NFT Marketplace
Browser-based B2C trading platform focusing on NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to provide a holistic investment experience for Bitpanda users.
Design unavailable due to an NDA
My Role
- Lead UX Designer
The Team
- 2 x UX Designer
- 1 x PM
- 1 x Technical PM
My Contribution
- Whitepaper and competitor research
- User interviews and affinity mapping
- User journey mapping
- Feature prioritization (with PM)
- Wireframing and prototyping
- UI design
- Internal Usability Testing
Tools Used
- Miro
- Figma
- UserTesting.com
Project Span
- Feb 2022 - May 2022
- 0.5 years
Process
Research
- User survey
- User interviews
- Competitor analysis
- Whitepaper research
Define
- Affinity mapping
- User stories
- Feature prioritization
- Information Architecture
Ideate
- Journey mapping
- Wireframing
Build
- Prototyping
Verify
- Internal usability testing
Problem
Inability to provide a holistic trading experience with missing digital asset classes.
Bitpanda's current broker platform(s) does not offer non-fungible token (NFT) trading. This means that investors need to set up an account with a third-party platform to trade NFTs. Thus, the investor's portfolio cannot live in only one platform, in case the user would like to diversify their assets with NFTs.
How Might We include NFTs in Bitpanda's current trading experience, while offering a holistic investing platform?
Solution
An all-in-one trading platform, where users can trade all digital assets.
Include NFTs to the Bitpanda investment ecosystem, and enable and empower the users to start trading immediately, without having to set up a separate account or wallet. Due to an NDA and the project not being publicly available, I cannot include the final designs in this project.
Early stages and research
While closely collaborating with the project managers and development team, it was evident that due to the complex technical background of NFTs, they could not be added to the existing broker platform. Therefore, the approach had to be setting up a separate web application that can be accessed by existing and new Bitpanda customers without having to go through a separate onboarding or KYC process.
Regarding the user-centricity of the process, there had been a quantitative user survey that showed that over 60% of existing Bitpanda users would have an interest in trading NFTs.
I wanted to find out more about the NFT traders, which led me to conduct qualitative user interviews, first internally with Bitpanda employees, and then externally via UserTesting.com. For the external interviews I focused on diversifying the sample set by including more female traders, as well as people from different countries and with lower levels of technical knowledge.
Research findings
Tech savvy users care most about the utility of the NFT
Users with higher levels of technical knowledge are most interested in the utility behind the NFT. They want to know immediately what else (other than an image) am I getting for my investment (e.g. raffle participation, entrance to the metaverse, etc.)
Purchasing an NFT is not a quick process
Most users spoke about the amount of preparation and research that they put into the process across various platforms before buying the NFT. They want to check the project's roadmap, participate in Discord channels, google the project and artists, and more. All of this is very time-consuming.
Users look to the platform to guide them with legitimacy
There are an infinite amount of NFTs available, which also include a lot of opportunities for the user to get scammed. Most users seek out projects, artists, and NFTs with a "verified" symbol to invest in the item with a greater sense of security and peace of mind.
Less tech savvy users are easily overwhelmed
NFT enthusiasts with lower levels of technical knowledge described their wallet setup, research, and first purchase as a process where they needed to seek support from people "smarter than them". This is also an opportunity for the platform to support and guide its users more while providing an elevated user experience.
In terms of the next steps on the research roadmap for this project, I had planned to create personas or behavioural patterns that could support us with the user-centric practices. I had started to notice patterns that could be defined into 3 separate groups based on level of expertise with NFTs.
MVP
Feature prioritization and user journey mapping of the MVP relied heavily on the competitor analysis, where the platform would offer the key foundational functionality the users are expecting to see from any NFT marketplace. The research findings were put into an affinity map and translated into opportunities that would support and elevate our NFT platform and stand out from the rest.
How might we
structure our information architecture to support the user in their decision-making process when considering investing into an NFT
How might we
enable our users to get the most out of the utilities that come with an NFT
How might we
verify legitimate NFT projects so that users can securely invest with a sense of ease
How might we
take care of overwhelming parts (e.g. setting up a wallet) of the NFT buying process so that our user can get investing quicker
Design ideation and validation
After we had done the feature prioritization, user journey mapping, and user stories, the process moved into ideation where we collectively listed the design deliverables with the team. We checked in daily with the PM to align on the progress and remove possible blockers. I prepared wireframes, which received stakeholder feedback and acted as the base for the development team to start building the platform.
Wireframes were then advanced into high-fidelity designs and prototypes, which were shared with the development team, as well as used for internal usability testing. In less than a month I was able to design a full platform from scratch. Usability testing focused on validating key concepts that were different on our platform compared to other NFT marketplaces. One of them was a slightly more complicated wallet concept, compared to other platforms.
Outcome
Due to the business focus shifting to a different direction, the project was put on hold until further notice. I cherish the experience and everything I learned that came with working on such a high-stakes project. I also gained the knowledge to discuss all things NFT on any occasion.
Learnings
User needs differ a lot based on experience
I was surprised to learn how there was such a high contrast between newbies and more experienced NFT investors when it comes to what are the main things they are looking for when deciding to buy an NFT. The amount of due diligence they need to do before the purchase is similar, while what are the most important facts differ a lot.
(Very) Competitive and fast-paced market
I learned that OpenSea is the most trusted and preferred NFT marketplace. It's preferred due to a clean simple design, great filtering, and navigation options, plus having aggregated extra information (e.g. links to Discord, etc.) for any NFT project. OpenSea has had years to validate and better its approach, while new NFT platforms need to hit the ground running. I saw Coinbase's NFT platform receive a lot of negative feedback, as the beta was launched and opened to the public. It showed me how as a new NFT marketplace, your MVP needs to immediately show that you are better than all of the existing options out there, including OpenSea because losing the interest and trust of your potential customer can take just a moment.