In 2018 Dash was creating a platform where users of a typically complex cryptocurrency experience would be able to use the blockchain to enable human avatars, names and connections in order to transact business. This revolutionary platform was only in backend complex coding stage, requiring a front facing user experience that communicated simplicity and industry dominating forward movement.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have removed and hidden confidential information in this case study. The information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of DASH or its community.
Design Innovation & Leadership
I led the design for the Dashpay flagship product from 2018 - 2020 in concept, innovation and strategy.
I partnered with a project manager, a product owner and one other lead designer to uncover concept and translate requirements into features that address user expectations and motivations.
I created module framework concepts and prototypes to share the vision, design principles and experience strategy. This aided in evangelising ideas, gaining alignment and driving decision making.
I defined the product with my project manager partners. I evangelised customer goals and balanced business goals. I prioritised and negotiated features for launch and strategically beyond.
I designed across and collaborated with multiple back and front facing platform developer teams and their partners to translate product features for each platform context and user story.
I designed specifically for notch based iphones, gesture based android phones and tested on smallest iphone 5 for global validation. I executed journeys, wireframes, prototypes and design specs.
I presented animated design high fidelity mockups to gain buy‐in from executives, senior stakeholders and many other community teams throughout each project lifecycle.
Build A Crypto Wallet
For non crypto Audience
Since the creation of the blockchain and cryptocurrency, user experiences have been abysmal at best. Requiring long strings of text, multiple verification checks, cryptic command line controls and new vocabulary adoption.
Our challenge was to create a simple user friendly cryptocurrency wallet that creates personal ownership and approachability to enter the highly competitive peer to peer payment and digital commerce global industry.
DASHPAY would offer a uniquely personalized, experience centered around the user, in which technical jargon is either removed or obfuscated and actions are intuitive and simple. With this new approach we believe the mainstream user audience would be attracted to the experience of DASH.
Simplicity is King
Due to the incredible amount of complicated and dynamic feedback required for transactions on the blockchain, we were tasked with converting complexity into simplicity while increasing adoption from complex power users and minimizing friction. This tactic was perceived to be the most appropriate due to our audience having extremely varying needs.
The assumption was simple—Millions of people use mobile payments daily. Create an experience that rivals modern payment applications and do so within the cryptocurrency space. Extend the payment, contact creation and human relatability model that customers were familiar with and leverage the deeply cutting edge blockchain infrastructure to create an unexpected impact in the marketplace.
This decision was created in order to refocus market share from the larger cryptocurrencies as well as mainstream payment applications to Dash.
Feature Analysis
Feature requests, designs and development were broken into 3 separate streams of communication of which I was intimately following and/or responsible for. I led the conceptual design and innovation for each feature whether approved or otherwise.
Each feature phase of the project was organized through well structured development roadmaps and agile sprint reporting, I split the feature design approach into 2 conceptual pathways. The initial design pathway was for creating approved features and integration into the greater DASH ecosystem while the second pathway was for innovating reasonable complimentary experiences that give cohesive identity to the initial approved features.
To create features that allow for the existing platform to be used, while also forming new features that a newly formed platform inadvertently demands, became a full time job.
Creating the environment that allowed me to deliver expected results while also allowing me the creative space to innovate contextual brand experiences was my initial foundational process.
I followed by working with technical platform designers to translate product features for their platform’s context. Concurrently, I would design the next feature in the pipeline, whilst also working with my own platform engineering teams to execute the current feature through to completion. My role as design lead meant that I spoke diverse languages in terms of internal team environments to move features and concept along the rails of execution.
Customer Insights
We conducted customer and market research to drive our discovery and validation phase.
We defined a few major insight drivers that structured and focused the initial version of the product:
The primary customers are those that are crypto-averse due to complexity while also specifically customers that fall into the power-user category.
Customers will more likely use a new product when someone they know is using it. In particular, when a transaction is socially experienced, apprehension is minimized.
Power User customers are just as interested in innovation as long as they do not lose any features they are used to having.
Customers that use money sending apps do so because it's easy to receive from that app as well as spend from it.
We found adoption potential increased in less affluent areas where shared distrust of the government was a driving factor in cryptocurrency adoption.
Customers were in general afraid to trust any "new" money system, and therefore we needed to identify drivers that pushed past that boundary.
Cryptocurrency Is For Everyone
Our vision for DASHPAY was to be the best experience in sending money globally and instantly for DASH users, not a complex crypto wallet for technical geeks.
We did not want to offer an exhaustive in-your-face feature set, rather wanted to focus on helping customers discover each other and send money, from a relational/social experience they already connect and relate to.
Together with instant global sending, low priced transaction costs, a simple intuitive interface, socially leading experiences and integrated de-surfaced power-user functions—Dashpay would make DASH one of the best cryptocurrencies that has ever existed.
Simplicity is what we wanted customers to get excited about.
DASHPAY
DASHPAY is a cryptocurrency wallet and payments application available to DASH users at no additional cost. DASHPAY users can connect to friends and family through real human avatars baked directly into the global blockchain. With a roadmap that integrates vendors, merchants and global payment structures, DASHPAY allows any business anywhere to transact across geographic boundaries and cultural divides.
PersonalizeD Experience
Customers can create an avatar image of themselves to personalize sending and receiving as well as change the main color of the app. Not just spot color, a complete overhaul of the app for each customer experience. This is ownership and connection in a new way.
Pay Friends and Family
Customers can pay friends and family in a trusted blockchain experience without being overwhelmed by the technical frameworks that govern the process.
Always Know Whats Happening
Customers can now see at a glance the latest events on their home screen, keeping them updated on payments, contact requests or status changes and more.
THE FRAMEWORK
The biggest challenge I faced throughout this project was balancing the state of the development cycles with expected output in design. Since this project was based on a deeply dynamic new platform still being developed by the team, I needed to coordinate and get buy‐in from many teams at the executive level, development level, product level and design level. This resulted in delayed communications such as feedback and agreements.
Managing feature expectations was even more challenging because it felt like I was creating innovation for functions that may randomly disappear, reappear and then disappear again.. The development teams had internal struggles causing them to debate on timelines and function often, forcing all cycles around them to come to a a crawl.
The impact was uncertainty, inefficiency and a growing doubt for the community as they looked into DASH waiting for the next release.
My personal answer to this was to split the design process into 2 different streams. One stream focused on "Functions We Know For Sure" and the other was "Unique Innovative Functions Requiring New Designs" that would be used to inspire and drive forward movement.
I observed this pattern early and invested time into creating mini philosophies to help drive the approach and better communicate deign efforts and expectations.
Design principles and user experience prioritisation helped to create visibility into my decision‐making process and focus the team to share in and ideal vision.
Increase Approachability
My earliest design challenge was to propose how we could generally increase user adoption to make the app as well the industry more approachable. Historically speaking, blockchain projects are known for their technical requirements and therein, screens often prioritize technical details to increase the experience of security.
I hypothesised that the customer would be more open to the blockchain/crypto world, if we "de-nerd-ify" the user experience while simultaneously helping them to see themselves in the experience. I did not have qualitative data to support this and subsequently created a few early concept designs around an idea about "socializing" the UI, to simply to garner current client and potential client approachability through interviews. My aims were to understand how customers perceive a "money sending app" whether or not it had anything to do with crypto.
I led live guerilla sessions in coffee shops where participants were asked their thoughts on a few different designs and plotted a general overview on a basic feedback capture grid.
Using a feedback capture grid I was able to create some early validation that although participants were unclear as to how cryptocurrency worked and whether or not they should use it, they were much more likely to approach a personalized experience and tended to create higher reviews for the social profile experience.
Users in the power user group were approached online and over phone through a remote interview, and they were also more likely to choose screens that displayed more blockchain information . As a matter of fact, about 50% of power users were interested in a social relational user experience however it is important to note that this design interest was not a need for the power users but their own reflection on new mainstream users coming in to the ecosystem.
What they liked the social model concept is that it connects to people that do not understand crypto. This affects power users tremendously as it allows them to have a wider audience for the coin, the brand, and their ability to send payments and purchase with cryptocurrency.
This feedback repositioned my initial hypothesis as although I had an assumption that non technical users would respond more favorably to the social design, I was surprised and excited that the power user group also affirmed these convictions.
Future Thinking In Reverse
My next major hurdle to overcome in terms of defining the overall feature feel of the application was, how to increase general buy-in from the community.
As a side note: It needs to be said that the "crypto community" is a cacophony, in a wildly diverse screaming narrative in which everyone has different priorities on what global needs are. To weed out selfish ambition and personal gain focuses only, I focused on the internal economic drivers of any thriving economy; merchants and patrons.
I imagined the best possible scenario of a DASH transaction being done in line as if it was 3 years from now, at a store where the customer simply picked up their phone and flashed it over a POS system (or a merchant phone if small vendor) and BEEP BEEP the transaction was complete.
It was my postulation that if merchants were empowered with the most powerfully simple tools within the same application as the core consumer, the relationship between the core DASH consumer and the merchants would drive general buy-in.
I then mapped out what would be necessary to have this scenario exist in the future (based on my own opnion and not deep blockchain knowledge) , and worked my way backward by identifying features necessary to prioritize in the roadmap so that we begin designing around those models in the early stages of the product.
From this exercise, it became clear that we can begin to implement functions early, in the design philosophy that have their roots in tomorrow's user adoption goals.
To gain buy‐in for this direction, I created a set of design comps. Although many of these concepts were not feasible at the time of launch, they were still important to help get the team excited about the future and to understand early design decisions.
Real World Needs
We conducted a mid‐scale survey (100+) to understand how current clients in different parts of the world were using DASH. We learned that:
Based on these insights, I designed the basic user experience around the human. Making sure that the feel was person to person immediately, Also hiding the currency balance into a more secure location was important for security. I increased important user action potential through a simple task system. Merchant solutions were moved to a later phase of development however I began work on social constructs that sharing, liking, purchasing and commenting on product and merchants would fit directly into at a later stage.
Too Many "Home Screen" Choices
One of the more difficult hurdles was the overwhelming amount of "homescreen" navigational jump point options that most teams told me "had to be there".
After analysing the SWOT and identifying the value in OPPORTUNITIES we have, it seemed logical to model DASH home screen after what customers were NOT familiar with in crypto—a clean non assuming open home screen. My proposal was fairly well received but this did not get me off the hook as each department still had their needs that were written in stone. I had to solve the problem so that everyone's requests were still a priority.
The solution was to communicate to the team what options were going to make it to the homescreen by giving their requests a life of their own. That life was to create a menu screen that held the balance, the options, the user information and controls and structure it so it appears holistic and stable.
To Be Human Or Not
There was this moment where a single decision changed the outcome of the project forever. That moment seemed small on the ourside, internally however, it formed a real mountain to overcome. The moment was this: To allow someone to represent themselves as a person or continue the crypto-cycle of pseudonymous masking.
You have to remember here that the audience is not only users, but merchants, community members, the crypto sphere at large and stakeholders with many of these user types holding traditionalistic views of privacy in their blockchain expectations. In other words, championing a crypto app with a personalized profile experience could mean the end to the brand as we know it or the possibility of radically changing a dynamic that many hold central to the vision.
This controversy was simply based on the idea that I wanted to place the user profile image front and center on the home screen. That's it... thats the big deal.
The three areas that were most debated related to:
The idea of placing a profile photo on the homescreen was based on a branding strategy used in the top 5% of all companies, called "Psychological Ownership" and it is simply defined as when a consumer sees themselves in the product so that they consider it an extension of themselves" ( You see this with coke placing personal names on bottles and other similar branding/marketing campaigns)
My goal in defending this decision was to both receive approval of this game changing mechanic and to educate the organization on how marketing and UX design play a significant role cohesively in brand awareness and retention.
The security issue seemed to hover around the usage of a photo as an avatar. The main concern being that if you can see who the user is "at a glance" you can find them easier and that opens up the door for financial shenanigans. (my phrase not theirs)
This was one of the main sticky areas as it truly behaved more as a placeholder for the real issue, which is "can crypto be personalized and still be secure?" Overcoming this hurdle was not accomplished through simple marketing technique references as above, but was done by placing pressure on the vision of the product as a whole of which I was able to do once I read through the whitepaper and current documentation of the product platform.
My Defense:
"If the platform in DASH could correctly pseudonymize transactions on the blockchain while concurrently creating a one-to-one payment experience, then the pressure is on the chain and not in the UI.
If the platform works, then the UI represents the innovation. If the platform does-not then the UI exposes an incomplete development timeline."
Although my argument was not iron-clad in a definitive sense, It was enough to move forward with the new UI representing a small security potential while the heavy lifting was handled by the blockchain and platform directly.
The final hurdle to overcome was the concern that the button did not communicate well I set out to create a series of button designs that would draw the user into its purpose and tested in a live setting using a handful of button variations,
Testing the button options with 22 participants revealed that:
This validated most of my design assumptions. I was surprised by the initial pushback and did not realise how much an avatar would rock the boat. Overall customers knew that the user image was central to their experience which increased a feeling of ownership while creating an expectation that their profile data was linked to the image.
“…I felt good enough to move forward with the avatar button as it was, because I knew it would be very easy to change if I was wrong, or if larger scale testing later produced alternative results.
Pre Design Wireframes
DASH is at its core a development driven organization. This meant that in order for me to create solutions I needed to communicate through design as much as possible. Early wireframes were enough to identify IMPORTANT elements and prioritized features however were not used to communicate design. Wireframes were used to identify goals and features as a roadmap and blueprint to communicate concepts.
One of my UX strategies is to use wireframes to visually identify elements and prioritize features. This means that a wireframe is an organizational tool and not a design tool.
High Fidelity Communication
Moving through the Discovery phase with DASHPAY was a fun and enjoyable experience. The highs and lows of accurate assumptions and completely missed perspectives kept me humble and encouraged. Using High Fidelity Prototypes to convey movement, transitions and motion design allowed the final pieces to come together in a very visual collaboration.
Videos for Story telling
Creating videos for projects is one of my secret maneuvers. I love to communicate to the team, stakeholders and early adopter clients, the value of the next release. I intentionally create energy packed experiences with stolen soundtracks to encourage internal teams through the harder parts of development.
There are few things more rewarding in the corporate world than seeing a team come together over a fully realized design through visual story telling.
What I Learned
DASH holds a unique position in the world of Cryptocurrency. They are one of a small number of coins that have a corporate center. As such, working with DASH was similar to being hired by a corporation as an outsourced service provider. I received the privilege of working with very talented people within my own design team, my own coding team and project owners and managers dedicated exclusively to the wallet application.
I learned over the near 2 year time frame that organizations spanning multiple tools in varying audience demographics should take the time to organize their priorities before they begin to adjust one over another. In their defense, I felt they did not understand that working with a UX strategist could have moved them further into their many goals instead of assuming a single project was their best ROI.
This was not to say that they were unorganized, it's only a reflection based on how much more I wish we could have created a streamlined ecosystem of platform deliverables during my time with the organization. As a critique I offer this perspective because DASH has the internal structure and technical accomplishments to truly become a dominant sustainable global coin. To me I simply consider this an opportunity loss of which my lack of experience initially should have been stronger on their behalf.
If I championed the understanding of their goals at a much higher level from the beginning, I would have been more proactive in creating additional platform solutions during my time at DASH.
Commentary
UX Leadership is always a personal risk, to expose a future potential problem or increase the value of a currently accepted norm can be scary. I have to assume up front quite a bit, test those assumptions and then humbly report my findings. Sometimes this makes me look like I have a 6th sense with a visionary gift, and other times it can bite me. It's a risk.
For me, the risk is worth it, the end result is a better product. The humility required to accept when I'm wrong is the same it takes to push for greatness in any goal. I put the client first, their goals, their application and their customers. UX has never been about me, it's about the project and everyone involved. In DASH I was surrounded by many who practiced this same philosophy in their respective disciplines. I was surrounded by wildly intelligent dedicated individuals that truly champion behind the scenes a better life for billions of people and their financial freedoms.
I learned that crypto currency is not about the next new gadget, it's a separation of government from the people's money. This is truly a magical time to be alive as around the world, there are tireless developers, designers and executive stakeholders pushing for a stronger individualism through currency. While we sleep there are countless thousands sacrificing with lower salaries, less public positions and restless nights to change our world. I came into DASH on the fence about crypto currency, and I leave with a deep appreciation for the intentions of an entire industry.