Luis Howin · Nairobi · 01°17′S 036°49′E
“Here’s to the crazy ones.” Apple, “Think Different”, 1997
Manifesto
I stop to ask. I’m a designer and researcher who works across interfaces, hardware and software: close enough to the metal to know what’s possible, close enough to people to know what’s actually needed.
Taking systems apart to see how they hold together, then putting them back slightly differently and watching what happens: that habit became Beben Design, the studio I run in Nairobi. It also explains the experiments, the notes and the half-finished prototypes on this page. This site is less a portfolio than a record of what curiosity does when it gets workshop time.
Luis Howin · Nairobi
Selected Work
Objects from the archive rather than a highlight reel: client work and studio projects, most with their process documented.
W·01
A glanceable, safety-critical dashboard for a four-inch circular OLED on an ESP32, built for sunlight, vibration, gloves and rain. Every pixel has to earn its place at 80 km/h.
Role: research · UI · interaction / Platform: ESP32 + circular OLED
W·02
A text-first interface for a hiking watch that runs weeks on a small cell. No touch, no gestures: a crown, two buttons, and nine actions you can find without looking. The hardware prototype exists too.
Role: UI · interaction · hardware / Output: monochrome LCD · piezo · LED
W·04
Seven identities across logo, packaging, print and web: Nanyuki Holiday Home to Queens of the Dust.
W·05
The studio I founded in Nairobi: careful thinking and disciplined craft, applied to other people’s hard problems.
Experiments
Unfinished by design; the status is part of the record.
EXP·01
A 128×64 blue-OLED watch face running in the browser, emulating the Trek Watch 91 interface. Buttons, alarms and all.
EXP·02
Node scripts that rebuild an entire design deck straight out of a Figma frame: layout, type and assets included.
EXP·03
Designing with models as a bench partner: taste stays human, execution gets delegated. Most of this site was built that way.
No link yet
EXP·04
A tracking experiment about streaks, honesty and missing data.
Paused
EXP·05
An operating-system concept for people who read manuals for fun.
Shelved
Notes
Short entries written while building, filed as they happen, no editorial calendar.
People ignore design that ignores people. Most research is just paying attention to the space between how humans actually behave and how systems expect them to, then closing that gap on purpose instead of by accident.
Delegating execution to a model only works if the decisions are already made. The taste, the empathy, the “why does this feel wrong” instinct: that part doesn’t delegate. It just moves earlier in the process.
Most ideas arrive somewhere around kilometre five of a run. Running isn’t a break from the work; it’s where the work untangles itself.
About
Designer, researcher, builder: founder of Beben Design in Nairobi. I like taking things apart to understand how they work, then building something slightly different and seeing whether it holds up.
The range runs from motorcycle dashboards and watch interfaces to brand systems, websites and the occasional operating-system concept. The common thread is always the same: research first, prototype early, ship it, then keep adjusting while real people use it.
Contact
Unusual products, stubborn problems, experiments that need a designer who reads datasheets: that’s the good stuff. Tell me what you’re actually trying to build.
howin329@gmail.com. Replies from Nairobi, usually within a day.