Bitcoin dollar cost averaging using Bitnob DCA

By the first quarter of 2020, Bitcoin was spotlighted as a good investment. However, considering its volatility and uniqueness compared to other financial assets like stocks, shares, and bonds, people had many questions. I was part of this epic project to educate people about investing in Bitcoin using dollar cost averaging (DCA) and predicting their future investment using DCA against investing the lump sum way (all at once).

Our goal for the project was to allow people predict their investments in Bitcoin using dollar cost averaging compared to waiting for the "perfect time" to invest in the volatile asset. The direction was simple; put in a desired time, amount and frequency. Our ambitions were to create a timeless product that guide users along the DCA means while investing in a highly volatile asset with rapidly fluctuating price.

Our high-level goals were to:

Make it easy to use for everyone

Show people the gains they can get through DCA vs lump sum investing

Convert people to download and use the Bitnob app to invest in Bitcoin by dollar cost averaging.

Between July 2020 and October 2020, I collaborated with another designer to design and simplify the whole experience around the web app.

In addition, I worked closely with three developers. I stopped working on the product and just oversaw the implementation when designs were handed off to the developers.

The web app was launched in November 2020.

At the start of this project, I had little to no concrete understanding of Bitcoin, investing in the asset, and DCA-ing altogether. I made research to get to understand how things worked.

We combined multiple research methods to gain comprehensive insights:

User persona representing three main user groups: beginners. Intermediate investors and experienced traders.

Carried out competitive analysis of 4 similar DCA tools in the market.

Took surveys to know how crypto investors go about their investment strategies.

What I uncovered from my research got me surprised. The issues people faced were mainly out of ignorance of how Bitcoin worked and expecting to be the next millionaire after investing a few dollars. As the price of Bitcoin fluctuated, so did their fears about their investments.

Seeing a lot of people with these fears were financially stable and literate with a fair understanding of how the economic market and assets work, I then thought about how hand and overwhelming it would be for the less-literate and financially stable people wanting to invest and get profit, which is the end goal of every investment.

Dollar-cost average is an investment strategy that proper periodic and timely acquisitions of a given amount of Bitcoin. This strategy prevents you from investing all your money at once.

Our design choices were driven by user research insights:

Creating a simple, familiar input field for amount and frequency to reduce cognitive load.

Implemented a visual timeline to help users understand their investment journey.

An interactive graph to show historical performance to build confidence in DCA-ing, while having a side-by-side comparison of DCA vs. lump sum investing to demonstrate value.

Added a glossary of terms accessible throughout the experience.

Bitcoin is highly volatile and requires a lot of research and understanding to invest. Bitnob DCA gives you the stress and time spent thinking of the best time to invest.

Bitnob DCA helps you calculate your investment gains when your dollar cost average against spending a lot of time waiting for the perfect time to invest and searching for how to gain in the long term.

After six months of launch, we reviewed the performance of the DCA calculator, and here are some impacts:

A 45% conversion rate to downloading the Bitnob App.

60% of converted users started their DCA journey through Bitnob.

50,000+ unique visitors in the first quarter of launch.

Working on this project made me realize the first and major thing that stood out for me, was "User Education is crucial to designing a product"; other key learnings from this project are:

Understanding the importance of simplifying complex financial concepts for various user literacy levels.

Starting my designs with limited knowledge of Bitcoin and DCA helped my approach to designing from a user's perspective.