Coinbase Simple Trade

I led a redesign of the core trading experience (buy, sell, convert) in the Coinbase app. This project entailed extensive cross-functional communication to account for existing, newly released, and future functionality intended for these core flows. This project took around 5 months and was worked on by 3 designers in total.

Duration: 5 months

Role: Lead Product Designer

Team: Myself, 1 product designer, 1 visual designer, 1 UX researcher

Problem

We started with a design that had served Coinbase well over the years but was beginning to reach its limit with the addition of new features like order types, wallet selection, and decentralized trading. We also noticed a number of design discrepancies between different trade-related experiences in the app as shown by the image.

Goal of redesign

Create an extensible system of components that could flex across any trade context — buy, sell, convert, and in the future, transfers, decentralized trade, and beyond.

Cross-functional requirements

The Simple Trade flow is the core experience in the Coinbase app. For this reason, this project required rigorous cross-functional communication and consensus. Here is an example of one piece of documentation where I maintained a master list of functionality based on the requirements from all teams touching simple trade (Business banking, International, Web3, Growth teams, etc.)

Wireframing

To achieve our goal of using one set of extensible components for all trading contexts within Coinbase, we had to pressure test all designs across buying, selling, and converting crypto. These mocks represent a few iterations of the convert screens.

Research and user testing

Most of the research insights that we used to inform this work were pre-existing. As already mentioned, the core trade flow is a feature that touches a lot of other areas in the app, and therefore, we had no trouble gathering meaningful and actionable insights from various teams across Coinbase. We also conducted a number of rounds of usability sessions to pressure test new designs.