Uganda. Device audits. Connectivity mapping.
Jobs to be done
Mapped 12 core JTBD across four franchise roles. Prioritised ruthlessly based on daily task frequency and error cost.
Offline-first flows
Designed state management for every flow to handle no-signal gracefully — queued actions, sync indicators, conflict resolution.
Market localisation
Adapted flows for Ethiopia, Uganda and Ghana — regulatory, language, product category, and cultural differences per market.
Research & discovery
I ran a multi-stage discovery sprint across Nairobi, Kisumu and Kampala — combining contextual observation with structured interviews. We recruited 24 franchise operators, 8 field supervisors and 6 HQ operations staff.
Key research insights
Franchise operators trusted paper receipts over digital records. The app had to produce printable, shareable artefacts to replace paper — not just replicate it on screen.
67% of field interactions happened in areas with 2G at best. Any flow requiring an active connection to submit would fail daily. Offline-first wasn't a feature — it was table stakes.
Icon-only navigation failed during testing. Users needed text labels. Large tap targets (minimum 48dp) were critical — many operators worked with gloved hands or in bright sunlight.
Franchisees' primary motivation was visibility of their commission earnings. A clear, always-visible earnings dashboard became the single highest-priority feature in the redesign.
Stock discrepancies between what HQ shipped and what operators received were a constant pain point — causing disputes and eroding trust. Delivery confirmation with photo evidence was essential.
Field supervisors visited operators weekly to manually collect data. A digital daily report flow would eliminate those visits and free 8hrs/week per supervisor for coaching instead.
Design decisions
Offline-first architecture
Every screen was designed with three explicit states: connected, offline (cached data), and syncing. We introduced a persistent sync status bar — a single-line component that lived above the nav — so operators always knew whether their actions had been transmitted to HQ. Queued actions were stored locally and processed in order when connectivity returned, with a clear log operators could audit.
Earnings dashboard as the entry point
Research told us operators checked their earnings multiple times a day. We made the earnings summary the first thing visible after login — not buried in a profile section. Commission earned today, this week, and pending payments were always visible without a single tap.
Inventory confirmation with photo evidence
The delivery confirmation flow was one of the most impactful design investments. Operators could photograph received stock, flag discrepancies, and attach notes — all offline. When synced, this created a shared record that HQ and the operator both agreed on, eliminating the most common cause of disputes.
Large-tap, text-labeled navigation
All primary actions used a bottom navigation bar with 48dp minimum tap targets and mandatory text labels beneath icons. Colour contrast met WCAG AA across all states, tested on low-brightness screens in outdoor sunlight simulation.
Market expansion
After validating the core Kenya product, I led the design localisation for three new markets — working with in-country partners to adapt the app to each context without fragmenting the codebase.
The biggest localisation challenge was Ethiopia: Amharic uses the Ge'ez script, which required a full typography audit of the component library and coordination with engineering on right-to-neutral rendering. Product categories also differed — cookstoves and water filters were higher-priority than solar in Ethiopia's highland regions.
Design file & prototype
Explore the full Figma design file and the interactive prototype below. The design file shows the complete component library, flow annotations, and all four market variants. The prototype lets you walk through the core franchisee journeys as they would on device.
↑ Left: full design file with components and annotations · Right: interactive prototype — click through the flows
Key flows covered in the prototype:
- Franchise onboarding — registration, ID verification, territory assignment
- Earnings dashboard — daily/weekly commission view, payout history, pending payments
- Inventory management — stock receipt, photo confirmation, discrepancy reporting
- Sales logging — product selection, customer record, offline submit with sync queue
- Daily reporting — structured field report, supervisor review, completion status
- Customer management — customer profiles, purchase history, follow-up scheduling
Outcomes
The franchise app became the operational backbone for Impacc's entire Africa network. Replacing paper-and-WhatsApp with a structured, offline-first digital workflow produced compounding benefits across operations, data quality and franchisee satisfaction.
Field supervisor site visits — previously the primary data collection mechanism — dropped to exception-only once digital daily reports reached 85% completion rates. Delivery dispute resolution time dropped significantly after photo-confirmed inventory receipts were introduced.
What I learned
- Offline-first is a design problem, not just an engineering one. Sync states, conflict resolution, and queued action feedback had to be designed explicitly — engineers couldn't invent good UX for those states on their own.
- The highest-value feature is not always the flashiest. The earnings dashboard was the least technically complex thing we built and the most loved. Research, not assumptions, pointed us there.
- Localisation starts at the research phase, not the end. Going into Ethiopia without Amharic-speaking research partners would have produced a broken product. Each market needed its own discovery sprint, even if the core flow was shared.
- Design systems pay off hardest at expansion time. Because every component was tokenised and documented, spinning up the Ghana and Uganda variants took weeks not months — and stayed visually consistent without a design review bottleneck.
- Agile across timezones requires design to over-document. Leading a distributed team with engineers in three countries meant every design decision needed written rationale in the Figma file, not just in a Slack message that would disappear.