Ethos Universal Wallet
Industry: Cryptocurrency
Project type: UX/UI design, Design Direction, Design System
Role: Lead UX/UI Designer
Project duration: 6 Months
About the Client
Ethos is a people-powered crypto technology company whose mission is to make the "new economy" open, safe, and fair for everyone. Their main goal is to be the first to use technology, design, and social insights to create products that will allow crypto enthusiasts to usher-in a better financial ecosystem. To do this, they have identified a need for a user-friendly and technologically-sound application to make sending, receiving, and monitoring your investments in cryptocurrencies the easiest it can possibly be.
About the Ethos Universal Wallet
The first product by Ethos, the Ethos Universal Wallet is a place to "Store your crypto tokens, coins and digital assets safely and securely on your mobile device, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens." There is also the ability to track assets you have stored elsewhere such as on a hardware wallet or an exchange by using the "WatchFolio" feature. The wallet also includes summaries of coin performances, analytics of your holdings, the ability to send and receive tokens to your devices, and community sentiment ratings on each supported currency.
The Ask
I was brought on by the founders in to the product team at Ethos to help improve the look and feel of the current state of the designs and to also analyze the current user journey of the application prototype. The product team needed my help in making the flow of the app feel less cumbersome than the current methods of crypto management (ie hardware wallets and web-based exchanges).
To prove my worth to the team, I completed an initial audit of the app. I annotated the current experience with notes on how to improve the product. There were several hierarchy, color contrast, and information architecture issues that needed addressing, which you can see in the screenshots I took with my notes applied over top of the interface.
The “Before” state of the wallet app’s Homepage design
The “Add a Coin” screen in the “before” state
The Method
After completing an initial audit of the current state of the app, I hit the ground running implementing user experience best practices and style changes that would help the app be more accessible without interferring witht he experience. Through user feedback, education on blockchain technology, tons of iterations, and a lot of help from the rest of the organization, we were able to polish the style and the journey of the app. I had the pleasure of working with two brilliant UX/UI interns at the time, Ellen and Gloria, who had taken a previously designed concept sample and pushed it all the way to the well-rounded app the wallet became. Working with the team I was able to create and maintain a design library, create new interactions, screens, flows, and styles for the UW app.
A look at the audit I made when first shown the prototype for the Ethos app. This served as the to-do list of UX work to be done once I was officially onboarded.
The Result
While dodging technical limitations, crazy deadlines, and strange community requests, the members of the product team were able to launch the v1.0 of the Ethos Universal Wallet. The whole team was able to meet in person for the first time at the East Coast Summit. There we were able to explain our processes, methods, and tools to our community and to the world. It was a great experience to be able to meet and work with so many talented and passionate individuals working on such an ambitious project.
A snapshot of the design library I implemented. I utilized Brad Frost’s Atomic Design Methodology to create consistency and clarity for the Ethos Wallet app.
Thousands of downloads upon initial launch (iOS)
88% success rate in buying and selling tokens
4 out of 5 stars in the iOS app store
Bonus Content
While trying to successfully launch the app, the whole company met with customers to talk about the products we were building and answer their questions. Of course the product team, including myself, were asked to speak and I took the stage with my colleagues! It was a crazy experience to be on a panel and be livestreamed to YouTube, and I will never forget it!