Catalogued under: Psychology · Language · Technology · Ethics
DODOO
DARLING
(more formally known as Stephanie Orkuma)
Understanding people and designing systems that help them thrive.
AI UX Strategist, Designer, Researcher, Writer, and Builder working at the intersection of psychology, language, technology, ethics, and human flourishing.
Fig. 1 — St Peter's Basilica, Vatican.
Silver-print scan, photographer unknown.
The Card Catalogue
Four Drawers, One Question
Every field in this archive returns to the same inquiry: what helps people thrive?
Drawer 01 / D–UX
UX Design
Designing human-centered products, services, and experiences.
View UX Work →Drawer 02 / D–AI
AI Ethics
Exploring the ethical, social, and human implications of artificial intelligence.
Read AI Ethics Work →Drawer 03 / D–PSY
Psychology
Understanding human behavior, well-being, and flourishing.
Explore Psychology →Drawer 04 / D–LNG
Language
Examining communication, meaning, linguistics, and human expression.
Explore Language →Current Exhibits
Featured Projects
Selected works currently on display from the permanent collection.
Correspondence
Write to the Archive
Collaborations, conversations, and considered questions welcome.
From
Dodoo Darling — Field Office
I welcome conversations with researchers, practitioners, institutions, and individuals working at the intersections of psychology, technology, design, and human wellbeing.
If you are building something that takes people seriously — I would like to hear from you.
Archive / Personal File — 002
Who Keeps This Archive
About Dodoo
A practitioner's file: background, disciplines, and current preoccupations.
Dodoo Darling (Stephanie Orkuma) works at the intersection of people, systems, and meaning. With a background spanning Languages & Linguistics, User Experience, Artificial Intelligence, and Psychology, she asks the kinds of questions most practitioners overlook: how systems work, why people engage with them, and at what cost.
Her path began in language. A degree in Languages & Linguistics trained her to see communication as structure, culture, and cognition all at once which transformed into a lens she has carried into every field since. From there she moved into UX design and research, and then into AI, where the questions of meaning and interpretation she first met in linguistics reappeared at the scale of entire systems.
Today her practice spans AI UX strategy, design, and research, with postgraduate studies in psychology in view which is a deliberate next step toward the scientific foundations of the questions her work keeps raising. She designs AI-assisted tools that center psychological depth, attending not only to usability but to emotional resonance, ethical weight, and long-term wellbeing.
Beyond her design practice, Dodoo researches and writes about women's mental health, feminist approaches to technology, psycholinguistics, and the philosophy of flourishing. She approaches each domain as practitioner, researcher, and builder — making things while questioning the premises on which they are built. Her mission, across every field in this archive, is singular: to understand people deeply enough to design systems that help them thrive.
Archivist at her desk —
scan from a personal album.
The Course of Study
B.A. Languages & Linguistics
Phonology, semantics, sociolinguistics — the architecture of human meaning.
UX & AI Career
AI UX strategy, product design, and research across human-centered systems.
Postgraduate Psychology
Formal training toward research in wellbeing, behaviour, and flourishing.
Research Interests
Human flourishing · psycholinguistics · AI ethics · human-centered AI · feminist perspectives on technology · language & cognition · behaviour change.
Mission
To understand people — their language, minds, and contexts — deeply enough to design technology and institutions that help them flourish, with particular care for women's mental health and communities the industry overlooks.
Currently
Building Uwam · researching AI interaction · mentoring emerging technologists · writing at the intersections that matter.
Archive / Drawer 01 — UX Design
Drawer 01 / The Design Room
UX Design
Philosophy — Design is applied empathy with consequences. I design human-centered products, services, and experiences that begin from how people actually think, feel, and cope and not from how we wish they behaved. Good UX reduces friction and confusion; great UX leaves people more satisfied than it found them.
Featured Projects & Case Studies
Work Experience — A Timeline
UX Strategist & Lead Designer, Artificial Intelligence Full-time
Multonion — Abuja, NigeriaLed UX strategy for the AI Search feature — aligning user needs with business goals, optimizing access to 10,000+ data points, and reducing search time by 60%. Developed strategies to integrate AI across all product features, improving workflows by over 30%, and conducted user research with business and government stakeholders to keep AI solutions aligned with real needs.
UX Strategist & Lead Designer, Artificial Intelligence Contract
Office of the Head of Civil Service — Abuja, NigeriaDesigned and implemented a comprehensive Performance Management System for Nigeria's federal civil service, serving approximately 720,000 employees. Architected complex features, user flows, and an intuitive information architecture; supervised a team of designers; integrated AI solutions to automate routine processes for a projected 25% reduction in administrative workload; and produced wireframes and prototypes that expedited development cycles and improved stakeholder engagement.
UX Strategist & Lead Designer, Artificial Intelligence Contract
Venmail — Delaware, USADelivered high-fidelity designs for an AI-powered emailing platform, driving a projected 70% increase in acquisition and retention. Introduced and integrated AI features that established a unique USP for the company, and led discovery workshops achieving a 90% acceptance rate for design concepts.
Founder & Lead UX Strategist Founder/Independent Work
FoodForethought — Abuja, NigeriaConceived the idea for a personalized meal-planning platform, built the core strategy, and led a cross-functional team to deliver a functional MVP. Grew the waitlist to 1,000+ sign-ups with a 20–30% conversion rate to active users, and collaborated with AI and data engineers to design a personalized meal-planning engine aligned with real user behaviour.
UX Designer & Strategist Contract
Sterling Bank — Lagos, NigeriaSpearheaded the design of two new features, generating $400K in projected revenue within six months. Crafted user-focused product strategies improving satisfaction by 35%, facilitated a 75% increase in the internal application of user research, and overhauled onboarding to achieve an 80% reduction in drop-off rates.
Research & Papers
Skills & Tools
↜ tools change; the questions stay the same
Archive / Drawer 02 — AI Ethics
Drawer 02 / The Ethics Reading Room
AI Ethics
Philosophy — Every AI system is a set of values wearing an interface. I study the ethical, social, and human implications of artificial intelligence: who benefits, who bears the costs, and how design and deployment decisions become moral ones. The goal is not to slow technology down, but to make it answerable to the people it acts upon.
Projects in This Drawer
Research & Papers
Relevant Work Experience
UX Strategist & Lead Designer, Artificial Intelligence Full-time
Multonion — Abuja, NigeriaLed UX strategy for the AI Search feature — aligning user needs with business goals, optimizing access to 10,000+ data points, and reducing search time by 60%. Developed strategies to integrate AI across all product features, improving workflows by over 30%, and conducted user research with business and government stakeholders to keep AI solutions aligned with real needs.
UX Strategist & Lead Designer, Artificial Intelligence Contract
Office of the Head of Civil Service — Abuja, NigeriaDesigned and implemented a comprehensive Performance Management System for Nigeria's federal civil service, serving approximately 720,000 employees. Architected complex features, user flows, and an intuitive information architecture; supervised a team of designers; integrated AI solutions to automate routine processes for a projected 25% reduction in administrative workload; and produced wireframes and prototypes that expedited development cycles and improved stakeholder engagement.
UX Strategist & Lead Designer, Artificial Intelligence Contract
Venmail — Delaware, USADelivered high-fidelity designs for an AI-powered emailing platform, driving a projected 70% increase in acquisition and retention. Introduced and integrated AI features that established a unique USP for the company, and led discovery workshops achieving a 90% acceptance rate for design concepts.
Research Interests
Human-Centered AI
Methods that keep AI accountable to human needs, agency, and dignity.
Feminist Perspectives on Technology
Whose experience is treated as default — and what design owes everyone else.
Psychological Safety in AI Interaction
Trust calibration, dependency, and the emotional contracts interfaces make.
Archive / Drawer 03 — Psychology
Drawer 03 / The Study of Minds
Psychology
Interests & goals — I'm drawn to the brain and cognition: how our brains actually work, what shapes and drives our behaviour, and what happens to both when we interact with technology. My goal is to pair practice with formal research training, with postgraduate studies in psychology in view, so that after I complete that training I can help contribute to how we interact with AI and technology in ways that are safer and genuinely good for us.
Psychology Writings & Essays
Cognitive Load and the Quiet Harm of Poorly Designed Interfaces
No. 02Against Wellness: Why Mental Health Apps Often Miss What Women Actually Need
No. 03Flourishing Is Not a Feature: Psychology Beyond the Engagement Metric
No. 04What Behaviour Change Research Actually Says About Habit Apps
The Road Ahead
Postgraduate Degree — In View
Formal psychology training to ground practice in research methods, with a focus on wellbeing and human-AI interaction.
Human Flourishing Research
Studying the conditions — psychological, social, and designed — under which people thrive, and how to replicate these conditions.
Future Projects
Developing psychology-informed design and safety guidance for AI products.
Projects in This Drawer
Research & Papers
Archive / Drawer 04 — Language
Drawer 04 / The Philology Desk
Language
Where it all began — My degree in Languages & Linguistics taught me that language is structure, culture, and cognition braided together. That training now shapes how I study communication, meaning, and psycholinguistics as well as how I think about machines that claim to "understand" us.
Language Writings
Interests at This Desk
Psycholinguistics
How language is processed, produced, and woven into thought, and what that implies for conversational AI.
Communication & Meaning
Pragmatics, framing, and the everyday negotiation of understanding between people, and between people and machines.
Language & Cognition
The two-way street between the words available to us and the thoughts we can comfortably think.
Language Projects
↶ linguistics was the first apprenticeship — everything else is its continuation
Research & Papers
Archive / The Stacks — All Writings
The Stacks
Articles
Clippings and working notes, organised by subject heading.
Empty drawer
Nothing filed here yet
This drawer is empty for now — try another subject heading, or come back soon. ✎
more clippings are filed monthly — the archive is alive ✎
Archive / The Project Hall
The Project Hall
A Cross-Disciplinary Portfolio
Built things, research efforts, and social-impact work — each exhibit labelled by field.
Archive / The Map Room — Research Interests