KSB Tech is a cryptocurrency exchange platform built for both beginner and advanced traders. Despite offering a genuinely solid product under the hood, the platform was losing users at critical touchpoints, during sign-up, while navigating the dashboard, and before completing a first trade.
I was brought in to lead a full redesign of the mobile app and web platform. The brief was clear: fix what's causing users to leave, and build a foundation that could support growth. The strategy was to address root-cause UX failures,not just apply a visual refresh.
User interviews, session recordings, and analytics review pointed to the same three failure modes — each compounding on the next, and together producing a high dropout rate among first-time users.
"Users weren't leaving because they didn't want to trade. They were leaving because they didn't feel safe enough to try."
01
Key actions required multiple taps to locate. Users couldn't predict where things were, so they gave up.
02
Unlabelled form fields and no sign-in alternatives created anxiety at the exact moment trust needed to be established.
03
Users couldn't see what happened to their money. No filtering, no status indicators, no clear portfolio view.
This wasn't a team handoff, I was the single design lead for the entire engagement. That meant making product calls, not just design calls. I:
Led competitive analysis across 6 crypto platforms to identify UX benchmarks and positioning gaps
Ran user interviews and synthesized findings into 3 core personas with distinct needs and risk tolerances
Defined and mapped user journeys for onboarding, active trading, and portfolio management
Created wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, and a full component system in Figma across mobile and web
Presented design rationale and trade-offs to stakeholders; iterated on designs based on engineering constraints
Collaborated directly with product and dev teams to ensure every design decision aligned with business objectives
The redesign addressed all three friction points through targeted changes to onboarding, navigation, trading, and the web platform. Every decision was grounded in a single principle: reduce perceived risk, and conversion follows.
Insight 01 — Onboarding & Authentication
The original sign-up flow front-loaded too much friction. Users faced unlabelled fields with no context, no clear progress indication, and no alternative to creating a new account from scratch. Anxiety at sign-up translates directly to drop-off.
The redesigned flow broke sign-up into progressive, digestible steps. Each field was given contextual microcopy explaining why the information was needed. Google and Apple sign-in were introduced as low-friction entry points, removing the biggest psychological barrier for new users entirely.
Insight 02 — Navigation & Transaction Visibility
Users were losing confidence in the platform because they couldn't track what was happening with their funds. An unclear navigation hierarchy meant key actions — buy, sell, withdraw — were buried behind multiple taps.
We flattened the navigation hierarchy and elevated primary trading actions to always-visible positions. A dedicated transaction history view was built with filtering, status indicators, and a clearer portfolio summary at the top. The principle was simple: visible = trustworthy.
Insight 03 — Trading Experience
New traders were intimidated by the existing trading interface; experienced traders felt constrained by it. The previous design tried to serve both audiences with one undifferentiated view — and succeeded for neither.
The solution was a dual-mode trading experience: a Quick Trade view for newcomers with plain-language market context and guided trade flows, and an expanded detail view for experienced users with real-time chart data, order book access, and advanced filters. One codebase, two modes — unlocking the platform for both audiences.
Web App Redesign
The web platform received a full information architecture overhaul informed by the same research insights. The priority was eliminating structural confusion — not adding visual complexity.
Key changes included:
Flattening the IA from 4 navigation levels to 2. Rewriting all menu labels using plain language validated with non-expert users. Adding inline help tooltips at every high-stakes decision point — deposits, withdrawals, identity verification. Introducing quick-action shortcuts for the three most common tasks (deposit, trade, withdraw) prominently on the dashboard.
The result was a platform that beginner and advanced users could navigate confidently — without a support ticket.
Website Redesign
The old website buried the value proposition under dense, undifferentiated text. There was no social proof, no clear CTA hierarchy, and no acknowledgment that the platform served two very different audiences: crypto newcomers and experienced traders.
The redesigned landing page led with a sharp headline and above-the-fold benefits. Team credibility and security credentials were surfaced prominently to build trust before users even scrolled. Two distinct CTAs — one for beginners, one for experienced traders — reduced decision paralysis and improved sign-up intent across both segments.
Outcomes & Validation
The clearest signal that a redesign worked isn't a metric. It's when users describe their experience using the exact words you were designing toward. These Play Store reviews, posted in April 2026, came back with the same themes: clarity, confidence, no confusion.
Learnings and Key Takeaways
Three things I now bring to every fintech engagement:
Users don't abandon fintech apps because they're confused, they abandon them because they don't feel safe. Every design decision on KSB Tech was ultimately about reducing perceived risk. Clarity and confidence are the same thing in fintech.
Making a complex system feel simple requires understanding every edge case and choosing deliberately what to hide, surface, or defer. The Quick Trade view took the most design iterations of anything on this project, because simple is hard.
The accessibility-driven decisions we made for new users, better labels, higher contrast, progressive disclosure , consistently got the highest praise from our most experienced users in testing. Designing for the edge makes the centre stronger.
