With the hype of web3.0, ridiculous $2.67 million monkey JPEG, and Metaverse, it is unlikely that no one has not heard of crypto — my retiree mom is not an exception. After questionable hours on Twitter, these questions arose

What is NFT? Why is Elon Musk buying dog coin? Is Bitcoin safe? How can I buy the dog coin? Why do people buy million dollars jpeg?

So I took 3 months to dive into DeFi, crypto, and NFTs so I can explain to any moms, pops, or grandparents why those JPEGs are so expensive.

We fear what we do not understand

I realized that the deeper I went, the more complex the whole ecosystem is. Jargon like dApps, DEX, gas fee, slippage, etc is too technical for non-tech savvy people to begin with.

Don’t get me started on over-saturated dark blue UI apps straight out of sci-fi movies that feel ‘alien’ to older generations. Remember, familiarity breeds comfort.

Millennials are well tech-iterated in this field but remember these old chumps have loads of money and time to spare. For businesses, ignoring them is like ignoring a sweet ol’ goldmine that smells like cookies.

Walk before run

DeFi stands for decentralized finance that utilizes blockchain technology to execute financial activities without traditional middlemen unlike banks (centralized finance).

However, newcomers need to learn by experiencing the simple basic financial activities such as seed phrase, buy, sell and trade before heading towards more advanced activities like lending, staking, and farming.

Solution: I decided to design an educational DeFi wallet that aims to help beginners learn by doing.

Side note: This case study only reflects my experience and other people using DeFi apps from a beginner’s perspective. The designers and developers in an actual ecosystem have created amazing products with extensive data ie: Luno, Coinbase, Binance Lite. My goals are simply to demonstrate and practice my understanding of DeFi and to design products for general users.

User Insights

To answer our hypothesis, I asked 10+ users (age range 20–50) what comes to mind when they hear about cryptocurrency investment:

• Is it safe for me? What if I get hacked?
• Where do I start? Which coin should I invest in?
• What do I need to know to begin investing?
• Which tools should I use? There are so many.
• I am not keen on emerging technologies. Too risky.

Based on research, I’ve simplified three things to design great DeFi products for complete beginners.

• Simplicity
• Transparency
• Literacy

Another important insight is that the number of mobile users increases by 10% every year, hence my approach is mobile-first while applying design principles as much as I can.

Solution #1 — Branding that stands out

“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein

I found out that the majority of the DeFi apps look similar to one another being dark mode and blue/purple UI. They are widely popular because their hues scream technology and security while dark modes are easy to the eyes.

However, the first impression matters. To cut through the clutter and win the user’s attention, we need to take a different approach.

The research found that users are likely to want to try the visually appealing product. Take a look at this shelf-impact thought experiment in retail by John Marovino.

If I’m building a DeFi company, my positioning statement to stand out is quite simple;

To crypto beginners, this DeFi wallet is only wallet that allows you to invest in crypto without prior knowledge because we provide intuitive learn-by-doing experience.

Visual Design

I studied the UI from other (non-financial) apps such as Medium, Airbnb, Nike because of the design simplicity. Then, I experimented with these visual elements:

• Light grey background
• White tile with shadows
• Soft gradient
• Green accent — evokes growth
• Rounded corner cards
• Dark CTA color button — contrast

The goal is to evoke these feelings: Familiarity, growth and security.

Solution #2 — Personalized experience

The learning curve of DeFi can be really scary therefore users want to be gently welcomed and feel like they are being taken care of (like my mom).

Personalized experience keeps users engaged, and created deeper relationships. For example; Headspace app does a great onboarding experience.

Using the Pareto principle, 20% of the first experience makes up 80% of customers’ retention rate. Hence, I designed the on-boarding journey aims to segment users based on goals and behavior. The information helps to suggest a gas fee, coins to invest in, transaction speed, and so on.

In addition, a soft personalized experience can include:

• Name greeting on the homepage
• Friendly illustrations
• Tutorials and tooltips
• Lite and pro mode toggle like Binance app

Solution #3 — Keep it simple, genius.

Thinking in most basic element helps me to build visual hierarchy of what’s most important while because it removes assumptions and analogies.

Intuitive is when anticipation and result meet after users click on something in the app. I designed the pages to answer the question ‘What would users expect to do on this page?’ For example,

• Homepage acts as dashboard to update user progress and allows quick shortcuts to basic financial activities.
• Explore page invites users to explore trending projects and decentralized apps (dApps).
• Wallet page allows users to manage their wallets.

Solution #4 — Learn by doing

The intrinsic motivation of learning can be paired with extrinsic motivation such as rewards or points.

I learned that gamification in UX is widely popular in learning and fitness apps like Duolingo and Nike. Added that with progress tracker as seen in course apps like Udemy and Coursera can make welcoming and rewarding learning experience.

My suggestion is to break down financial activities using bite-sized tutorials with detailed explanation or video for examples:

Level 1 teaches users to setup account and do basic transactions and get rewarded (Example: A percentage of cryptocurrency).

Level 2 may teach users to do more advanced task; KYC (know-your-customer) validation, staking, NFTs and more.

Solution #5 — Transparency and show don’t tell

People don't read, they scan.

Arguably, the villain in this story is the technical crypto terminology. Users don’t understand what does it mean by slippage, gas fee, arr, apy, etc without reading an article or a 17 min Youtube video.

Asking the right question would be ‘Why it is so important that users know this?’ Communicate value to users, not the technical term.

However, choosing which information to explain visually or in the text is a difficult task and requires feedback and testing to get it right.

In this example, I tried my best to visually communicate transaction progress using familiar illustration objects.

Takeaways

We came a long way from the 2007 era of DeFi and the UX has tremendously improved by miles. The majority of crypto and DeFi companies have already begun to invest in UI UX now more than ever to acquire mass adoption. When we reached that, brand positioning will be the name of the game.

Although this writing is just tip of the iceberg of DeFi world, I hope it gives some insight on how to give confidence to general users to enter web3.0.

It was a joyride to hone my skill stack in branding, product design, and DeFi while adding writing to the list.

Hello there! Izzul Syazwan is a brand and product designer from Malaysia. He can be found on Medium, Dribbble and Linkedin. Currently exploring remote opportunities.

Additional Resources