CryptoGateways is an early stage startup redefining the way crypto trading communities operate. We give community leaders the power to build their own platforms, instead of having to rely on numerous third-party services; subsequently, streamlining the trading experience for community members.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted some information from this case study. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to learn more about this project.
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ROLE
Product Design Intern
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YEAR
2020
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INDUSTRY
Cryptocurrency, Technology
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DESIGN TOOLS
Figma, InVision
CONTEXT
From a business standpoint, CryptoGateways wanted to set up a core MVP designed for the purpose of kickstarting development, investment, and marketing. The purpose for this was to improve the current structure of how crypto trading communities operate in the market.
THE PROCESS
Project Breakdown
Our goal was to design an MVP to increase stakeholder buy-in and kickstart initial development. Working alongside Christina, my fellow product design intern, we were tasked with designing the main platform and its functionalities. Led by both the Senior Product Designer and Project Manager, we spent 16 weeks on research, design, prototyping, and setting up our design system. For each iteration of a feature, we generally worked in sprints lasting 3-6 days, covering product requirements, research, wireframing, prototyping, and informal reviewing & testing.
RESEARCH
To get familiar with our product landscape and learn about our users, we first looked into key stakeholders.
These were the key stakeholders we were able to identify and collect feedback from.
Crypto trading communities
The target users of our platform, usually consisting of a leadership team and large member base. Leaders who run their communities and provide trading insights to members are often experienced traders and market analysts.
Crypto exchanges
Exchange platforms allow users to execute trades through matching buyers and sellers of currencies. All traders have an account on at least one exchange, which is connected to their digital wallet.
Service Platforms
The majority of these trading communities currently rely on messaging platforms to share insights, signals, and information with each other. These platforms are primarily made for communication; they are not designed to support trading activities.
Exchange API providers
Leaders use exchange API providers to provide automation of signal follow through copy trading. They connect to leader and member accounts, so that members can directly copy leader trades on the exchange.
Payment processing platforms
Leaders typically customize the quality, amount, and frequency of information shared, as well as services provided, based on different levels of membership at varying price tiers. To receive member payments, leaders often set up payment processing for both fiat and crypto.
THE PROBLEM
The current structure of a crypto community requires leaders to use many external services, namely payment processors, service platforms, and exchange API providers. Using multiple services results in a build up of fees, which cuts into community profits. As members and leaders bounce between platforms, there is often a fragmented user experience. Additionally, some platforms promote different communities to members, increasing competition, and affecting member retention within a community.
How crypto communities currently operate
OUR SOLUTION
We set out to reduce friction in the trading experience through targeting frustrations that the community had with the current system. This meant designing a platform that did everything they were already used to, plus a little more. For our MVP prototype, we knew we needed to flesh out the functionality of user accounts, and our product offering, for both leaders and members. Within these areas, we tackled core features – namely profile settings, security and identity, payment, and exchange API management on the account side; and trading signals, community chat, posts, and a personalized portfolio dashboard on the product side.
Community structure on CryptoGateways
FOUNDATIONS
Building Our Design System
We decided to use the Ant Design framework as a starting point to accelerate design and development. We took relevant components from the Ant library, customizing and refactoring them when necessary. We consulted the documentation to understand elements' behaviours and use cases, to design more feasible solutions, and keep note of when deviations needed to be made.
FOUNDATIONS
Grids and Layout
Since our product needs to be quite dense in features, to support leader setup and member experience, we chose to focus on desktop first. We needed to flesh out the full functionality for the many people who sat at their multi-monitor trading setups. Additionally, 78% of traffic in the B2B space derives from desktops, and we were marketing primarily to community leaders. We decided on an 8 point grid and a 12 column layout to accommodate for variations in navigation.
PLATFORM
Designing the features
I had the opportunity to work on a majority of features spanning the entire platform, but my main focus was on designing the leader experience for products, settings, users, API Management, as well as the security aspect of user accounts. I also was responsible for designing the marketing site and products page. Although I couldn’t include all of the pages that I worked on, here are a few key features that I designed:
PLATFORM
01. My Products
The ‘My products’ feature is one of the key benefits of our platform. It's where community leaders can add, configure and edit products for its members and dictate how they will interact with them. As this feature is heavily prioritized for community leaders, it was imperative to design a system that was intuitive and easy to use.
Adding Chat to My Products
Once Chat is added to My Products, it can be configured in Settings
PLATFORM
02. Designing Signals product configurations
Signals is the bread and butter of our platform and where community members will spend most of their time. A signal is like a lead to enter a trade on a currency pair. One of the most valuable aspects of joining a community are the signals that leaders send.
This flow indicates how a Leader would create a Signal System and how they would connect these systems to the proper APIs.
PLATFORM
03. Creating a Signal Manually
With this flow, I had to map out how Leaders would configure the product settings and take into account certain requirements that Leaders would need in order to create a signal manually.
PLATFORM
04. Adding and Managing Users
On this platform, community leaders would be able to add new users by sending these individuals invites via email. They would also be able to manage their community members and each users’ level of access.
IMPLEMENTATION
So we designed a sharable one-stop shop demonstrating our core MVP offering. Doing this gave us a proof-of-concept to get buy-in from potential communities and investors, as well as get started with development.
We also worked with our development team to design a landing page and products page for marketing purposes so that users and potential stakeholders can learn more about the platform and CryptoGateways’ core offerings.
Our Signals Product
Our Chat Product
Our Dashboard for Posts
TAKEAWAYS
Closing thoughts
The world is always changing, and so are design processes. Looking forward to change starts with being prepared. This means going into designing with a solid understanding of the product landscape and goals, to better anticipate, evaluate, and generate new ideas. This also means finding ways to optimize workflow, to adapt and iterate more quickly. Eventually, this prototype will get broken up. As interactions and flows change, it's not maintainable. And we will add hundreds of more states and screens, iterate on our product, solidify our brand, build upon our design system, and tackle the mobile version. The main takeaway I took from this internship is that design never ends.