G-Coin offers a seamless experience to save, send, spend, and redeem gold in real-time, 24/7. Blockchain technology and smart contract platform traces responsibly sourced gold from a mine to a refinery and to a vault, and then digitizes this gold into secure G-Coin tokens for trading around the world.
The G-Coin App can be downloaded from Apple Store and Google Play
Problem
Acquiring new users is one of the keys to success. As a regulated brand-new company, G-Coin is required to identify new customers and verified their identity during the registration process. That is why G-Coin needs to have it seamless, with a high-security level and low risk.
My Role: As a team member of three designers, I participated in all stages of product development, conducting research and usability testing, creating user flows, prototypes, and most of the UI.
New technology
Blockchain is an evolving technology. Design decisions should be made with an understanding of the principles which blockchain is built on, and how people perceive it.
Challenges
Heavily regulated industry
Building a financial application needs to comply with strict requirements. Our design mission is to find the sweet spot where user needs, business goals, and regulatory requirements live in peace and harmony.
Uncharted territory
While designing something new, we are often forced to make somewhat informed assumptions that need to be tested and verified later.
Process
Our UX Design team started by conducting research and my task was to analyze competitors. I went through the registration processes of a few popular fintech applications, such as Coinbase, Robinhood, Glint, Blockchain, and Crypto.com.
What I have learned
Most of the applications desire to streamline registration as much as possible. However, fintech apps turn out to be those exceptions where friction can benefit the user experience. That can reduce user errors and thus relieve headaches for both users and providers!
Therefore, instead of simplifying registration, our design team aimed to make the inevitably long process as smooth as possible.
User flow as a set of fractions
There might be a few options to choose from on the mobile page. So, to create an initial user flow, I depicted each page as a fraction, where:
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The numerator is what users see
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The denominator is what they do, and there can be more than one action over there
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An arrow points out what users see next
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Positive outcomes and actions are indicated in green, negative ones are in red
That approach worked well to help stakeholders easily understand the flow and leave comments.
Never leave our user alone
If users get stuck or have questions in any step while registering, our support team is always there to help.
I created a small button with a question mark that accompanies the CTA-button on each screen, where necessary, throughout the registration. By clicking on it, the user gets to the support center page with a chat.
Solution
Every little detail counts. When we design the registration, we have to think about how we can directly enhance the user experience.
Security vs Friction
To ensure account security, it is required a 2-factor authentication (2FA) in the app. New users must activate 2FA, but for recurring users we provide the option to skip this step when logging in, along with using Touch ID instead of entering user credentials.
It gives them some peace of mind when needed. Security is always a priority in blockchain and digital currency.
Why are we asking for this?
Our users should always know why we ask their personal information such as a phone number or SSN. By giving a detailed explanation, we aim to build trust with our users.
More technology
One of the ways to speed up the registration process is by using a barcode reader or OCR technology (optical character recognition). The user does not need to fill in all the fields manually. Just take a photo of the driver's license and Voilà!
Iteration
After launching the MVP, metrics revealed a significant percentage of drop-offs right after people downloaded the app. The reason was that visitors just merely failed to find the register button on the Login page or spent an unnecessarily long time searching for it.
The page looked overloaded. Besides, the register button had the same font size and color as the other text.
I suggested splitting the initial login page into two pages:
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a welcome page with the prominent "Create" button for the first-time visitors
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a login page for the registered users
Simultaneous implementation of these changes can be risky. A/B testing was supposed to help find out how the new design affected the conversion.
Closing thoughts
When designing a user interface for financial services, achieving simplicity and clarity is a high priority. Our design team worked closely with the product and engineering teams to understand all the complexities of the fintech application. To make it truly useful, we put so much effort to:
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Balance user goals and business requirements
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Design with keeping the app scalability in mind
In addition, I would add an emotional connection with customers to the design. Studies suggest that creating an engaging digital experience evoking an emotional response from users can enhance their perceptions, trust, and loyalty – one of the biggest challenges facing financial service providers today.
The registration journey for the G-Coin mobile app
