Role

UI / UX / Product Designer

Duration

2 years (July 2021 - Present)

Tools

Figma, Design Tokens Studio, Dovetail, User Testing

Team

Entire company cross-functionally (small startup)

Global payments powered by bitcoin

Overview

I had the privilege of joining the team in 2021 when the company was still a baby. Since then, as the first product designer on the team I witnessed its transformation, from a fledgling idea into a product teeming with potential. The journey so far has been quite a ride, from complete rebrands to a growing waitlist exceeding 450,000 users. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback for our simplicity and user-friendliness even during our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. My job? To set up design at Noah and create the simplest crypto wallet that anyone, anywhere can use. The goal? To make crypto and its financial instruments accessible to all. Especially the people that need it most.

My role

My job has been to set up design at Noah and craft the simplest crypto wallet that anyone, anywhere can use. The goal? To make crypto and its financial instruments accessible to all. Especially the people that need it most.

I’ve fostered a culture of user-centricity by creating constant feedback loops at every stage of the business. This has allowed us to move as fast as possible whilst working around limitations from tech and compliance. As the sole product designer on our cross-functional team since the company's launch I’ve had my hands full. From handling UI/UX design, research and testing, data analysis and evangelising UX best practices, not only in the tech team, but across the company.

Highlights two years on

Custom design system

Built design system with design tokens for seamless designer-developer collaboration.

User research process

Implemented weekly usability testing & interviews to improve product design based on user feedback.

Validated MVP

Goal of MVP being easy & user-friendly - achieved, reflected in frequent feedback from beta users & usability tests.

NPS score of 30

58.6% of our early adopters are promoters who are extremely likely to recommend NOAH to a friend.

July 2021 - Present

Improving saving, sending, & spending in emerging markets by leveraging crypto's speed, low cost, and global reach.

I had the privilege of joining the team in 2021 when the company was still a baby. Since then, as the first product designer on the team I witnessed its transformation, from a fledgling idea into a product teeming with potential.

The journey so far has been quite a ride, from complete rebrands to a growing waitlist exceeding 450,000 users. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback for our simplicity and user-friendliness even during our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. My job? To set up design at Noah and create the simplest crypto wallet that anyone, anywhere can use. The goal? To make crypto and its financial instruments accessible to all. Especially the people that need it most.

I’ve fostered a culture of user-centricity by creating constant feedback loops at every stage of the business. This has allowed us to move as fast as possible whilst working around limitations from tech and compliance.

As the sole product designer on our cross-functional team since the company's launch I’ve had my hands full. From handling UI/UX design, research and testing, data analysis and evangelising UX best practices, not only in the tech team, but across the company.

Discovery & research

Knowing the startup world, we knew finding the right product market fit wouldn't be easy. Our goal was clear: design, test, learn, repeat. We embraced a philosophy of rapid prototyping and user testing to gather feedback and improve designs swiftly. Initially, we were only targeting emerging markets with high crypto adoption. But we soon realised our audience extended beyond those regions. We adjusted our strategy and tapped into early adopters in Western markets too. The shift enabled us to quickly explore new opportunities and partnerships, leveraging our compliance team's expertise in western financial regulations.

During the discovery and research phase, the first step was to interview both internal stakeholders and our target audience to understand the problem domain. I dove into the world of crypto telegram and facebook channels to find potential users in emerging markets. This process of generative interviews was extremely valuable to challenge existing assumptions and to get to know a representation of our initial audience personally.

Thematic analysis conducted from direct quotes from user interviews

Early insights from user and stakeholder interviews
User personas

During the discovery process, I created personas of emerging market users to help the team get into the shoes of our potential users. Users from different parts of the world, with different life experiences and backgrounds. The goal was to get our stakeholders to empathise and resonate where possible with this audience and to bear them in mind when considering business objectives.

Thematic analysis conducted from direct quotes from user interviews

July 2021 - Present

Improving saving, sending, & spending in emerging markets by leveraging crypto's speed, low cost, and global reach.

I had the privilege of joining the team in 2021 when the company was still a baby. Since then, as the first product designer on the team I witnessed its transformation, from a fledgling idea into a product teeming with potential.

The journey so far has been quite a ride, from complete rebrands to a growing waitlist exceeding 450,000 users. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback for our simplicity and user-friendliness even during our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. My job? To set up design at Noah and create the simplest crypto wallet that anyone, anywhere can use. The goal? To make crypto and its financial instruments accessible to all. Especially the people that need it most.

I’ve fostered a culture of user-centricity by creating constant feedback loops at every stage of the business. This has allowed us to move as fast as possible whilst working around limitations from tech and compliance.

As the sole product designer on our cross-functional team since the company's launch I’ve had my hands full. From handling UI/UX design, research and testing, data analysis and evangelising UX best practices, not only in the tech team, but across the company.

The main problems discovered in interviews

High remission fees when sending money internationally with fiat rails.

Some people resort to crypto rails such as stablecoins and peer to peer systems to avoid high transfer fees on these transactions.

Distrust in local banks: People in emerging markets may have a lack of trust in their local banks due to factors such as corruption, inefficiency, or instability.

They may be looking for alternative financial solutions that provide greater transparency and security.

Limited access to banking services

Many individuals in emerging markets do not have access to traditional banking services. This could be due to geographical barriers, lack of proper identification documents, or high fees associated with banking services. A crypto wallet could provide a means of financial inclusion, allowing them to participate in the global economy.

Currency volatility

Emerging markets often experience high levels of currency volatility, leading to rapid inflation or devaluation. This instability can erode people's savings and purchasing power. For example, for users in Nigeria, it is more beneficial to hold their savings in stablecoins vs their local currency (Nigerian Naira).

Limited financial literacy

Financial literacy levels may be low in some emerging markets, making it challenging for individuals to understand the complexities of cryptocurrencies and their benefits. Designing a user-friendly crypto wallet with educational resources and intuitive features could help bridge this knowledge gap.

Security concerns

Cryptocurrency theft and hacking incidents are a concern globally, but they can be especially impactful in emerging markets where individuals may have limited resources and limited legal recourse. Building robust security features into the wallet and providing education on best practices for securing digital assets would be essential.

Integration with local merchants

For a crypto wallet to be useful in daily transactions, it needs to have widespread acceptance among local merchants. Understanding the barriers that prevent merchants from accepting cryptocurrencies, such as technical limitations or lack of knowledge, can inform the design of features that facilitate merchant integration.

Early insights from user and stakeholder interviews
Competitive landscape

The primary objective of Noah is to simplify and make cryptocurrency more accessible to those most likely to benefit from it. Allow people to send money globally quickly and cheaply while storing value and building more wealth than they would with some of their own extremely volatile local currencies.
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During the past few years, crypto apps have gained popularity and adoption. Crypto apps have revolutionised the landscape of crypto asset management, empowering individuals to navigate the world of digital assets, making it more convenient and accessible than ever.  Although the crypto wallet market is highly competitive, a number of players are focusing on specific use cases, including portfolio trackers, trading platforms, and wallet apps, to name a few.

Competitor matrix

Binance & Trust Wallet as top players

From interviewing users, the main two competitors that came up time and time again were Binance and Trust wallet. Trust wallet being a very simple crypto wallet owned by Binance, we had our work cut out for us. Below are some direct quotes we got from interviewees.

Binance

"The transaction fees are low, it's fast, it's easy to get your identification approved and I've never been scammed on Binance yet. Hopefully never so far honestly no, no bad experience that I, I can think of at the moment."

"I like the Binance because, because of the security features, because of the strong security we're in it, it is impossible to steal your assets"

"In centralised exchange I always use Binance. That's really a trusted one. Using it for five or six years. I like it because there is a learn to earn feature there. Also we are able to send crypto to other binance users without charge."

"I don't know how safe my funds are in Binance, so maybe that can be a question mark"

"There was no option to withdraw to my local currency in Binance."

"Binance is very complicated compared to Noah. Noah is very, very easy."
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Trust wallet

"I always use Trust wallet and Metamask. For trust wallet, it's trustworthy because of their reputation and from my research I found out that trust wallet is owned by binance. So I use Trust Wallet even more than Metamask, although I use Metamask to carry out more complicated crypto transactions like related to NFT's. Depends on the network on which the NFT launched on."

"I use Trust mainly for, for storing my coins. Then I trade on Binance."

"What do you like most about Trust Wallet? It has high security so that no one can steal my points there. I wish Noah will also have extra security in the future"
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"On Metamask or trust wallet the fees are really high".

July 2021 - Present

Improving saving, sending, & spending in emerging markets by leveraging crypto's speed, low cost, and global reach.

I had the privilege of joining the team in 2021 when the company was still a baby. Since then, as the first product designer on the team I witnessed its transformation, from a fledgling idea into a product teeming with potential.

The journey so far has been quite a ride, from complete rebrands to a growing waitlist exceeding 450,000 users. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback for our simplicity and user-friendliness even during our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. My job? To set up design at Noah and create the simplest crypto wallet that anyone, anywhere can use. The goal? To make crypto and its financial instruments accessible to all. Especially the people that need it most.

I’ve fostered a culture of user-centricity by creating constant feedback loops at every stage of the business. This has allowed us to move as fast as possible whilst working around limitations from tech and compliance.

As the sole product designer on our cross-functional team since the company's launch I’ve had my hands full. From handling UI/UX design, research and testing, data analysis and evangelising UX best practices, not only in the tech team, but across the company.

The Noah MVP

The MVP needed to encompass all of the essentials a crypto wallet requires in order to take off: buying, selling, sending, and receiving, while remaining on the very simple side of the competition. We're not trying to be a trading app for people aiming to turn a quick profit, but to make cryptocurrency accessible to everyone. To launch our MVP as fast as possible, we needed to consider which features we needed to build from scratch, and which ones we could use out-of-the-box integrations for i.e. authentication flows.

Using integrations, while allowing us to move faster, meant that there were some limitations with what we could do with the UX/UI. It proved an interesting exercise to understand how to work with more or less flexible integrations, something my front-end background helped massively in. Occasionally, I have stood my ground against certain integrations, to ensure a better user experience (for example, the buying and selling flows). 

Early insights from user and stakeholder interviews
The UX design process behind the scenes

Features

Buying, selling, sending and integrations.

Research

Usability tests with Figma prototypes using Maze, and continuous qualitative user interviews and usability tests with the live product. Dovetail used for organising and storing findings collaboratively and to conduct thematic analysis.

July 2021 - Present

Improving saving, sending, & spending in emerging markets by leveraging crypto's speed, low cost, and global reach.

I had the privilege of joining the team in 2021 when the company was still a baby. Since then, as the first product designer on the team I witnessed its transformation, from a fledgling idea into a product teeming with potential.

The journey so far has been quite a ride, from complete rebrands to a growing waitlist exceeding 450,000 users. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback for our simplicity and user-friendliness even during our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. My job? To set up design at Noah and create the simplest crypto wallet that anyone, anywhere can use. The goal? To make crypto and its financial instruments accessible to all. Especially the people that need it most.

I’ve fostered a culture of user-centricity by creating constant feedback loops at every stage of the business. This has allowed us to move as fast as possible whilst working around limitations from tech and compliance.

As the sole product designer on our cross-functional team since the company's launch I’ve had my hands full. From handling UI/UX design, research and testing, data analysis and evangelising UX best practices, not only in the tech team, but across the company.

Buying & selling cryptocurrency

One of the first features we had to build was the buying and selling flows to allow users to buy and sell bitcoin. In the context of a financial application, features like this, which require communication with external systems, i.e. government regulations and crypto markets, have a lot of implications for both compliance and tech.

From the beginning, it was essential to have a cross-functional effort and ensure continuous alignment even in the smallest details.

Sell flow as it currently stands

Initial buy flow with MoonPay integration

In order to prove our ability to deliver quickly to investors we knew we had to make trade-offs. As an essential feature of the app, we chose to move fast and go with an out-of-the-box integration from Moonpay.

After implementation, I gathered feedback from our users for this flow with both user interviews and usability tests (more on our continuous discovery process later), and shared findings with the wider team in our weekly user feedback calls.

Early buy flow with the MoonPay integration

Time-lapse of synthesising user feedback for buy flow in Dovetail

Getting feedback for our early buy iteration

During ongoing user interviews I conducted, this is some of the feedback collected:

"I really had a complaint. I see the minimal you can use is 15,000 Naira. That's Nigerian Naira. So I am with on the opinion that can it be minimised so that people can buy with less money, maybe even 2000, 5,000 error. If you leave it at that rate of 15,000, I don't think people can buy, especially not the less privileged people like us."

"I really want to try buying this, but I am not very familiar with Moonpay and the fees are very high."

"I tried but lengthy process. That's why I don't prefer."

"I face some problem with Noah when I deposit bitcoin, this says our country is not supported, it does not appear on this list. I'm from Bangladesh."

"I would really love it if you add other features like where you can actually buy directly from the exchange, where you don't necessarily have to use the platforms like Moonpay."

"I hate MoonPay."

It was clear that the integration wasn't up to par. Many of our users found the purchase price and the fees too high, occasionally the process was a bit buggy and fiddly (with an iframe in a web application on mobile), some countries were not supported by MoonPay, and a general dislike and desire for alternative options.

As a result, I used user feedback to consciously push back on this integration and investigate other options. It became apparent that it did not meet our standards and the goals we had set for our app. In order to prioritise improving this flow, the team began looking for another payment partner.

Eventually, we settled with checkout’s SDK, which allowed us to redesign this flow in Figma with greater flexibility. Checkout also allowed us to reduce the minimum buy amount, reduce the fees and support more countries - a good start.

Iterating on the buy flow based on user feedback

I went back to the drawing board and started off by workshopping some user flows with the team to understand how the new checkout integration would work. A few changes were made in the following iterations based on user feedback, compliance and tech feasibility.

Prototyping time-lapse of a buy flow

First checkout iteration & usability test feedback

Second checkout iteration & usability test feedback

Third checkout iteration

Iterating on the sell flow

For the sell flow, the payout methods vary by country due to what our payment providers support, for example in the UK we support most payout methods but for example in Nigeria, for now at least, only manual bank transfers are accepted - so for the sell flow, the first step is to ask for the users country before moving on to the enter amount screen.

For selling, we had to make a final tweak because our payment provider did not yet support off-ramping by credit/debit card for all countries. As a pre-check when selling, we would have to ask the country first as a pre-check for the countries it doesn't support, so we decided to offer off-ramping by manual bank transfers for the countries our compliance team allowed.

Sell flow with checkout integration

Improvements for following iterations based on user feedback

Add more currencies, have more payment and payout methods available for certain countries (look into peer to peer and mobile money solutions), improve the bottom bar so users are not as confused about the meaning of the icons (add labels), make the app available in more languages.

Sending

Sending was also one of the early features we implemented from the get go - it was essential for users to be able to send bitcoin to one another fast and cheaply.

Existing problems with sending bitcoin

Most crypto wallets allow users to send bitcoin on-chain. This means that bitcoin is sent on the on-chain network to the public blockchain ledger. The blockchain ledger is like a huge book listing all of the bitcoin transactions ever made, this ensures transparency and security. On top of that, it’s also immutable, so no one can change the history of the transactions.

This is game-changing as no single entity is responsible, therefore creating a more trustworthy system, but the process of getting a transaction on the public ledger typical involves multiple computers (nodes) working together to validate the transaction, I won’t go into too much detail, but this process can take around 10 minutes and you are required to pay a fee (known as gas) for the computers to validate the transaction. It can be pricey and lengthy.

Current send flow

Potential solution and research

Recently, the lightning network appeared within the space, allowing users to send bitcoin cheaply and instantly. There are very few well known lightning wallets in the space, Noah aimed to harness the power of lightning to massively improve the experience of sending bitcoin to encourage real-world use and payments with bitcoin.

My thinking was that I wanted the send flow to abstract the complex technology away, or at least use terms/descriptions that most people were familiar with. So I started by taking a look at send flows for some of the most user friendly and widely used apps out there.

Examples of similar products / competitor apps - sell flows

Competitor research

I noticed that they feature contacts, social elements (such as leaving messages when sending funds), user-friendly, easy-to-understand language, and tooltips or help dialogs for any possible confusing terms.In the beginning,

I had the idea of having a contact list, but due to bitcoin addresses being anonymous, we were not able to do so, but we later managed to at least provide a list of the 5-10 previous payees so users can easily pick people they sent money to recently.

We also incorporated custom lightning addresses, so users can choose to be easily identified by their username if they wish. The final screen has been changed from 'payment processing' to 'payment on the way!' for a more satisfying feeling.

Feedback loop for early designs with prototypes

From taking a look at competitor flows, I put together some early designs and usability tested the prototypes with Maze by recruiting users from our waitlist. The early designs got pretty good feedback from the start.

Additionally, I conducted interviews with users regarding the live app to get some additional feedback since prototypes don't always reflect feedback from live apps. The main thing that kept coming up was the need for more security across most flows (buying, sending, selling).

Early prototype with heat maps and feedback from usability testing with Maze

Notes from user interviews regarding security

Iterations

From the feedback acquired from prototype usability tests and user interviews, iterations were made. A required verification PIN was introduced when sending as well as multi factor authentication measures in our app, which are currently being implemented. The feedback from continuous user interviews was overall positive, and this send flow ended up being one of our most raved about features.

Latest send flow

Quotes from a send flow usability test

July 2021 - Present

Improving saving, sending, & spending in emerging markets by leveraging crypto's speed, low cost, and global reach.

I had the privilege of joining the team in 2021 when the company was still a baby. Since then, as the first product designer on the team I witnessed its transformation, from a fledgling idea into a product teeming with potential.

The journey so far has been quite a ride, from complete rebrands to a growing waitlist exceeding 450,000 users. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback for our simplicity and user-friendliness even during our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. My job? To set up design at Noah and create the simplest crypto wallet that anyone, anywhere can use. The goal? To make crypto and its financial instruments accessible to all. Especially the people that need it most.

I’ve fostered a culture of user-centricity by creating constant feedback loops at every stage of the business. This has allowed us to move as fast as possible whilst working around limitations from tech and compliance.

As the sole product designer on our cross-functional team since the company's launch I’ve had my hands full. From handling UI/UX design, research and testing, data analysis and evangelising UX best practices, not only in the tech team, but across the company.

Streamlined and clutter free interface

I take pride in adhering to and advocating for Nielsen Norman Group's usability heuristic number 8, which promotes minimalist design by removing "noise" in an interface and emphasising important information.By decluttering and simplifying our interface, I strive to eliminate distractions and enable users to concentrate on their tasks.

As we continue on this journey toward absolute simplicity, user feedback consistently praises the simplicity and clarity of our platform. Advocating for this minimalist design philosophy is an integral part of every new design project I create.

Early insights from user and stakeholder interviews

Noah app

Quotes from user interviews and usability tests where users described the interface as clean, simple and easy.

Takeaways

Although I have been at Noah for 2 years and have engaged in many other activities, such as creating a design system from scratch, hiring and managing visual designers, setting up our user feedback loop, and conducting research, I hope the above processes for buying, selling, and sending give you an idea of how I approach my work.

Designing UX and products isn’t something you ‘know’, but rather how to understand everything you don’t know and how to get closer to the truth - delivering what users want, even subconsciously. Every new project, domain, and company comes with its own set of hurdles, users, constraints, and we must make the most of what we have in order to find the truth. My approach isn’t linear.

In my experience, constant, meticulous feedback loops are the fastest way to reach your goals, along with constantly improving your craft as a UX designer. You must know what you don't know, have a toolkit of methods to help you obtain answers (research), and iterate continuously to find out what aligns with your users and business.