OKU TRADE
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Role
Senior Product Designer.
Research, strategy, visual design, and team management
Duration
18 Months
Jan 2024 – May 2025
Team
3 designers (managed)
Product Managers
Engineering (full-stack), Founders
Marketing
Industry
Cryptocurrency
The problem
Users were landing, getting confused, and leaving before making a single trade
The Solution
Clarity and credibility drove the growth numbers but the real outcome was retention.
The Outcome
+400%
Trading volume growth YoY — following the redesign launch
+350%
Organic user growth YoY across the 18-month engagement
+950k
User trades completed on the redesigned platform
About OKU
OKU Trade is the most powerful way to trade across 30+ blockchains chain but no one knew how to use it.
OKU Trade is a zero-fee DEX aggregator layered on top of Uniswap’s liquidity engine. It was technically superior to most alternatives deeper data, limit orders, real-time analytics but the product was being built by engineers for engineers. The UX assumed users understood on-chain mechanics, gas estimation, and liquidity routing. Most didn't.
The business model depended on trading volume. Every abandoned transaction was direct revenue loss and every confused user who left became a negative signal in a space where trust is already fragile.
The Problem
Users were landing on Oku trade, getting confused, and leaving before making a single transaction.
Despite strong inbound traffic, the swap completion rate was poor. The platform's primary action initiating a token swap was buried beneath charts, analytics panels, and DeFi-native terminology that most retail users didn't have the mental model to decode.
The core tension: OKU's power users loved the data density. But that same density was the reason new users couldn't find the front door. We needed to serve both without stripping the product of what made it valuable.
My Role & Ownership
I worked cross functionally but led this end-to-end from research and strategy through to managing the team shipping the product
I conductedresearch, scoped features, designed systems, managed two designers, collaborated directly with the co-founders on product direction, and partnered with engineering on delivery. I also owned all marketing design output during this period.
Research
I ran lean research under real timeline pressure and focused on where the breakdown actually happened.
With no dedicated UXR, I sourced content from: support ticket analysis (50+ tickets), five user interviews (mix of DeFi newcomers and intermediate crypto users), and internal team interviews with five OKU members including engineers who'd observed user behaviour in community channels.
This wasn't confusion about where to click it was a complete absence of feedback, confirmation, and proof of action. In a space where users are moving real money, that ambiguity is terminal.
Reframe
This wasn't a navigation problem. It was a trust problem.
How do we make users feel confident that their money moved and why it moved that way?
That reframe changed everything. Better navigation would increase discoverability. But what would make someone actually complete the trade and come back?
Proof.
Receipt level clarity on what happened, what it cost, and what to expect next. In crypto, trust isn't assumed. It has to be designed.
I also identified a second, compounding problem: the brand itself was creating skepticism. The UI felt inconsistent visual language, not following AA, no clear identity, design that looked like it was built by engineers. In a space full of scam sites, visual credibility is not cosmetic. It's a conversion signal.
Phase 1 : Swap Flow Redesign
I simplified the swap page around a single principle: the user should never have to guess.
The original page presented charts, data, fee tiers, and liquidity depth alongside the swap widget. All valuable but visually equivalent, which meant nothing had hierarchy.
I ran a hierarchy audit and restructured the page so the swap action was the unambiguous primary call-to-action, with data available on demand rather than forced upfront.
Before
After
Surface swap first.
Data panels collapse until the user has submitted intent. Experts can expand; newcomers aren't overwhelmed.
Phase 2 : Brand & Product Identity
I persuaded the founders to expand scope after research showed visual inconsistency was actively suppressing trust.
This wasn't in my original brief. But 76% users in interviews mentioned the product "looked like it could be a scam" or that it "felt unfinished."
In DeFi, visual quality is credibility.
76%
Did not trust the website as it felt like a “scam”
The rebrand centred on 3 principles I discovered from research: Trust, Clarity, Gamification
I led the full creative direction and produced the new system, including the social media and marketing output used for growth.
Systems Thinking
30+ features and 450+ components all built for scale in one design system
This scale was only possible because I built a design system in parallel. Without it, every new feature would have required renegotiating component decisions with engineering. With it, new pages could be assembled in hours rather than days and developer handoffs became predictable.
I also built the QA process: ticket templates, red-line specs, PRD’s, and started using Figma Make to push code live. This reduced back and forth cycles with engineering significantly and meant we could hit tight deadlines without compromising implementation quality.
Design System
Design variable , swap UI, data tables, dashboards, notification states, 8 breakpoint system, chart overlays & optimizing for AA
Gamification
With the redesign came a mascot and a gamified experience this allowed for the brand to have personality
QA Infrastructure
Drafted PRDs, templates, redline exports, and handoff standards that cut revision cycles
AI Integration
Integrated Figma make into our design system, pushed code to a json file, created prototypes to speed up process for engineering
Design Result
Oku's rebrand to create trust.
Impact
The Outcome
The volume growth was the headline but what it reflected was users completing flows they previously abandoned, returning for repeat trades, and the brand gaining enough credibility to attract word-of-mouth in DeFi communities.
The support ticket volume around transaction confusion also dropped meaningfully following the confirmation screen launch.
Key Learnings
01
Start with the trust audit, not the usability audit
I spent the first few weeks thinking about navigation and hierarchy before I fully understood that the real friction was psychological. In a high-stakes financial context, perceived safety precedes usability.
02
Design systems are leverage build them earlier than feels necessary
I spent the first few weeks thinking about navigation and hierarchy before I fully understood that the real friction was psychological. In a high-stakes financial context, perceived safety precedes usability.
03
Quantify the case for scope expansion before making it
I persuaded the founders on the rebrand with qualitative user quotes. It worked, but I'd now pair that with a clearer business case — what percentage of churn might be attributable to brand distrust, and what's the value of recovering it.
