CoinR4 is a personalized and localized blockchain news aggregator that organizes and highlights Crypto, NFTs, DeFi, and other events. I worked from the early stage of the app and was tasked to research and propose new features.
CHALLENGES
After we mapped out CR4’s business model and built the core of the app based on our hypotheses, we now have the opportunities to gain user feedback for the initial stage.
The opportunities to improve the MVP can include, but is not limited to:
Understand the target users and propose new features to suit their needs.
Understanding user experience (UX) on reading crypto news in general.
Improve UX on exploring and reading news in CR4.
Improve UX on gaining coin market insights in CR4.
GOALS AND MEASURE OF SUCCESS
From this research, we are looking to deliver key insights on the above questions as well as design recommendations for CR4 general experience that can drive traffic and retention rate.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
1. Crypto-related experience
Learn what medium users use to approach news and crypto community.
Understand users challenges while using those medium.
Understand what users care while finding news.
2. CR4 usability
How can we improve users relationship with product?
Understand user challenges when exploring news while using CR4.
Understand what users care and what challenges they face while checking coin market.
METHODOLOGY
We conducted three distinct research studies to gain the clearest understanding of user behavior:
Mass survey to understand the general usage of crypto-related app and user's behavior.
In-depth interview and usability testing of CR4 app to understand the pain points.
Secondary research to understand what the community discussed online, hence find the pain points.
We first used affinity maps to understand and group the answers, then used empathy map to summarize the answer and understand the general picture.
PERSONAS
We aim to personalize our app for each persona in the crypto industry. By comprehending their backgrounds, we seek to identify pain points and develop features that cater to their specific needs. From the aforementioned research, three primary personas were identified: the Newbie, the Tech Lover, and the Traditional Trader.
USER PAIN POINTS
By categorizing user pain points into different categories, we could comprehend what challenges we would be equipped to solve and those that might remain unresolved.
Product pain points:
Users have a hard time knowing the legitimacy of the source.
Users use many sources to cross check the news.
Process pain points:
Users cannot give their decisions on trading since there are many scam/fake news.
Users have a hard time understanding special terms, or terms in the language that they don't know.
Users have a hard time understanding the information since the news are long, or they don't have time to read.
Support pain points:
There is no way to measure the trustworthiness of a source.
STARTING THE DESIGN
After gaining a comprehensive understanding of our users, we prioritized focusing on these features for this release.
CR4 with a summary for news, a feature to search for the meaning of special terms, and a translation for global news to local language will enhance the news reading experience of the users.
CR4 with a clear information of the aggregated sources and recommended related news will help users cross check the legitimacy of the sources and the news.
CR4 with an aggregation of news, coin market insights, and community will create a super app - a global source of crypto/blockchain insights for users.
DESIGN
1. NEWS READING EXPERIENCE
A summary for news will help users take less time to gain the latest news.
A feature to search for the meaning of special terms while reading.
2. SOURCE LEGITIMACY
Show information of the source and the amount of followers to gain the user's trust.
Aggregate and recommend related news to help users cross check the information within the app.
3. A GLOBAL SOURCE OF INSIGHTS
Besides aggregating news, we introduced the feature "Signals" where users can gain insights from our own analysts for trading crypto.
Users can set target, directly buy/sell, chat with other people about these signals.
4. A DESIGN SYSTEM THAT WORKS FOR BOTH WEBSITE AND APP
Alongside developing new features, we established a design system for both the website and app, catering to desktop and mobile users, including options for both light and dark modes.
TAKEAWAY
OUTCOMES
After a month working on the new features, the app was ranked #1 in App Store in August (Check the image above ^).
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