Challenge Tech x Santé (Togo)

The Challenge

This wasn't one platform — it was three, occupying the same URL at different points in time.

In November, its only job was persuasion: convince strangers with no prior relationship to the initiative to form a team and submit an application. In February, its job flipped entirely — ten teams had been chosen, and now it had to make ten unfamiliar names feel worth a stranger's attention and trust. By March, the job changed again: turn that attention into verified public votes, fast enough to build real momentum before the awards ceremony.

The risk wasn't visual staleness. It was disorientation — a visitor returning in March needed to immediately understand that a platform they remembered as "join us" was now "choose your favorite," without a single moment of confusion about what changed or why.

Act One: Call for applications

The opening act had one measure of success: registrations. Everything on the page — the stakes of the challenge, the timeline, the eight evaluation criteria, the four award categories — existed to move a visitor toward one action.

Registration itself couldn't be a single generic form. Teams needed to specify a thematic focus, describe their project in their own words, list three to five members with individual areas of expertise, and attach both a presentation document and a pitch video — all without the process feeling like a bureaucratic wall between a good idea and its submission.

Act Two: Showcasing the talents

Once the ten finalists were announced, the platform's entire reason for existing changed overnight. The primary call-to-action shifted from "S'inscrire" to discovery — a searchable directory where the public could browse every finalist team and project on equal footing.

Each team got a dedicated page built to earn trust in seconds: a pitch video, the specific problem they were addressing, their proposed solution, and full team profiles. KɛnɛyaCare, an AI-assisted diagnostic tool for primary health centers, is a good example — a visitor lands with zero context and leaves understanding exactly what the team built and why it matters.

Act Three: Turning visitors into vsoters

As voting opened, the platform shifted again — from a static showcase to a live, gamified leaderboard tracking real-time vote distribution across all ten teams, building momentum toward the final ceremony.

Every finalist's detail page now doubled as a voting entry point, still carrying the pitch video and team story that had built trust during the discovery phase.

The vote itself had to be both frictionless and credible. A citizen enters a Togolese (+228) phone number, confirms with a 6-digit SMS code, and gets immediate feedback on whether the vote succeeded — enough friction to prevent spam and duplicate votes, not enough to make someone abandon the action halfway through.