Product Design: Can You Make Crypto Less Cryptic?
In 2021, the world of cryptocurrency and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) seemed like a labyrinth designed only for those well-versed in the esoteric arts of tech and finance. Intrigued by the buzz around this new frontier, I embarked on a journey not just to understand, but to actively participate in the evolving crypto scene. And, maybe have some fun while I was at it.
As I delved deeper into the digital creation realm, my artistic pursuits expanded from simple sketches on my iPad to more complex three-dimensional visualizations using Cinema 4D. Initially, this tool served as a means to create silly little product mocks for brands here and there, but this exploration into digital design was different than something I’d ever done before. This was the captivating and strange world of 3D art... (and NFTs!)
Fascinated by the potential of these funny jpegs, and in an effort to merge art with blockchain technology, I began channeling my inner creativity into this new medium, crafting unique digital assets that reflected my growing passion for crypto and artistic vision for funny jpegs. Some good. Some bad. And some more interesting than others. But a new frontier, nevertheless..
Flash-forward to 2022, and my curiosity (and recent work on NFTs) in crypto had steered me to a new startup in San Francisco. The startup was on a mission that aimed to democratize and demystify cryptocurrency for good. It seemed interesting enough. What started as a bold initiative to simplify digital transactions had evolved into a new project under this parent company — a social fintech app aimed at transforming cryptocurrencies into intuitive social media interactions.
I was hired to be part of an ambitious project to redesign and reimagine the cryptocurrency experience globally — from blockchain experts to those who still thought ‘blockchain’ was a new kind of Lego set. The parent company of this project would operate primarily as an investment firm with a dedicated incubation wing under it. This internal incubator not only provided the necessary funding but also served as a strategic support system to ensure the growth and success of its ventures. It was, overall, pretty wild. But the idea was fascinating from it’s inception:
Startag is a fintech platform designed to make cryptocurrency transactions easy and social. Imagine being able to send and receive cryptocurrency as effortlessly as you send a message or post on social media. Startag combines the functionalities of a digital wallet with many elements of a social network.
I soon discovered that Startag was not just another tech venture but rather a radical experiment, set against the gritty reality of startup life in San Francisco aimed at transforming the complex, often inscrutable world of cryptocurrency transactions into seamless, transparent, social interactions. However, as romantic as the dream of this startup was, the path to success was fraught with real challenges and the looming possibility no-user-downloads in the end..
What’s Startag now?
From its inception, Startag was dedicated to making cryptocurrency accessible to the everyday user. It was arguably at an interesting cross-section of finance-meets social media. Kind of like Venmo meets LinkinBio, except with funny internet coins, and funny dodge memes. Er, NFTs. A novel concept. Well, in theory anyways..
The Challenge
Startag aimed to redefine the landscape of digital finance by ensuring its platform was intuitive and straightforward, mirroring the simplicity of everyday online interactions. The project was crafted to enhance user autonomy in financial dealings, providing a clear and manageable framework that supported both seasoned investors and newcomers. Beyond mere transactions, it was designed as a hub for community and creativity, encouraging users to design their profiles, engage with others, share new links and innovative content.
Startag’s High-Level Goals were to:
- Make it quick and easy for anyone to use, anywhere.
- Empower users to have more control over their financial interactions.
- Foster a space for creative expression and deeper user engagement.
My Role
I was initially brought on to create the brand’s visual identity and marketing assets as the Creative Director. So when I joined the team, there was only a mid-fidelity wireframe that demonstrated this concept — a rough draft of what could be. It laid out the idea behind Startag, though mostly vague and less than a proof-of-concept. So I took these initial ideas and not only brought them to life through research, user feedback, market analysis, but also through testing, prototyping, and launch, ensuring this brand blossomed into a fully-fledged, user-friendly platform.
My role initially focused on establishing brand identity, but it soon expanded to include a broader range of responsibilities:
- Leading the design and implementation of user experience, user onboarding, profile customization, settings, notification functionality, and transaction features. This was a whole department in and of itself.
- Overseeing the visual and interactive aspects of the app, ensuring a cohesive and engaging user experience. A LOT of user-feedback.
- Collaborating with engineers, QA testers, a marketing lead, and contract product designers to refine and execute the product vision. Unironically, more user-feedback. This time with a twist.
- Coordinating with the marketing department to enhance the app’s social media presence and community engagement strategies. Turns out, Twitter Spaces really does work!
- Managing the iterative design process for the product team, incorporating both designer and developer feedback into continuously improving feature sprints and functionality deployments. Thank god for Figma’s collaborative nature.
The platform launched successfully in July 2023, establishing Startag as a user-friendly and innovative cryptocurrency platform. Hurray!
But this story starts long, long before it was ever even close to launch. So buckle-up, this is a long read (but you knew that, right?).
Day 1: Onboarding
At the outset of the project, I didn’t have a clearly defined mission or specific goals for the onboarding experience. In fact, while the product itself made sense, the official product director of the app had quit shortly before I joined the team. Without any pre-existing insights, or even any lead designer to rely on, I partnered with our head developer, Pavlo, to get a better idea of what limitations and roadblocks the ‘draft’ in it’s current state faced.
It was a lot.
First Doodles and Daydreams
With help of product design friend, and advice from Pavlo, I managed to put the drafts into a usable MVP (proto-MVP?) state. This included stripping a lot of design fluff and ‘hopeful’ features that, while nice to implement eventually, had to be cut from the first version to make sure we were within launch schedule. With that defined, I started to test the new cobbled-together prototype with Pavlo and a few engineers around the office, and also some personal friends of mine. My goals were to understand the challenges people new to crypto faced and to be up front with how the app in it’s current state faired. Here’s what I found out:
The Discovery
While most of the issues we encountered weren’t surprising (our prototype was far from ‘MVP’ status), we gained a new appreciation for fintech apps like Venmo, Paypal, and Uniswap, both known for their user-friendly, consistent designs. These platforms excelled because their layouts and usability remained consistent across all screens and functions. I know, revolutionary to think about, but the amount of work that goes into consistent design systems is far more than you think!
We dug a bit deeper into user research and testing with our developing MP and learned a lot more about our designs, about customer journeys, and especially about developing process flows. This helped up immensly define user personas (based off of real feedback ‘in the field’), and a fairly robust customer journey map, both of which became natural guides as we dove deeper into building transaction and financial flows!
Throughout our research, it became evident that our target users needed clear, empathetic guidance on unfamiliar topics in an industry ruled by power users and influencers. By deeply understanding the struggles of our target users (everyday people like you and I), we realized the importance of compassion in our design process. Each journey we had found, had connections to users in terms of similar apps they may have used (venmo, social media, generic profile builders), and each app had familiarity between them. Really, the connection itself to the design and friendliness of their respective app is what built positive interaction every time a user opened similar apps. That’s what we realized we could focus on, is the connection to design and empathy.
Empathy revealed an opportunity to bring the perfect crypto experience to anyone, anywhere in the world.
If tech-savvy users in well-connected markets faced difficulties like we did, the situation was likely worse in regions with less reliable technology and infrastructure. This realization underscored the need to design a universally accessible platform. Empathy guided us toward creating a solution that worked for everyone, regardless of their environment or experience level. This insight became our guiding principle as we aimed to perfect the crypto experience for all users worldwide.
Working Backwards
Before diving into the design, it was crucial to define success and understand the user experience at scale. Previously, we had limited metrics to gauge the quality of crypto transactions and the overall feel of the product experience.
To address this, I deconstructed the concept of seamless transactions and the product experience itself, focusing on factors like ease of use, effective education, and user appreciation for the brand. Collaborating with our engineers and QA testers, I used this framework to assess the app’s performance across different areas and metrics.
Aha! Moments
Diving into the data revealed significant insights about our user experience. Many users faced challenges during onboarding and navigation, encountering unclear instructions or confusing interfaces. These issues hindered the seamless experience we wanted to provide for the new MVP designs.
Studies show that 70% of users abandon new apps within the first week due to poor onboarding experiences.
The time and effort users spent trying to understand the platform or find features significantly impacted their satisfaction and engagement. While we couldn’t test the transaction flow directly on TestFlight, user feedback highlighted these critical areas. Addressing these issues and ensuring a strong, consistent brand presence was essential to making cryptocurrency accessible and engaging for everyone.
Tackling Major Challenges
Of course, embarking on the development of Startag was a multifaceted challenge. The scope of work was immense, requiring simultaneous attention to multiple complex issues, from streamlining onboarding to forging a cohesive brand identity. Making the product was cool and all, but it needed like, the rest of it done. So the brand, the logo, the ethos, Apple and Android marketplace content..
So the journey commenced with an in-depth research phase, during which I analyzed competitor apps and compiled extensive moodboards to set both the visual and functional direction of the brand and marketing identity. The depth of this research not only influenced the design direction but also laid the groundwork for the rich visual storytelling that would later characterize the final aesthetic of the product. And research I did..
Establishing the Brand Identity
The first, and most critical task was establishing the ID of the brand. The app initially lacked a consistent logo, brand colors, and font. It started with developing a solid mark and appealing logo design. I settled on a logo mark that captured the wonder of space and referenced popular culture by choosing a pin-icon, which was reminiscent of a star with a ring around it, signifying the ‘pull’ a Star user could have on their audience. The Tag of course, would be the profile of that user. A marker, in a way.
Next, I sought to establish the logo along with solid spacing constraints and color choices. The contrasty of Orange and Purple seemed like the right choice for this brand, given it’s distinct nature and allure.
I also developed a comprehensive design system in Figma and Illustrator by defining a unified color palette, typography, and a simple component library. (The complex one came later).
After that was completed, I then jumped into Cinema 4D to create branded assets. Yeah, that was quite a different twist than the brands I had worked on before. But this robust, cohesive visual language ensured that marketing and product would always be aligned, enabling me to later design the complex and nuanced component system that defined the product in the end.
Designing for Humans:
Creating a user-friendly interface was a complex, iterative process. I started by researching apps like Rainbow.xyz and other apps in the space, which set high standards for intuitive design. Initial prototypes I developed sometimes missed the mark — buttons too rounded, or aesthetics too overly playful, detracting from the functionality of the app. User feedback continued to highlight these issues, prompting several redesigns. Each iteration brought fresh challenges, from confusing navigation paths to misaligned user expectations. Through relentless testing and refinement, I gradually developed a robust UI that balanced ease of use with visual appeal, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Developing the Web Presence:
Initially, I set out to craft the website with a clear focus on amplifying app downloads, enhancing user education, fostering brand loyalty, and ensuring retention. While I had designed landing pages and ecommerce sites before, designing a website for a sole product was a bit new. I would need to once again consider the demographic I defined earlier and make sure I was still catrering to the diverse audiences of Startag. These included digital artists and content creators, NFT artists, and early non-crypto adopters. Our sitemap strategically included everything from overviews to community interactions, tailored to guide users seamlessly through the site.
The content strategy showcased a mix of app UX showcases and eCommerce highlights — each piece chosen to subtly engage and inform. Through wireframing, we refined our vision, stripping back to essentials that aligned closely with Startag’s mission, aiming for a website that was intuitive yet understated, making the complex world of crypto a bit more approachable.
Back to Onboarding:
Transforming the onboarding process was a monumental task. The initial linear approach didn’t mesh well with our dynamic app, leading to numerous challenges such as users dropping off at various stages and confusion about app functionalities. Users understood onboarding on most apps, but we struggled with enticing users to try a slightly different approach. New insights, such as the need for more interactive and segmented onboarding steps, were needed to help shape our user education and adoption.
Navigation & Trying to not Reinvent the (Color) Wheel:
As the app’s functionalities expanded, so did the complexity of navigation. To ensure a seamless user experience, we conducted a thorough review of the global navigation system, including footers and headers, and benchmarked our layout against similar crypto wallets and fintech apps. User behavior studies definitely guided these refinements, helping to create a more robust and user-friendly interface. I came to realize nothing was ever too obvious, and users always found ways to confuse themselves over what I previously thought were trivial matters. Nothing was trivial! But everything was trivial!
Profile editing, on the other hand was particularly challenging, requiring detailed analysis to integrate features with iOS components efficiently without prolonging development over minor functionalities, like uh, image cropping. I meticulously designed and prototyped essentials like button layouts and NFT integrations, while critically assessing the feasibility of more complex capabilities like gradient colors integration (for background colors) and custom color-picking. This rigorous process led to the implementation of a ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) editor, enabling users to observe real-time changes as they customized their profiles, thus significantly enhancing usability and customization.
Developing the Transaction Flow:
Once we squared away the editor and onboarding, building the transaction flow was priority number one. On paper it was probably the quickest feature we were developing, yet it was fraught with challenges we never expected. For instance, after we wrapped up designed and pushed for deployment, Apple decided to block our efforts of release due to regulatory (and often vague) hurdles. Tackling this would require back-channels and diplomatic networking. Then, once that was solved, our next process of hurdles included integrating multiple wallets for different tokens (x amount of wallets times y amount of crypto tokens) and incorporating NFT functionality (do you KNOW how many NFTs exist in the world today??) to display of ownership on user profiles. Numerous QA issues, such as critical bugs upon deployment, were addressed by implementing solutions like the ‘swipe to send’ feature to streamline the process.
Enhancing User Engagement:
Developing notifications was crucial for keeping users engaged. And having an app that dealt with finances meant that it was crucial we had a robust notification system. Without existing screens, we looked to successful fintech apps, both crypto and FIAT, for guidance. These notifications needed to be detailed, intuitive, and needed to include transaction information and engagement history. We added features like comments and likes to transactions to enhance the social aspect of the app, then we implemented notification settings, history checking, and also built a backend dashboard using Core UI Angular to better track and manage reports from users across the app.
Conclusion
Creating Startag was a journey rooted deeply in empathy, with a mission to bring the perfect crypto experience to everyone all over the world. By prioritizing user feedback and understanding their needs, we designed an app that catered to both crypto novices and experts. Features like enhanced onboarding, streamlined navigation, and real-time profile customization were integrated based on these insights. The rise in user engagement during onboarding and smoother transaction flows showed our efforts were starting to resonate. Seeing transactions starting to take off, and also watching the ways people sent NFTs, crypto, and messages back and forth was exciting for a new and upcoming app. Everything seemed like launch would be a slam-dunk.
Working on Startag involved countless late nights, relentless QA communication, and constant Slack updates. It was a joy to bring in designers, developers, marketers, and contractors into the workflow to ensure alignment across all facets of the project. Navigating these dynamics was an immense challenge that tested my resilience and problem-solving skills. Each hurdle reinforced the importance of empathy and meticulous attention to detail. We laughed. We cried. We rejoiced. We worked at night. Then we did it again!
However, in the end it became clear that things were not going smoothly as we thought when launch grew near.
In Memorandum
The whirlwind journey of Startag was fast and invigorating. I spent many nights thinking of product breakthroughs, and many days in new cities on business development and brand sponsorships. Yet as exciting as it was, the end came unexpectedly.
Despite our fervent efforts and the innovative strides we made to deploy a fun and exciting new app, the platform could not secure a sustainable market fit, leading to the difficult decision to disband the team. The intense competition in the social crypto space and our challenges with swiftly adapting to rapidly changing market dynamics were significant hurdles. I did what I could with what I was able to do, but the pressures from the top were just too extreme. It was an important lesson, and a profound learning experience about the volatile nature of the tech industry and the critical importance of flexibility, and of course, knowing when things are beyond your own team’s reach. We just couldn’t hit metrics to justify our desire to grow the team.
Yet, the experience of building Startag was rich with moments of growth and joy that transcended these challenges. Traveling to different countries to onboard new team members and foster a unified culture within the crypto community (at the height of the Bull-Market) was exhilarating. Inside the bustling environment of a startup, we celebrated small victories — each feature rollout and each positive user feedback that seemed to validate our hard work and vision. There was a tangible sense of achievement in those moments, seeing our ideas take shape and positively impact our user base. Previous hang-ups were solved, new ‘aha’ moments were had, and joy was shared. Being a rag-tag bunch of scrappy startup kids ended up being something I’ll never forget.
Reflecting on the journey, the termination of Startag was undeniably tough, yet it was also a period marked by intense professional and personal growth. I emerged from the experience with a deeper understanding of user-centered design, a nuanced appreciation for the crypto community, and a clearer vision for integrating user feedback into functional, appealing designs.
This chapter, though closed, had equipped me with invaluable insights and skills that I carry forward into my future projects to this day, ready to adapt in the ever-evolving landscape of tech-startups and funny jpegs.
