A website has an architecture.
We usually describe that architecture in technical terms:
- Homepage.
- Navigation.
- Pages.
- Sections.
- Menus.
- Links.
- Buttons.
But before the web existed, humans were already designing systems for movement, discovery, orientation and interaction.
We built homes.
We created courtyards.
We developed markets.
We walked streets.
We gathered in public spaces.
We created thresholds between private and public life.
We built verandas where people could sit, observe, converse and decide whether to enter.
These spaces do something that a good website should also do:
They help people understand where they are, where they can go, what they might discover and how they should interact with what surrounds them.
This leads me to a question I have increasingly been exploring through my work at KYTCH:
What can African spaces teach us about designing digital experiences?
Not how to make websites look African.
Something much more interesting:
How to make digital experiences behave with a greater awareness of place, people and culture.
A website is a space
When someone enters a website, they are entering an environment.
They arrive somewhere.
They look around.
They form an impression.
They decide where to go.
They encounter information.
They pause.
They explore.
They may become curious.
They may leave.
They may return.
This is remarkably similar to physical space.
A poorly designed building can leave you wondering:
Where is the entrance?
A poorly designed website can do exactly the same thing.
A confusing building makes you ask:
Where do I go from here?
A confusing website creates the same friction.
A welcoming space tells you:
You are welcome here. Come in.
A good digital experience can communicate precisely the same thing.
This is why I increasingly think of websites not as collections of pages, but as spatial experiences.
01 — The Courtyard: The centre that connects everything
The courtyard is one of the most interesting spatial ideas to consider.
Across different African architectural traditions, courtyard configurations have created spaces for living, gathering, circulation, privacy and social interaction. Research into African courtyard architecture describes the courtyard as a recurring configuration in traditional settlements, while research on East African coastal urbanism has examined how courtyards could participate in the social and commercial life of Swahili settlements.
The important design principle isn’t the shape.
It is the centre.
A courtyard gives different spaces a relationship with one another.
You can enter from one direction and still understand that other spaces exist around you.
There is a sense of orientation.
A sense of belonging.
A sense of:
Here is the centre. Everything else relates to it.
What does that mean for a website?
Your homepage can function as a digital courtyard.
Instead of trying to tell the entire company story immediately, it establishes the central proposition and allows the visitor to discover the different worlds around it.
For a hotel:
Stay → Dine → Explore → Events → Experiences
For a petroleum company:
Products → Logistics → Infrastructure → Industries → Energy Transition
For a creative brand:
Collections → Stories → Craft → Journal → Community
The homepage becomes less of a billboard and more of a central gathering space.
Design translation
Courtyard → central experience
Digital equivalent → homepage / central hub
Function → orientation + discovery + connection
The lesson:
Give people a centre before asking them to choose a direction.
02 — The Veranda: The threshold that invites
The veranda occupies an interesting position.
It is neither completely inside nor completely outside.
It is a threshold.
You can sit there.
Observe.
Talk.
Wait.
Decide whether to enter.
It creates a softer transition between worlds.
This is an incredibly useful concept for digital interaction.
Too many websites behave as though every interaction needs an immediate commitment.
BUY NOW.
BOOK NOW.
CONTACT US.
SUBMIT.
But human interaction doesn’t always work like that.
Sometimes people need to linger.
They want to understand.
Compare.
Observe.
Ask a question.
Build trust.
Then act.
A digital veranda could therefore be:
- A preview
- A product hover state
- A short story before the full article
- A conversational CTA
- A product comparison
- A guided introduction
- A visual teaser
- A WhatsApp conversation
- A “discover more” interaction
It gives the visitor somewhere to stand before entering deeper.
Design translation
Veranda → transitional experience
Digital equivalent → preview / secondary interaction / soft CTA
Function → trust + orientation + invitation
The lesson:
Not every interaction needs to demand a decision. Some interactions should create permission to explore.
03 — The Market: Discovery without a predetermined path
Markets are fascinating because they rarely behave like traditional websites.
You don’t necessarily enter knowing exactly what you will buy.
You discover.
You compare.
You hear.
You see.
You ask.
You negotiate.
You follow recommendations.
Something unexpected catches your attention.
Then you change direction.
Research on African urban markets emphasizes that markets are not merely places of commerce; they are also social and cultural spaces whose organization influences movement, interaction and the surrounding urban environment.
This is particularly relevant to e-commerce.
Many online stores are designed like catalogues:
Category → Product → Cart → Checkout
Efficient, perhaps.
But discovery is missing.
A market teaches us something different:
Commerce can be exploratory.
Imagine a digital marketplace where products are connected through:
Story → Material → Maker → Place → Related products → Community
Rather than simply:
Product → Price → Buy
For Kayamoko, for example, a customer might discover a bracelet through a story about black onyx, then encounter the stone’s character, then explore a collection, then discover another wearable piece.
The transaction becomes a journey.
Design translation
Market → exploratory information environment
Digital equivalent → discovery-driven commerce
Function → curiosity + comparison + social proof + conversion
The lesson:
Design some pathways for intention, but leave room for discovery.
04 — The Street: Navigation as movement
A street is different from a corridor.
It is not simply a route from A to B.
It contains:
- Landmarks
- Intersections
- Side streets
- Shops
- People
- Signs
- Activity
- Unexpected encounters
A street gives you orientation through context.
You know where you are partly because of what surrounds you.
Websites often remove this context.
You click a link.
A new page loads.
You suddenly have to reconstruct where you are.
This is why breadcrumbs, persistent navigation, contextual links and visual hierarchy matter.
But there is a deeper lesson.
Navigation should create a sense of place.
A visitor should be able to answer:
Where am I?
Where did I come from?
What is around me?
Where can I go next?
What happens if I follow this path?
That is not merely navigation.
That is orientation.
Design translation
Street → contextual navigation
Digital equivalent → menus + breadcrumbs + related content + landmarks
Function → orientation + movement + discovery
The lesson:
Good navigation doesn’t merely tell people where to go. It helps them understand where they are.
05 — The Home: Layers of intimacy
A home teaches us about hierarchy.
Not every room has the same level of access.
There may be:
Public → semi-public → private → intimate
A visitor may enter the living room without entering the bedroom.
A guest may sit on the veranda without entering deeper into the house.
This is a powerful information-architecture principle.
Not every piece of information should have equal prominence.
A website should also have levels of access.
Public
Who we are.
What we do.
Why we matter.
Deeper
Services.
Products.
Projects.
Capabilities.
Private / high-intent
Pricing.
Proposals.
Client portals.
Accounts.
Purchasing.
The mistake is flattening everything onto one level.
When everything is equally visible, nothing feels important.
Design translation
Home → layered information architecture
Digital equivalent → content hierarchy
Function → access + intimacy + progressive disclosure
The lesson:
Good information architecture reveals depth gradually.
06 — The Public Space: Designing for gathering
Public spaces are where strangers become communities.
A square.
A field.
A waterfront.
A civic space.
A market junction.
A community gathering place.
These environments are not designed merely for people to pass through.
They create opportunities for:
encounter.
That has enormous implications for digital design.
A website should not always be designed around isolated individual journeys.
Sometimes the experience should reveal that other people are here too.
That could be:
- Reviews
- Testimonials
- Community stories
- Customer photographs
- Comments
- Events
- Social feeds
- User-generated content
- Shared experiences
Social proof is often treated as a marketing component.
But perhaps it can also be understood spatially.
It tells the visitor:
Other people have been here.
That reduces uncertainty.
It creates belonging.
It creates trust.
Design translation
Public space → social layer
Digital equivalent → community + social proof
Function → trust + participation + belonging
The lesson:
A digital experience becomes more human when people can sense the presence of other people within it.
07 — The Threshold: Every interaction is an invitation
A threshold deserves its own category.
Doors.
Gates.
Entrances.
Bridges.
Paths.
Transitions.
These are moments when one condition becomes another.
Digital experiences are full of thresholds:
Homepage → product
Product → purchase
Article → enquiry
Visitor → subscriber
Prospect → customer
Customer → advocate
Every one of these transitions needs design.
The common mistake is to think of the CTA as merely a button.
But the deeper question is:
What is the emotional condition of the person before they cross the threshold?
Are they curious?
Confident?
Confused?
Suspicious?
Excited?
Ready?
A good CTA responds to that state.
Someone who has just discovered your business may need:
Explore our story.
Someone who understands your offer may need:
See our solutions.
Someone ready to buy needs:
Order now.
Someone uncertain may need:
Talk to us.
The threshold should match the visitor’s readiness.
Design translation
Threshold → transition
Digital equivalent → CTA / form / checkout / conversation
Function → progression + commitment
The lesson:
Design the transition, not just the destination.
08 — Gathering places: Designing moments of convergence
Some spaces exist because people need to come together.
A courtyard.
A market square.
A community hall.
A waterfront.
A café.
A mosque courtyard.
A village meeting place.
A public gathering space.
They create convergence.
Digital experiences need convergence points too.
A long website can scatter information across dozens of pages.
Good experience design brings related things together at the right moment.
For example:
A visitor reading about a hotel’s accommodation might encounter:
Rooms → Dining → Experiences → Location → Booking
The content converges around the decision they are trying to make.
A visitor researching industrial energy solutions might encounter:
Solution → Industry → Case Study → Technical capability → Contact
Again, convergence.
Design translation
Gathering place → convergence point
Digital equivalent → contextual content cluster
Function → relevance + decision support
The lesson:
Bring the right information together when the visitor needs it.
From Architecture to Information Architecture
When we look at these spaces together, something interesting happens.
We can begin translating physical spatial intelligence into digital systems.
| Physical Space | Digital Principle |
|---|---|
| Courtyard | Central hub |
| Veranda | Soft transition |
| Market | Discovery |
| Street | Navigation |
| Home | Hierarchy |
| Public space | Community |
| Threshold | Conversion |
| Gathering place | Convergence |
And these map into five fundamental digital behaviours:
Navigation
Where can I go?
Hierarchy
What matters most?
Discovery
What else might I find?
Orientation
Where am I?
Interaction
What can I do here?
This is where architecture becomes more than metaphor.
It becomes a design research tool.
The African city as an interaction system
There is another reason this matters.
African cities are often described only through their challenges:
Congestion.
Informality.
Density.
Infrastructure gaps.
Rapid urbanization.
But designers can also study them as incredibly complex interaction systems.
A street market contains navigation.
A matatu stage contains queue management.
A marketplace contains discovery.
A courtyard contains social organization.
A veranda contains observation and invitation.
A neighbourhood contains orientation.
A public square contains gathering.
These are interaction problems.
And people have been solving them for generations.
This doesn’t mean we should copy physical spaces directly into interfaces.
It means we can ask:
What intelligence is already embedded in these environments?
That is the interesting part.
Designing from place, not merely for place
This distinction is becoming increasingly important to me.
Designing for Africa can mean adapting an existing digital system to an African audience.
Designing from African contexts asks something more ambitious:
What can these contexts contribute to the design system itself?
The difference is subtle but significant.
Research into cultural context and African UX already points toward the importance of language, social norms, technology adoption, economic realities and local behaviour when designing digital experiences.
But I believe we can go further.
We can study:
spaces.
rituals.
movement.
social behaviour.
storytelling.
commerce.
hospitality.
material culture.
And ask what they can teach us about interaction.
This does not mean abandoning global UX principles
Cultural Interaction Design is not an argument against established UX practice.
Usability matters.
Accessibility matters.
Performance matters.
Responsive design matters.
Clear information architecture matters.
Conversion matters.
Research matters.
Testing matters.
But context matters too.
A culturally informed experience should still be easy to use.
It should simply feel as though it understands the world in which it exists.
That is a very different proposition.
What this means for KYTCH
This way of thinking is becoming an important part of how I approach my work through KYTCH.
I don’t want to simply ask:
What should this website look like?
I want to ask:
What kind of space should this website become?
Should it feel like a marketplace where discovery is encouraged?
A courtyard where different parts of the business converge?
A veranda where visitors can pause before committing?
A street where exploration leads naturally from one experience to another?
A home where information is revealed progressively?
A gathering place where customers can see and interact with one another?
Perhaps it should be a combination.
The answer depends on the business.
And that is precisely the point.
The website as a place
The future of digital experience will not be determined only by better screens.
It will also come from better understanding of people and place.
Africa has enormous cultural and spatial intelligence that can become part of that conversation.
Not as decoration.
Not as a collection of patterns.
Not as an attempt to make every interface look “African.”
But as design knowledge.
The question I am exploring through KYTCH is therefore becoming:
What happens when we stop treating culture as something we put on a website, and start treating it as something that can shape how the website behaves?
That is where Cultural Interaction Design becomes interesting to me.
Because a website is not simply a set of pages.
It is a space people move through.
And perhaps the next generation of African digital experiences can learn something from the spaces we have been moving through all along.
KYTCH — turning identity, culture and intelligence into distinctive digital experiences.
A note on the methodology
This is not a claim that there is one African architectural or interaction system. Africa contains radically different spatial, linguistic and cultural traditions.
The proposition is more open:
Observe → Research → Interpret → Translate → Test.
We study a context.
We identify the interaction logic within it.
We translate that logic into a digital hypothesis.
Then we test it with real users.
That is how cultural inspiration becomes design methodology rather than aesthetic appropriation.
