How to design a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) app for everyday people
What are we solving with DeFi?
In most countries today, the inflation rate is much higher than the traditional savings yield rate. What that means is even if you invest your excess money in a savings account, your purchasing power depreciates day by day.
Especially in high inflation rates countries (like Turkey, Argentina, even Europe) people have very limited options:
Use time deposit accounts in the local currency and get a 20–30% interest rate
Convert the local currency to USD to hedge against inflation
However, neither of these options protects your money against inflation. In option #1, inflation (Turkey’s is 64%) is much higher than the interest rates (20–30%), so your money depreciates. In option #2, banks charge 3–4% for conversion, plus they have very low-interest rates for USD (0–1%). What is more and what most users are not aware of is inflation for USD is around 6.5%, which again means that you lose money.
What’s worse is many financial institutions can actually pay a higher yield rate but they choose not to because one they have expensive and outdated infrastructures with many intermediaries to pay, inefficient processes and costly branch networks, and two they know that they can just get away with it.
We have built Cenoa Wallet, a high-yield savings account that helps you grow and protect your USD against high inflation and financial downturn. Cenoa uses modern and efficient technologies like blockchain and decentralized finance platforms (also known as open finance, or peer-to-peer finance). They cut out inefficient procedures, banks and other intermediaries as well as their fees in to provide users with the maximum interest rates.
How did we approach designing for everyday people?
We approached designing for Cenoa Wallet like any other project, first by researching to see what’s out there. Most solutions looked like they were built by crypto natives for crypto natives. What we mean by that is most apps were using cryptic crypto jargon like seed phrase, gas fee, coin, token, guardians, etc. they were not approachable and hard to use. Even we tech-savvy consumers had a hard time onboarding and trusting these services.
However, we wanted Cenoa to be for everyday people, for crypto natives as well as for what we call crypto naives.
We conducted user research to understand user doubts and problems when using Cenoa Wallet. The most critical questions users had when onboarding to Cenoa were:
What is Cenoa’s advantage over banks? Users wanted to understand Cenoa’s clear value proposition over traditional financial solutions. There’s a high switching cost for users, so the upside needs to be very high for most users.
How can I trust Cenoa with my money? Users hear about NFT and crypto scams online, they are wary about new technologies and trusting startups with their money. Users want to double check to see Cenoa is a legitimate business and their money is secure.
Is Cenoa Wallet easy to use for a non-crypto user? Most users use mobile banking solutions and some use common crypto apps like Coinbase, they wanted the experience to be familiar.
What are the design principles we followed?
To overcome the above challenges we identified, we defined the following 5 design principles while designing the Cenoa Wallet:
Demonstrate value proposition by comparing Cenoa to average bank gains
Motivate users to invest by making financial gains interesting and tangible
Earn user trust with full information transparency
Simplify UX by providing a familiar mobile banking experience
Provide step-by-step guidance when blockchain complexity can’t be hidden
Let’s go over them one by one.
Demonstrate value proposition by comparing Cenoa to average bank gains
Our goal was to incentivize users to invest and forget about the money they deposit in Cenoa, because compound interest allows their savings to grow faster over time. In order to help users visualize their gains over a long timeframe, we provided them with a chart on the homepage that shows the growth of their money with Cenoa over a 1/3/5/15/30-year timeframe and it’s compared to an average banking yield.
2. Motivate users to invest by making financial gains interesting and tangible
Our hypothesis was as users see their money safely grow with Cenoa, they would be interested in depositing even more money. We looked for ways to motivate users to invest more and keep their money in their wallets. We created a module to celebrate and visualize their success by showing them what they could do with their earned money, as well as what they could do in a 6m/1y timeframe if they keep investing.
3. Earn user trust with full information transparency
When users download the app, we intend for them to find answers to their critical questions about Cenoa to help them trust the service with their money. We wanted this information to be discovered and consumed easily, so we created a story-like format for common questions like What is Cenoa? How can Cenoa provide a high yield? Who is the team behind Cenoa?
4. Simplify UX by providing a familiar mobile banking experience
Most competitor products use hard to understand crypto jargon like gas fees, tokens, seed phrases, etc. which alienates everyday users. We set out to avoid any kind of blockchain jargon and crypto terminology and instead designed an experience that’s similar to a regular mobile banking experience. Instead of a wallet, we have a savings account, users can deposit or withdraw their money like they’re used to, and any kind of fees are handled in the background for them. In the UI, instead of displaying their money as cryptocurrency, it’s displayed as USD — a currency they’re already familiar with.
5. Provide step-by-step guidance when blockchain complexity can’t be hidden
The biggest complexity in the deposit flow is our need to use a partner company to move money from the user’s bank to the blockchain. The partner company wants users to create an account during the flow, which is unexpected and confusing to users. To overcome this complexity, we provided users with step-by-step guidance on what to expect during the deposit flow and why they should trust our partner.
Do these principles resonate? What has been your experience designing for DeFi?
If you’re thinking about designing a DeFi application let’s work together. Studio Pinto specializes in mobile product design. We help companies of all sizes launch a new product, feature, or capability or radically improve an existing solution. We work closely together to understand user needs, and business goals, and define and align on a strategy to design usable and beautiful products.
Get early access for Cenoa Wallet.
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