Designing NAGA's fintech ecosystem from scratch to $600M valuat…

My contribution

Product design Market analysis User experience Prototyping

The team

1 × Product designer 2 × Project manager 8 × Developers 3 × QA Engineer

Year

2018

As a product designer at NAGA from May 2018 to January 2022, I was part of an exciting journey that saw the company evolve from a mobile social trading app called SwipeStox to a comprehensive trading platform with its own cryptocurrency. During this time, I played a key role in shaping the user experience and interface design of NAGA's products, contributing to the company's growth from $0 to a $600 million valuation.

SwipeStox, our initial product, was designed as a "Tinder for trading," allowing users to swipe through and copy trades from other users. However, we quickly identified a major issue: users were hesitant to blindly copy trades without sufficient information about the trade or the trader. This led to a pattern of constant left-swiping, ultimately resulting in decreased user engagement and retention.

As we evolved into NAGA, we faced new challenges. The rapidly growing cryptocurrency market in 2020-2021 presented both an opportunity and a challenge: how could we integrate crypto trading and wallet features seamlessly into our platform while ensuring security and user-friendliness?

We made NAGA Trader, a new trading platform that fixed SwipeStox's problems and added new features. It has a live ranking board, detailed trader info, flexible copy trading, a social community, and built-in crypto trading with NAGA Wallet and NAGA Coin.

Monthly active users within the first 6 months of launch

Monthly trading volume growth by the end of 2021.

30-day retention rate improvement after the redesign

Increase in new user signups after launching Wallet

NGC reached a market cap of $120 million at its peak.

Our primary goals for the new NAGA platform were

🤝 Trust-Centric Social Trading Retain the core concept of social trading while addressing the trust issues present in SwipeStox

🎓 All-Inclusive Trading Hub Create a more comprehensive trading platform that caters to both novice and experienced traders

🌐 Vibrant Trader Community Build a strong community of traders to foster engagement and knowledge sharing

💎 Crypto Integration & Token Launch Develop a secure, user-friendly crypto wallet that integrates smoothly with our existing trading features.

To guide our design process, we developed three user personas that represent key segments of our audience.

We conducted in-depth interviews with 50 users, ranging from novice traders to experienced professionals. We also had a big Telegram group where we would collect feecbak. Our key findings included:

I'm interested in trading, but I feel lost when I look at all these charts and numbers. I wish there was a way to learn from successful traders without risking all my savings.

Emily, Novice trader (Aria persona)

I've been trading for years, and I'm good at it. I'd love a platform where I can showcase my skills and maybe even earn some extra income by sharing my strategies

Tom, Experienced Trader (Edwin persona)

I'm frustrated with having to use multiple platforms for trading stocks and crypto. NAGA is perfect at doing both of these

Aaron, Crypto Enthusiast (Michael persona)

These quotes highlighted the diverse needs of our user base and informed our design decisions for the NAGA Trader platform. We focused on creating a solution that would address the educational needs of novice traders, provide advanced tools for experienced traders, integrate cryptocurrency trading seamlessly, and have a transparent and engaging community for all users.

To better understand how different types of users interact with the NAGA platform, we conducted a user journey mapping. This process helped us identify key touchpoints, pain points, and opportunities for improvement across the user experience.

To understand how people use NAGA, we made user journey maps. This showed us important steps, problems users face, and ways to make things better. We made maps for three main user types: new traders, experienced traders, and crypto fans. Each map shows seven steps from finding NAGA to using it regularly.

The user journeys showed us that while NAGA offers many features, we needed to make the platform easier to use for different types of traders. We found that we should:

🌱 Make things simpler for new traders ⚡ Speed up processes for experienced traders 🔗 Add more features for crypto traders

By mapping out these user journeys, we really understood the problems our users faced. This helped us a lot in making the platform better. We kept working on improving NAGA, always focusing on fixing the issues we found and making our users happier. Every time we learned something new about our users, we used that knowledge to make NAGA even better.

Our deep UX research, looking at user types, journeys, and testing, gave us useful insights that helped guide our design choices.

🚀 Personalized onboarding: Create a welcome process that fits each user's trading skills and interests. This includes both regular trading and crypto

🧭 Improved Navigation: Make the main menu simpler. Organize information better so users can find what they need quickly

🔍 Enhanced Copy trading: Help new users choose traders to copy. Show clear info on how well traders perform and what risks there are

🌐 Expanded Crypto Offerings: Add more types of cryptocurrencies. Include new features just for crypto trading

🔒 Wallet Security: Make the crypto wallet very secure. Keep it easy to use at the same time

💬 Social Engagement: Improve the social parts of the platform. Help users build a community where they can share knowledge. Include groups for talking about crypto

Based on our research and goals, we embarked on a four-year journey of continuous improvement and expansion. From 2018 to 2022, we gradually transformed NAGA from a simple app into a comprehensive suite of financial products. This evolution wasn't a one-time overhaul, but a process of constant refinement and addition of new features and products. Here's how our solution evolved over time:

We started by improving the core trading platform, constantly adding new features and refining the user experience based on user feedback and market trends. The screen below is older implementation and it shows the evolution of the platform, especially simplifying navigation

As cryptocurrency gained popularity, we developed and integrated a secure, user-friendly crypto wallet. We regularly updated it to support more currencies and improve security features.

Throughout this journey, our approach was always user-centered and data-driven. We regularly conducted user research, analyzed platform metrics, and gathered feedback to inform each improvement and new feature. This allowed us to address user needs as they evolved and adapt to changing market conditions.

As a product designer, my role in this ongoing process was to ensure that each new feature and improvement aligned with user needs and overall business goals. I worked closely with various teams to maintain a cohesive user experience across all our products, even as we rapidly expanded our offerings.

This four-year evolution of NAGA showcases the power of continuous improvement and user-centered design in the fast-paced fintech industry. By constantly adapting and enhancing our products, we were able to transform NAGA from a simple trading app into a comprehensive financial ecosystem.

The success of this approach was evident in NAGA's growth from a startup to a company valued at $600 million. The gradual introduction and refinement of features like NAGA Coin and our crypto trading tools played a significant role in this success, with NAGA Coin reaching a market cap of over $120 million at its peak.