A decentralized investing web app I designed from scratch at a DeFi startup. I took full ownership as the sole designer working directly with stakeholders in every step of the design process to create the best DeFi investing experience.
I have built a full onboarding, payment, and management experience for diversifying a web3 portfolio.
In May 2021, I joined as the first designer on a 4 person team at the company's pre-seed round. I had the privilege to work closely with the founders to design every consumer facing assets and experience design. I also led a branding workshop to create a brand for the company. Arch was created to symbolize the bridge between traditional and decentralized finance.
When I started, I knew very little about transactions on the blockchain. I realized while there were differences to completing a transaction in decentralized finance, there were similar patterns from traditional finance. The biggest challenge was to onboard DeFi newbies into this world that was already intimating and full of jargons.
I created a browsing experience similar to shopping any product on an e-commerce site. The "check-out" experience would be similar to Robinhood, Acorns, or any other investing application.
tech & product
Blockchain transactions
Create & connect wallet
Purchase buying power tokens
Trade
Send & receive
After the bare bones of the desktop version was built, we implemented a design system library so that we could also start building for mobile.
This was also a second pass on the first version of the app that failed. The initial experience was too difficult for any newbie to complete. Through this failure, we further simplified the journey, created our on Onramp, and developed a design system library to build faster. You can read about that journey in the process link.
Desktop & mobile
Responsive design
Design system
End-to-end journey
Edge cases
Balsamiq
Process
Above is a small sample of my research session. I studied the buying journey of other TradFi and DeFi platforms to propose a flow that aligned with Arch. Throughout, I was creating clickable prototypes on Figma to conduct 1:1 user testing sessions.
