Elizabeth Akpan

Elizabeth is a design researcher with a background in Computer Science, passionate about understanding people, their interactions and challenges with digital technologies and translating these findings into product insights. Some of the recent projects she has led at YUX involved collecting and analysing large-scale user data, as well as an exploratory survey on the nuances of young Nigerians and Kenyans' daily interactions with AI tools. YUX is a pan-African research & design company that mixes behavioural sciences, human-computer interaction and machine learning to co-create tech and AI products tailored to African communities. Started in Senegal, YUX is today a team of 40 people spread across Dakar, Abuja, Kigali, Nairobi, and Accra, and partner with Google, TikTok, Wikipedia, Meta, GSMA, Gates Foundation, UNICEF and many local startups for projects in health, education, agriculture and fintech. In 2024, YUX launched the Cultural AI Lab (Kitala) to address the need for culturally relevant datasets and AI evaluations in Africa. To make research accessible and scalable, YUX also created the user insights software LOOKA and the YUX Design Academy. Get in touch at yux.design.