Motivating New Crypto Investors to Grow their Capital on Coinbase
Coinbase is an online platform for buying, selling, and storing cryptocurrency. Coinbase is on a mission to create a more open financial system and to be the leading exchange for people to convert cryptocurrency into and out of their local currency. New crypto investors begin their investing journey with a strong desire to grow their capital, but often lose motivation and give up easily. I designed a way to convey investment progress, motivating new crypto investors to take the necessary steps to grow their capital on Coinbase.
Timeline:
Feb-May ‘22 (12 weeks)
Role:
Product Designer
Responsibilities:
Research, Strategy, Design
Problem
New crypto investors have the desire to grow their capital but lose motivation and give up easily
People are eager to invest in crypto, but often have a get-rich quick mindset which leads to unrealistic expectations. When those expectations aren’t met, people lose motivation to continue growing their capital and stop investing on Coinbase - negatively impacting engagement and user retention on Coinbase’s investing product.
User Research
Identifying pain points in the process of making investment decisions
To understand why people stop investing, I conducted generative research with 5 people who are new to investing and have used Coinbase and other cryptocurrency exchanges. My goals when conducting this research was to identify what motivates people to invest, how they make investment decisions, and how confident they are with those decisions.
Through affinity mapping, I was able to discover key insights about what people struggle with when it comes to investing. These were the top pain points:
Lack of confidence to invest because of not having enough knowledge, so people make in uninformed decisions.
Lack of context on why numerous steps are involved when buying crypto on Coinbase, which demotivates people from following through.
People don’t reach their investment goals in their expected timeframe and stop investing because they don’t see their expected returns.
Design Goal
Motivate new crypto investors to continue investing on Coinbase
My overarching design goal is to motivate new crypto investors to continue investing on Coinbase. In gaining the motivation to continue investing, new investors will take the necessary steps to grow their capital and reach their personal financial goals. If people are motivated to grow their capital on Coinbase, Coinbase will retain users and see increased engagement with their investing product. To achieve this overarching design goal, I laid out four supporting design goals.
Supporting Design Goals
⟡ Set realistic expectations to help new crypto investors reach their financial goals
⟡ Provide guidance on gaining the knowledge needed to make informed investment decisions
⟡ Convey progress to motivate users to make crypto investments
⟡ Provide helpful context on security steps to safeguard investments
Ideation
Sketching ways to convey progress and impact investing behavior
My explorations centered around conveying progress to impact investing behavior. When I was exploring different designs, I was choosing between giving users the flexibility to define their goals and providing informational content upfront.
Design Decision
Combining Badges and Investment Insights
After weighing the pros and cons of each design exploration, I decided to combine badges and investment insights. I chose this as my final design because my other design explorations would require action and input from users before they can view any investment progress they might have made. This design decision also benefits Coinbase’s business, because at the bottom of the insights card, there is a call to action to set up a recurring buy.
Validation
Testing how badges and insights impact investing frequency and behavior towards investing
I conducted usability testing on my prototype with 5 people who have made investments on Coinbase in the last 6 months. I wanted to evaluate how people feel about badges and whether the investment insights provided are sufficient.
Top Findings:
⟡ Badges and milestones catch peoples attention
⟡ People feel a sense of accomplishment when seeing how long they’ve had their portfolio
⟡ Lightweight insights are not overwhelming
⟡ People are curious about dollar cost averaging
Scoping The Project
Initially, I chose to focus on two supporting design goals - setting realistic expectations and conveying investment progress. To manage complexity, I decided to focus on conveying investment progress to motivate users.
Iteration
Improving the way information is displayed
My usability test showed that people confused the investment allocation in the categories section for their investment performance in that category (ex. “DeFi - 50%” was seen as a -50% loss instead of a 50% allocation). To clarify the information, I replaced the dash with a parentheses. It was also not clear how to leave the insights card, so I improved the animation and made the “X” more discoverable by increasing its size.
MVP and Plan of Action
Gradual Design Changes
We can gradually achieve the final design in three phases. The first phase is awareness, notifying people of their investment progress through a badge and investment milestone. In the second phase, we can introduce a few insights and a call to action to set up a recurring buy. And in the final phase, we can put everything together and add investment categories to the insights card.
Vision of the Future
Guiding Novice Investors Through Market Cycles
In the future, I would like to explore ways to help novice investors navigate market cycles. Due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, it can be easy to stop investing completely after going through a down cycle. Everyone has a different tolerance for risk, and I would like to design a way to take risk tolerance into consideration when people set their personal financial goals.
Conclusion
Exploring Ideas
Initially, I found it challenging to let go of certain design ideas. Early in the design process for this project, I had already thought of some potential solutions. It also did not help when I avoided thinking of solutions that seemed too complicated to implement.
As I gained more insight from research participants, my mentor, and peers, I was able to let go of the solutions I already had in mind. Instead, I learned to think wide and be open to different ideas. In the end, I was able to eliminate ideas that would not work out and I combined design ideas that would benefit both the business and the users.