Guiding the team to foster widespread participation in DeFi by breaking barriers and enhancing accessibility
UX Research
UI Design
Data Analysis
Design Leadership
Overview
Background
In the realm of decentralized finance (DeFi), our Earn feature emerged as a pioneering use case, expanding beyond self-custodying crypto assets. Initially integrated with Compound, Yearn.finance, and Aave Lending, DeFi Wallet's Earn capitalized on the flourishing DeFi summer. As the DeFi market expanded with new Layer 1 and Layer 2 chains, a myriad of DeFi opportunities surfaced, but complexity and user-hostility grew.
This user-hostility also affected our Earn feature. The rapid pace of integrating 200+ protocols in just 1.5 years led to a decline in overall UX. As the Product Design Manager, I guided the team in crafting a user-friendly DeFi aggregator, breaking barriers, and enhancing accessibility to empower users in navigating this dynamic ecosystem. This case study explores our journey, revolutionizing DeFi participation through improved user experience.
Goals
The DeFi Earn project aimed to revolutionize the user experience by understanding users' needs and simplifying complex DeFi interactions. We sought to create a seamless and intuitive aggregator, fostering familiarity and consistency across various DeFi protocols. The ultimate goal was to empower users with confidence, ease, and a deeper understanding of the dynamic DeFi ecosystem.
My Role
As a Product Design Manager, I oversaw design and research progress, provided direction, and aligned objectives with stakeholders, ensuring each function's involvement in creating an intuitive aggregator for users.
Time Frame
September 2022
This case study is condensing multiple projects within Q4 2022
Problem
Problem Space
The DeFi Earn feature encountered significant challenges due to our narrow focus on integrating protocols at the technical level, overlooking the crucial aspect of how users interacted with these integrations. As a result, the overall user experience suffered, hindering widespread adoption.
The complexity of the problem could be broken down into two distinct layers: Discovery and Management.
Discovery Layer
Users faced difficulties in discovering DeFi opportunities within the platform. The abundance of protocols and ever-expanding DeFi ecosystem made it overwhelming for users to identify suitable opportunities for yield farming, liquidity provision, and other DeFi activities. Navigating through numerous protocols and understanding their functionalities became a daunting task, leading to user frustration and disengagement.
Management Layer
Once users discovered relevant DeFi opportunities, managing their assets and activities posed another set of challenges. The intricacies of staking, unstaking, and managing liquidity pools often proved convoluted and time-consuming. Additionally, the lack of consistency in user flows across various protocols added to the confusion, making it difficult for users to confidently interact with different DeFi platforms.
These pain points collectively hindered user adoption, leaving potential DeFi participants discouraged from exploring the full potential of the DeFi Earn feature. Addressing these problems became imperative in our pursuit of creating a user-friendly DeFi aggregator, breaking down barriers, and enhancing accessibility to the dynamic world of decentralized finance.
Team Alignment
As the company was hiring with scale, not every new joiners know the fundamentals of blockchain, not to say DeFi. Before we start anything, I hosted an meeting to bring every team members who involve in this project to align on the position of our Earn.
Research
Objectives
Throughout the condensed version of multiple projects that took place at different times, several high-level research objectives remained consistent:
User Understanding: Gain deep insights into user behaviors, preferences, and pain points in DeFi Earn. Understand discovery and interaction patterns with DeFi protocols to inform design decisions.
Usability Evaluation: Assess UI/flows, analyze feedback, and data to enhance user experience in discovery and management.
Design Direction: Create a cohesive design approach, find ways to standardize interactions for familiarity and consistency across different user flows designed by various DeFi protocols.
Validation and Iteration: Test designs, gather feedback, and iterate for optimal solutions.
By pursuing these research objectives, we aimed to uncover meaningful insights and data-driven solutions that contributed to the transformative impact of the DeFi Earn feature, empowering users to participate confidently in the decentralized finance ecosystem.
Methodology
Throughout the process, we employed an explanatory sequential design, using a quant-qual sequence of research.
The combination of both methods allowed us to build on existing insights and assumptions about the problem space, leveraging our context in DeFi and data from the product. As the Product Design Manager, I closely collaborated with the researcher to align objectives with project goals and guide research directions effectively.
The quantitative analysis provided objective insights into user behavior and engagement through numerical data, while the qualitative research, such as interviews and usability testing, offered contextual understanding of user perspectives and pain points. Together, these methods ensured a comprehensive approach to enhancing the DeFi Earn feature's user experience.
Recruitment
Participants were sourced from opted-in emails, community channels, and Usertesting.com. Including existing users provided insights into their real-life experiences, while non-users' feedback highlighted barriers to engagement.
Key Insights
Across multiple studies, these are the key insights:
Strong Attraction to DeFi Earn: An impressive 74% of users actively utilize DeFi Wallet primarily because of the DeFi Earn feature. This notable percentage underscores the feature's significant appeal and its role in driving user adoption within the platform.
Transition from Crypto.com App's Earn: An interesting finding revealed that a considerable number of users migrated to DeFi Earn from Crypto.com App's Earn. The primary motivation behind this transition was the reduction in interest rates offered in Crypto.com App's Earn. This key insight underscores the importance of offering competitive interest rates to retain users and drive adoption.
Financial Motivation and Ease of Use: Users initially migrated to DeFi Wallet for financial reasons, attracted by the opportunity to earn through DeFi activities. However, they subsequently remained on the platform due to the seamless and user-friendly experience it offered. The ease of use within DeFi Wallet saved users time and effort, eliminating the need to navigate various dapps for transactions.
Importance of APY and Token Understanding: Users indicated that they would be inclined to stake more if they had a deeper understanding of the tokens involved. Nevertheless, the most critical factor influencing their staking decisions was the Annual Percentage Yield (APY). Higher APY rates were decisive in guiding users towards specific staking opportunities.
Opportunities for Enhanced UX: Users expressed that the DeFi Earn feature's user experience could be improved. They sought more guidance when interacting with liquidity pools, as navigating these aspects could be challenging. Additionally, the token-first approach on the discovery page, while token-centric, made it harder for users to find and interact with LP tokens.
These key insights provided valuable feedback on user preferences, pain points, and priorities. Armed with this understanding, we could focus on enhancing the user experience, optimizing the staking process, and providing clearer guidance to elevate the DeFi Earn feature's overall usability and attractiveness to users.
Ideation
Screenshots highlight efforts to provide more than just APY information. Explore details on staked liquidity and token interactions with liquidity pools, offering users a nuanced view of their DeFi choices.
Screenshots reveal organization by token, protocol, with vital details like network and provided APYs—streamlining DeFi exploration for users.
Screenshot illustrates a sense of walkthrough for intricate tasks like staking to a liquidity pool, ensuring users navigate challenging task from adding liquidity, to actually staking LP token for yield farming.
Testing
Solution
Outcome
Learnings
Conclusion
In conclusion, our journey has evolved the DeFi Earn feature. Improved UI designs offer a comprehensive view. Strategic categorization enhances exploration, simplified guides aid complex interactions.
This ongoing process reflects our commitment to user-centric, accessible DeFi. While not all designs could be executed due to resourcing constraints, my team earnestly explored various ideas to make DeFi more approachable, acknowledging the challenges and persevering in our quest for simplicity.
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