The document outlines a design proposal for a cross-platform cryptocurrency exchange aimed at beginners, focusing on simplifying the trading process. It addresses the lack of trust and knowledge about cryptocurrencies among non-professional traders, proposing features like an onboarding flow, educational content, and user-friendly interfaces. The research highlights key insights into user demographics, challenges with existing exchanges, and opportunities for creating a more accessible and informative experience in cryptocurrency trading.

1. Research and Design by Tatjana Zavadja
Cryptocurrency Insights and Exchange

2. The Brief
Cryptocurrency Insights and Exchange
Design a cross-platform product (desktop, mobile, etc.) that provides a simplified and centralized exchange,
the function of which being to make it easy for non-professional traders to understand, follow and trade numerous types of
cryptocurrencies.
Key features can include:
- an onboarding flow to explain cryptocurrencies,
- as well as the abilities to buy and sell,
- to manage your portfolio,
- and to offload to a wallet.

3. Concept
What is the business case?
People are curious about crypto and interest in it is growing, but they don’t trust it enough due to the lack of knowledge.
They don’t understand how it works and how safe it is for investments. They don’t know how long it will last.
What are we trying to achieve?
We need to help them learn and also gain trust as a relevant source of information. They need to feel confident to let us
help them invest their money and trade.
Who is the target audience, what are their needs?
Target audience are non-professional traders who first need to understand what cryptocurrency is, how to buy and trade,
keep the portfolio and use the wallet. They need an advisor to help them decide how to invest their money.

4. Quick Validation
“More and more people have been trying to
find out about Bitcoin, especially when its
price is quickly rising or falling and media
draws attention to it. The percentage of
searches for Bitcoin on Google peaked in
the first days of 2018 then fell below the
50% of average searches. Interest at the
moment is at the same levels as it was in
November 2017. “
Source:
https://www.tokens24.com/exclusive/crypto-excha
nges-insights-report-2018

5. Research
Hypothesis
- People would like to exchange crypto but they don’t know enough to start.
- They don’t trust that the system is safe.
- They don’t know where to begin.
- They don’t understand the terms used to explain crypto and blockchain.
- There are some issues with existing applications for exchange that could be solved.
Research
- Learn about crypto from The Coin Offering (website + podcast)
- Google Search - relevant articles + statistics
- Competition Research - learn and find competitive advantage
- Survey to validate the hypothesis - send Google Forms to the target audience (LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack groups)

6. Google Search - Term: Cryptocurrency
Most of the results show market data and don’t provide any kind of information. The first explanation of crypto is from
Wikipedia. It’s good for understanding the term in general, but still too complex for the fast overview.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency
The first guide was the 6th result on the first page of Google results, written two years ago and still popular, which means it
gives somewhat good explanation.
https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/
Investopedia gives a short explanation but with links to Quora at the end, which gives some relevance to the article.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cryptocurrency.asp
The conclusion is that there’s no enough information about crypto on the internet for the beginners who
first want to make basic understanding of it. All the information is complex to understand, it demands
time and devotion.

7. Competition Research
“Coinbase is amongst the leading apps for buying bitcoin. Due to the decreased price in bitcoin, litecoin, and ethereum the
amount of monthly visits has seen a sharp decrease.
Gdax seems to have experienced the least amount of decrease as many traders say this as an opportunity for day or week
trading with a highly fluctuating bitcoin price.
Binance continued to grow in January as well as an high demand for its token and an increase in price in many coins only
listed on its exchange.
In previous months there seemed to be a clear advantage to exchanges that have their token. Binance
and KuCoin are some examples.”
Source: https://www.tokens24.com/exclusive/crypto-exchanges-insights-report-2018-feb

8. Competition Analyses - Coinbase
“As many would expect, Coinbase is the leading exchange in monthly visits. Coinbase is the go-to exchange for most
entry-level users to acquire Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin using USD or EURO, both by credit card or Bank transfer. It offers
an easy to use, mobile app and the payment methods provided are preferred by many new traders as well as those looking
for a quick way to get funds on other exchanges and trade for new altcoins.”
Source: https://www.tokens24.com/exclusive/crypto-exchanges-insights-report-2018
“As the company grew, some customers took to sites like Reddit to complain about site outages and customer support.”
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/coinbase-prepares-for-a-monster-increase-in-trading.html

9. Competition Analyses - Coinbase
There is no onboarding or any kind of introduction. You first create your user profile and then whatever you try to do, the
application suggests that you complete your account so you can start buying. There are no explanations and features are
simplified. After the verification fails for the third time, there is no explanation why it happened and how to fix it.

10. Competition Analyses - Coinbase
All screens are really simplified but they don’t explain what you’re looking at. There’s no Margin Trading and Lending. But
one of the screens is reserved for Affiliate. CTA buttons “Buy” and “Sell” follow you across the screens but don’t provide
confidence to proceed with the purchase.

11. Competition Analyses - Coinbase App Store Reviews
On the App Store Coinbase has 610K reviews and holds 4.7 out of 5 grade, but when having searched in both categories of
“most helpful” and “most recent” reviews, users were quite angry, saying negative things about the experience and giving
low grades. Could it be that they just grew too fast?

12. Survey
I will only copy a few results from a survey which can be found on the link below. There were 42 responses and the question
can be found in the form. I will cover some of the most important results in the Conclusion section.
https://goo.gl/forms/3ORkZ0HBkJ6IjBCr1

13. 35.7% I don’t understand how it all works.
14.3% It’s just not my thing.
14.3% I am owning and exchanging.
9.5% I can’t decide which cryptocurrency to start with.

14. Key Takeaways
- There is no enough information about crypto on the internet for the beginners who first want to make basic
understanding of it. All the information is complex to understand, it demands time and devotion.
- Even current traders don’t do fundamental analysis before making an investment.
- Sometimes it takes a lot of time to confirm the account and, whenever new coins were introduced in exchanges,
many disabled new signups.
- The most complex thing to understand about crypto is its value and what it depends on, how it works, how it
converts to fiat currency, which crypto to start with, blockchain and if it’s just a bubble or it’s here to stay. Many
people call it gambling. For them it’s impossible to make any predictions and base investment in that.
- The main issue with current applications was the lack of local country support and not being transparent about
commissions until the very end of the process.

15. User Research
“Users from the US still account for the majority of traffic on most exchanges.”
“China’s attempts to entirely ban any type of cryptocurrency trading on domestic and foreign trading sites have had an
impact on web traffic from Chinese users.”
Source: https://www.tokens24.com/exclusive/crypto-exchanges-insights-report-2018-feb

16. The Profile of the Average User
At least 50% of all users have some sort of graduate or college education. With the 24-44 age group being the most active
user group.
The average user spends 10 minutes on apps that only trade the major coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin etc).
Examples of these apps include Coinbase and Gdax and up to triple the amount of time (28 minutes maximum average on
Bittrex) on exchanges with multiple cryptocurrencies.
Excluding outliers, users come back to the exchanges an average of 7-12 times a month depending on the exchange and an
average of 4-15 coins are viewed per visit.

17. Cryptocurrency Trading Demographics
The US, Japan, and China are major cryptocurrency markets. The average trader is male in their 20s and 30s, with females
and other extreme age groups entering the market.
Huobi: 70% of customers come from China, a lot from Japan, but not much from US. About 50% are 30-50, while the
average Chinese investor is 20-30. “The male to female customers 4 months ago was 4:1. Now it’s 3.3:1. So female
involvement is growing very fast”.
Kraken: Kraken exchange users are mostly male, with a recent influx in both really young (18 years old with little money)
and those around 70 years old. The average age in mid-30s more and tech-savvy with a bit of money to invest. “Lately we’ve
seen both of the extremes, teens and people 70+.”
Binance: “We are 270th globally on Alexa, and 70th in the USA. The US is our biggest market, average age 25-35, mostly
men.” The ones that are still not in crypto are the midlife crises ones, ages 50-60s.
Source: http://sneakyfalcon.com/insights-inside-biggest-cryptocurrency-exchanges/ - based on insights from the Blockchain Connect Conference in
San Francisco.

18. User Experience Insights
“New users often found themselves waiting for days on end for their accounts to be approved (wherever that was
necessary), and whenever new coins were introduced in exchanges it wasn’t uncommon for many to disable new signups
altogether (Bittrex, Binance).”
“Strangely enough, less than 20% of all traders actually look at blockchain info data before or after an exchange. This could
be interpreted as an overwhelming amount of investments made without fundamental analysis of the actual coins.”
“Some exchanges are only available in certain countries, while others make it easier to deposit or withdraw currencies from
specific territories. The registration requirements (ability to get approved), fees and account approval period are also
determining factors in the final selection of an exchange.”
Source: https://www.tokens24.com/exclusive/crypto-exchanges-insights-report-2018

19. Personas
This is now really hypothetical as it would require business goals from a client and more detailed market research from the
marketing department. My guess would be to tackle groups that show interest in crypto but are not trading. From the
research I know that already established exchanges are satisfying the needs of a major group of traders with similar
demographics, I am trying to find a niche market that is likely to become highly involved but it needs an application with
specific features for beginners. My personas are more market potential than the already established profitable market
group.
I am running out of time so I won’t make a full Persona description, just a preview.

20. Jane is a young (28 years old) layer. She is an early
adopter and interested in tech.
She is quite curious about crypto and blockchain.
She would like to know more but she’s afraid she
won’t understand technical explanations on the
web. She might even invest if only she had
somebody she can trust and ask for advice.
She doesn’t have that much time to conduct
detailed research but she has so many questions
and wants fast answers. She likes to learn by doing.
Matthew is a retired (67 years old) former accountant.
He listens about crypto every day from his grandson and became
interested to learn more about it but his grandson is too busy to explain
and advise him. He doesn’t take Matthew’s interest for serious.
But Matthew has some savings he would like to invest and he has time to
follow the market data and trade. He just needs to find some learning
material first so that he would understand. There are some terms his
grandson uses, like “portfolio” and “wallet”, for which he needs to find
good explanation.
He has his tablet and knows how to use Excel and browse the Internet.

21. Approach - Main Features
We have to gain trust from our users. They must perceive the application to be reliable, trustworthy and stable. We will
accomplish this by giving enough information about crypto and application usage with these features:
1) Learning material that is simple, does not contain terms people are not familiar with (or explains them) and uses a lot
of comparisons with familiar life situations. It is based on questions and short answers that are organized into a few
categories:
a) About Crypto
b) How to Use the App
c) Advanced Trading
d) Important Advice
2) Explanations on top of each page in the application that tells users what they are looking at and how to use that
information.
3) Question mark signs next to possibly confusing terms - by clicking on them the user gets more information about
that term or action.
4) Advice / notification whenever there is something important that the user should know. This is also useful for traders
who don’t do basic analysis before investing.

22. Advice is especially concentrated to most common issues users complain about in other services:
- Waiting time for account confirmation and doing that well in advance.
- Credit card limits that might restrict the exchange.
- Putting money to the wallet after the exchange for safety reasons.
The application focuses on learning and giving enough information to beginners in trading. They need to feel safe at all
times of the process and trust the application in order to decide to invest their money. The application should also be easy
to use and find information whenever needed.

23. Information Architecture
I made a scheme of onboarding process, all screens I would have in the beginning and information they contain. I don’t
have time to show it in an easier-to-scan way. But for the purposes of the presentation I hope the drawing will be enough to
explain the idea.

25. Sketches and Wireframes
I sketched some screens just to make sure I have the transitions and onboarding figured out. The application focuses on
beginners with crypto and their learning process but I needed to make sure that it is also useful for people who want to skip
the learning process or don’t digest it linearly but prefer learning by doing. For them I have provided explanations along the
way and an option to find out more.
I only had time to transfer few of the sketches into wireframes.

27. Part of the Onboarding Process
I wanted to keep lessons short and easy to digest so I used cards. For example, I followed Primer, a nice learning app from
Google. The last screen shows the important advice and CTA for users that choose to follow the advice.

28. Learning by Doing Concept
Every screen has an explanation what users can expect to find there. I tend to keep them short but there is “Tell me more”
button for those ones who need more information. After scrolling, this explanation disappears, leaving enough space for the
content. The question mark opens short explanations for the actions that might not be clear.

29. Testing and Feedback
In this phase I would conduct a user testing by showing potential users InVision prototype. I would also collect feedback
from some fellow designers. Unfortunately, there’s no time for this step.
During the actual usage of the application I would use Mixpanel to track what users are doing and what adjustments are to
be made. For example, I would:
- Log the events to keep track which questions users choose the most and then check if the provided explanation is
enough or they want to know more;
- Connect those events with transactions users do in the end; those who never made a transaction - which questions
were they reading most? Maybe they need more support and relevance.
- Do also qualitative research to confirm some hypothesis.
- Keep track of the most read advice and put it on top or mark it somehow.

30. Conclusion
I spent too much time on learning myself about crypto and blockchain. That left me less time for the actual design.
There was a lot of research because the topic is complex and hard to explain. I first had to learn what are the main
obstacles for people to dive into crypto.
I wish I were able to speak to developers as for many features that I came up with but
I wasn’t sure if they could be done and how it all connected to the rest of the functions.
The community was really helpful and I was lucky to have friends in crypto who were there to explain me more advanced
stuff. Because of the lack of time I decided not to include them in the application (such as margin trading and lending).
If I were to continue working on this, my next step would be to include some services that allow payments with crypto and
give the whole exchange more real life situations to make users feel comfortable with the new currencies and use them for
paying instead of the fiat currency.

31. Branding Criteria
These are just recommendations and if I were to work with UI or graphic designer, I would be open to suggestions and
working on polishing the app together. It is important to keep consistency across the screens, especially when presenting
different learning material (cards, advice, notifications…). The topic is complex enough and hard to digest that the interface
has to remain simple and the use of colors help to better explain the usage.
- I used a bright theme to present an open concept, wishing to be honest with users, to give them all the information
and convince them that we’re not hiding anything. Dark themes remind of secrecy and hacking, complex technology
that’s being developed somewhere behind the eyes of publicity. I wanted to remove that feeling.
- Red, green and yellow have to stay reserved for approval, mistake and notification. I chose blue for learning.
- Cards with learning material need to be different from advice and page explanations.

32. UI and Branding Samples
This is still work in progress and is not finished for production. I just wanted to give a direction that I had in mind when
working on UX but I would be open to suggestions.

33. Tracking Progress
My advice to a client would be to follow
growth of the competition applications and
measure how fast he reaches the
benchmark. Keeping track of the
application usage and user reviews
together with the competition analysis will
give a valuable insight how the application
can be improved for users and how to
generate more revenue.
Picture source:
https://www.tokens24.com/exclusive/crypto-excha
nges-insights-report-2018

34. Thank you!
Contact: tatjanazavadja@gmail.com
You may use this research but, please, credit my work.