Decred
My contributions to the project began with winning the first product design RFP, then leading the team at EETER.co as a primary design contractor, later overseeing the project's design domain. I co-authored the project's identity, worked on various brand and marketing projects, expanded the design domain to over 20 contributors, and contributed to the concepting and designing of core software products.
The best examples of currency symbols (€ ¥ £ $) are designed with utmost simplicity and constraint. They can be recognizably reproduced by hand within seconds and reconstructed in different type styles while remaining evident. Their clear forms, common strikethroughs, and semantics provide an understanding that one is dealing with a medium of exchange, and they aren’t easily confused with numbers or letters.
The goal was to create an engaging and recognizable identity and a design system to clarify the rationales integrated into the platform and products. A common vision and set of principles were developed to ensure longevity, unity, and representation for Decred as both a cryptocurrency and a project in any environment.
DCR symbol is an ambigram, designed with currency symbol performance in mind. Its simple construction provides a strong cornerstone and the potential to adapt to use cases beyond a logo without losing its distinctive form.
Decred brand identity was designed as a tool and framework for Decred to function as a headless brand, enabling anyone to use it effectively. The design system includes practical tools, principles, methods, and asset libraries that guide and simplify communication about Decred, as well as product design and development.
As a result, release of Decred’s new identity in February 2017 created significant value by growing the brand and establishing a strong presence in the crypto space. At the time, Decred had nearly no marketing efforts, but the visual identity release correlated with a noticeable increase in market share and community growth.
Decrediton – core wallet for interacting with the Decred blockchain, has achieved over 650,000 downloads.
My contributions to the wallet design began at its earliest development stage, when it was known as project Paymetheus. At that time, there were few common UX practices in the crypto sector to refer to, so we conceptualized many novel solutions with the earlier releases. This involved transforming command-line features into user-friendly interfaces and processes. A guiding principle was to create a simple yet powerful user experience for Decrediton, making it accessible to both novice and advanced users while ensuring a secure and intuitive environment for managing funds.
Besides handling basic wallet functions like payments and fund management, Decrediton also facilitates staking, governance participation, privacy through a coin mixer, and off-chain micropayments via the Lightning Network.
The wallet's design unifies features and workflows through consistent and calm layouts, using subtle motion design and color contrasts to highlight main interactions. Number typography setting reduces the visual weight of displaying numbers with eight decimal places, and motion design enhances feedback and hierarchy. The design is applied across desktop and mobile, with light, dark, and high-contrast modes meeting WCAG AAA standards.
To address Decred's learning curve, we implemented a refined onboarding process, starting with a comprehensive introduction in the launcher and continuing with references and tips throughout the software. We also focused on making the UI more vocal addressing the critical UX problem of helping people not lose their keys. This is a significant challenge in crypto software and a major barrier to the mass adoption of self-custodied cryptocurrencies.
Politeia is a blockchain-anchored proposal system where all user actions, regardless of access level (admins or regular users), are completely transparent and auditable. By preventing manipulation of historical records and making censorship more transparent, it can improve self-governance.
Politeia was developed as part of Decred’s governance system to facilitate the submission, tracking, and discussion of proposals, it has the potential to be implemented in a wide range of contexts, such as financial record-keeping, insurance policies, asset tracking, and medical and government records.
My contributions began with early prototyping, initially utilizing Reddit's open-source UI. As development progressed, we combined elements from the current builds of Decrediton and Politeia to design the pi-ui library, which became the go-to UI library for the Decred ecosystem.
Key aspects of the design work included creating a clear UX for communicating and interacting with the proposal process, defining proposal workflows and status lifecycles (such as submission, details, quorum, and pass requirements), enhancing user identity features, and improving the messaging and communication experience.
Decred Contractor Management Systems (CMS) two main functions are to help project contributors manage their billing with the treasury and to provide quality control and dispute resolution through Contractor Clearance. The system is designed with incentives for accountability, aiming to improve staffing decisions by drawing on issues observed from informal vetting methods commonly used in open-source projects.
