Uptick

TL;DR

About

Uptick is a cryptocurrency analytics platform providing institutional-grade analytics to retail investors. In addition to their responsive web experience which focuses on in depth market analysis, the company wanted to design and develop a mobile portfolio tracker as a companion application.

Purpose

Uptick believed there was an opportunity in the market to provide a more complete view of the cryptocurrency market from an analytics perspective.

Solution

The solution was a feature-rich web application that used proprietary algorithms and predictive analytics to analyze curated information and predict the direction of the market. Additionally, Uptick launched a companion mobile application that acted as a light-weight version of the web terminal/portfolio tracker.

Result

With the multi-pronged product approach, users in the Uptick universe grew from less than 1,000 to greater than 10,000 within 6 months after launch.

Overview

There was nothing quite as professionally alluring in late 2020 as working in crypto and web 3.0; doing one's part to help reimagine the world's financial future. Uptick is an organization spawned from similar excited motivations. While not creating a revolutionary dapp, or building on chain, their goal looked to help mature crypto as an asset class by offering compelling intelligence to investors, similar to terminals one may find for traditional markets. Achieved through sophisticated algorithms that source and parse thousands of data points to assess things like sentiment and predict market performance, Uptick is in business to give users a better understanding of what moves the crypto market.

Despite Uptick's sophistication, they needed assistance packaging the platform in a meaningful way.

Desperate for Design

No matter how flawlessly functional a platform's backend may be, without proper presentation, value may be improperly communicated, if communicated at all. In a space so often associated with scams, frauds, and bad actors, designing with trust, security, and authority in mind is that much more important. Needless to say, the initial Uptick (then DAIX) offering left much to be desired.

Uptick's Initial Landing

Approachable Design

Building something new is exciting and that notion is only compounded when its market is equally nascent. While it's important to pronounce the unique attributes of both the new market and the products that exist in it, designers and product teams must work too, to create products that are as easy to use as the products users are most accustomed. Uptick's responsive web app redesign and design of its companion mobile app was an exercise in addressing Approachable Design.

Approachable design bears in mind the simple truth that users of your application spend 99% of their time using other apps and products. This suggests one must design in a way that is familiar, without sacrificing what makes their offering unique. This is a fine line to say the least.

Applying Approachable Design

Some nonnegotiables when it comes to familiar design are the macro-level processes/interactions (think navigation, what icons represent, hierarchy, transitions, animations, etc.). Navigation and interactions must adhere to the mental models users have developed from their experiences with other applications, as measurable divergence from user expectations may require significant time spent onboarding, which could increase user attrition.

In addition to an application's need to feel familiar while remaining distinct, for applications that are as informationally dense as a market watcher and analytics provider, its information architecture becomes a place where significant time must be spent. Information and actions need to be presented in a way that is simple and pleasant, without sacrificing the value the information and analysis provides (another fine line).