As the founding designer and sole design voice on the team, my mission was to contribute in whatever way would make the product better.
I inherited a product where every page looked different—inconsistent visual language across the interface. Through user feedback, I learned users left immediately because they wouldn't trust their money to a site that looked unfinished and outdated. In high-risk finance, visual chaos and generic aesthetics both signal danger.
I created design guidelines targeting savvy, action-oriented traders familiar with DeFi and seeking high-yield opportunities. The direction: bold, energetic, and trustworthy—matching their risk-taking mindset. This gave the team a foundation before touching any interface.
I identified critical, reused components in core trading flows and high-traffic pages, then built the design system around them. This delivered immediate impact where users needed it most.
❌ Before v.s. ✅ After
⚡️ Components that impact immediately
User feedback showed the redesign worked: the platform now felt legitimate and trustworthy enough to start trading. With this scalable design system in place, we grew from launch to $13.4M total value locked and 1M users within a year as features expanded.
Working with engineers revealed that not every component should be global—product complexity sometimes required local, context-specific solutions. Understanding the full product structure helped me decide when to standardize and when to adapt. That's when the design system delivered real value: scalable without becoming rigid.