Design Assignment

I would like to share my thoughts during the design assignment process provided by a Design Team during a hiring process for a startup in Brazil and what I did to solve in (6 days).

1. The challenge

The design assignment brings the challenge to make a solution for a fictitious cryptocurrencies venture. The target is young people (20 and 30 years old), but there’s no additional information to understand who I was designing. With just some pieces of information, I asked for people on my Linkedin network, to help me understand giving their thoughts about this subject. Around 40 people on Brazil scenario, that answered the survey and I got the following results (in Portuguese) — https://forms.gle/HMXSoBCgphH1L1MU6:

Some answers are clear that there’s no good understand how the cryptocurrencies work on the Brazilian market:

Answer: I do not trust. If investing in the normal currency market is already complicated, imagine this new one? I think the person needs to be very expert for this. And about the companies, it takes a lot of responsibility to move the money of others and the players do not seem to develop this confidence building very well.

Answer: Cryptocurrencies are a store of value, not an action of a company that you transform to earn from investment (return).

Answer: People need to understand that companies that promise revenue on top of their encryption often leave their customers on hand. Crypto is only in wallets.

Answer: Most currencies have long turnaround times, so they prove unviable as currencies, the faster ones don’t have market grip so they only lose value, no establishment will want to accept a currency that only loses value, so the concept of crypto as Even money doesn’t prove viable at this point … Because of this only speculation and money laundering remain firm in Crypto, this bubble should burst at some point.

2. Framing the problem

From the survey, I could understand better what people think about cryptocurrencies and I tried to provide a way to minimize the gap of information about this subject. So, I made an opportunity matrix to get a product vision and propose some ideas to test as a deliverable, the interface.

The matrix is divided into 4 blocks that show the threats & opportunity for short term and long term goals.

The evidence of the problem, at my viewpoint, was about the lack of information on how to invest and how to bring value to this way to invest.

1 — Lack of information about the investment (how to invest)
2 — Show benefits about the investment

I decided to focus on bring to solution

At this point, I started to create a solution, but I was not sure about it yet cause this market looks very complex and 7 days could be not enough to get more information. Even minimum, I got some information to start a sketch on app design.

3. The logo idea

As part of the challenge, a logo and name were required the assignment. So I started looking for what the market has of players and how I could create a clear and common name.
The list about studies for names:

• SafeBox;
• CoinBox;
• MyBox;
• MyCoinBox;
• CryptoWise;
• ValueCoin;
• Crypo;
• Cryptoing;
• Cryptobox;
• CryptoSave;
• BlockCoin;
• CryptoBlock;
• CoinMe;
• CryptoCoin;
• WaryCoin (available);
• WiseCoin;
• CoinFolio;
• CryptoBase;
• BeenCrypto;
• BeCoin;
• FolioVault (available);
• CoinChest (Chosen);
• DepositCoin (available);

I tried some draws to bring and the idea of the shape and I choose the yellow one cause it’s a mix between the C and ₿ shape. I liked this initial shape, but I could explore more to bring different ideas.

4. The app design

4.1 User Flow

As part of my process, I think that’s important to create a user flow. From the flow, I can understand how the user could use the app and how many screens the app could have. At this challenge, the initial user flow has 6 main screens, but I know that’s not a rule, cause the app can change sometimes during the design process.

The features that I would like to work, based on Opportunity Diagram and the Survey was:

• Folio: it will provide an overview of cryptocurrencies available and which is the best one to invest (to bring options)
• Planning: it will provide a way to save money with less risk as possible on short or long term investment (to bring safety)
• Learning: it will provide a way to learn more about cryptocurrencies available on the app and how to invest in them (to bring information)

I used the tool draw.io to create the following user flow:

It is very important for me to create a reference for any person that will use this document, can understand what’s the idea and how it represents.

4.2 Sketches / Wireframes

To bring to life the idea, I made on the paper the initial sketches of a wireframe. For me, sometimes, I need just to have a first view of what I want to do. I didn’t validate the wireframes with some user cause I would like to do that on a high fidelity prototype. Some screens below:

To create an emotional connection and left the interface more friendly, I made an illustration to try to explain the app idea: a wallet, a safe place to put money.

4.3 Sketches / Wireframes

To design the interface, I used the Adobe XD. The color approach was one point that I cared about. I would like to create a clean interface with the best contrast possible.

Login / Signup Screens

Only these initial screens have a dark blue background color. The idea is to show the focus to Sign Up as the primary action.

Folio

The choice of white for background comes from a study between black and white. I would like to preserve the contrast and the black sometimes looked overwhelming. Also, I needed to use the light green and left the contrast seems radioactive on principal action. On the black version, I used 4 colors (Light Green, Light Blue, Black, and White) and on white version 3 colors (White, Dark blue, Light Blue).

Low Risk to invest and High Risk to invest session is a category of information to let the user know wich the best option to invest.

All screens

The app has 19 screens that simulates the interaction and is based on the first 3 features: Folio, Saving and Learning.

5. Learnings

The challenge was a good opportunity to think about something new and exercise it. Cryptocurrencies are a very complex subject and I had a lot of difficulties identifying what I could make to reach the objective. The missing information or the time to get more information or try something new, shows what we can do with the resources available. For me it was a great experience and I enjoyed the result and the process. I would like to evolve the idea in a second moment gathering more information and testing the solution.

Prototype link: https://xd.adobe.com/view/a55d5bec-0d06-48cc-4c2f-72f094605793-d36c/