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Blockchain to Basics
Bridging the gap
between currency and culture.
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Project
Overview
From bitcoin curious visitors to empowered buyers: our in-app education framework, Bitcoin Basics, transformed our customers experience - addressing a 2% conversion hurdle and generating trust for future success.
Where
Cash App / 2023
My Role
As Product Design Lead, I established a clear vision for the team, fostered a collaborative environment, and spearheaded our successful educational initiative on Bitcoin within Cash App.
Collaborators
Research, Writing, Creative, Product, Engineering and Customer Support.
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The Context
The Customer Experience of Cash App
Money Verbs
Bank
Spend
Save
Invest
Bitcoin
Scale
Currently serving 65 million customers across the United States and Canada
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The Observation
Bitcoin Barrier: A Conversion Conundrum
The Problem
Despite attracting millions of visitors a month, our bitcoin applet struggled to translate interest into adoption.
Only 2% of customers were converting in their first visit.
The Impact
Our Customers: degraded trust.
Our Company: underperforming top-of-funnel limited potential customer acquisition, jeopardizing future revenue growth.
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Customer Research
Onboarding Odyssey: A User-Centric Exploration
Methodology
Leveraging Design-thinking principles, we conducted in-depth interviews, surveys, and usability testing to gain valuable customer insights.
Discovery
—Limited understanding of bitcoin fundamentals caused apprehension among new Cash App users.
—Fear of volatility acted as a major barrier to entry for potential Bitcoin investors on our platform.
—Jargon heavy communication alienated new users and created a frustrating onboarding experience.
Learning. Better Together.
21 immersive customer sessions brought together invaluable perspectives from across the organization, with experts from engineering, product, customer support, writing and creative departments - all committed as participants and live observers.
We said "Welcome!"
They said "Whoa. ✋"
Recognizing the potential shortcomings of our welcome experience, our team embarked on a user-centric journey to gain deeper insights.
Customer Curiosity
Alex M.
"How much money do I need to make to make this worthwhile? How can my bitcoin grow?"
Alicia K
"How do you even buy bitcoin?"
Eaugelique S.
"Am I saving for something? What can I spend it on?"
Maria A.
"I understand it's rare but why would I benefit from having it outside of rarity?"
Fundamental Finding
Only a third of Cash App customers reported understanding the basics of bitcoin.
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Principles + Leadership Across Partners
From Insights to Impact:
Leading The Redefinition of Cash App's Bitcoin Experience.
Product Design
Demystify the user-experience by prioritizing basic principles for user trust and confidence-building.
Content Design
Answer the basics and give Cash App a more broad vocabulary about bitcoin.
Creative Design
Make bitcoin feel more accessible and human while expanding our bitcoin visual vocabulary.
Core Principle
Familiarity breeds trust, and ease-of-use opens doors. These elements had to be the foundation for unlocking the full potential of bitcoin for our customers.
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Design Concepting + Testing
Meeting Learners Where They Are
Format Explorations
What is the right interaction design architecture? Quiz, Article, Cards, Stories?
Location Explorations + Progress
Where should this live and what is the role of progress?
Moving from Questions to Confidence
Our customers had countless questions and we needed to find the right format to answer them in that would help close their knowledge gap, nurture confidence and equip them with a solid foundation in bitcoin basics.
Quiz
Short, interactive activities like quizzes effectively boosted confidence and reinforced learning, but inadvertently caused mild anxiety linked to performance concerns.
Cards
Cards offered a more bite-sized approach to our testing participants. Once we observed their performance compared to the quiz system, we started to feel as though we were on the right path - but not quite to the finish line.
Stories
Success! Through the stories approach, we began to push the limitations of cards which effectively allowed us to craft truly impactful learning experiences through visuals and typography.
A Home for Lessons
To optimize the learning experience, we tested different placements for Basics lessons, ultimately finding that proximity to frequent user touch points led to higher participation.
Moving from Noise to Narrative
Prioritizing trust and efficient, high-impact information led us to the stories framework that ultimately became Bitcoin Basics.
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Writing and Creative Partnership
A Collaboration of Trusted Counterparts
Writing Principles
To take our customers from intrigue to investment, we needed to build a linguistic bridge that provided clarity, fostered confidence and inspired motivation.
Confidence within Constraints
I worked hand-in-hand with our lead content writer, Anna Bloom, we defined the principles to help our larger Cash App organization arrive at a bitcoin writing framework for in-product, social and web.
Creative Principles
Aiming for both harmony and simplicity, we worked to align visuals with the narrative and focused on the emotional aspect for our customers, not the technical complexities.
Emotion, Beyond the B.
I worked closely with our Creative Design team to develop new ways of representing Bitcoin, moving beyond the traditional 'B'. Our goal was to capture Bitcoin's innovative and disruptive nature through visual design that better communicated Bitcoin's value and vision to a wider audience.
Writing Collaboration
Big Bets on Bitcoin Education
Anna and I worked hand-in-hand as we helped lead the Cash organization through an increase in it's own vocabulary about bitcoin and how we can describe it in more detailed lessons.
Defining our Writing Principles
Compelling
Ensure that our content design is provides value and is engaging to our customers.
Trustworthy
Focus on being responsible and credible in our language and what we share.
Easily Understood
Create content that fits a ninth-grade reading level to allow for accessibility
Creative Explorations in Emotion
Fundamental Finding
It's critical that we allow the information to be the primary driver of the experience and have the illustrations play a harmonious, secondary role.
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From Progress to Product
Curiosity to Confidence: Bridging the Gap in Early Bitcoin Adoption
A Warm Welcome
By adding a welcome carousel, we aimed to make the first impression count by guiding users through key questions and functionalities, fostering delightful engagement and understanding from the very first tap.
A Softer Landing
We reframed the learner onboarding experience to focus on understanding bitcoin fundamentals, before price.
A Friendly Framework
To aid in customer trust as well as enable empowered choices, we brought both education and action to the forefront of the experience.
Now, when a customer arrives, they can choose to "buy" or to "learn," putting them in control of their experience.
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Launch and Learn
Building Trust and Driving Action
Metrics that Matter
While paying close attention to conversion data post launch, we also prioritized fostering user confidence and enjoyment, creating a holistic success metric for our initial design.
Smart(er) Lessons
Our ongoing optimization has thus far yielded two key changes: a more concise curriculum with 4 lessons instead of 6, as well as personalized recommendations powered by machine learning to ensure the most relevant next step for each learner.
First Visit Bitcoin Conversion Rate
Before Basics : 2%
After Basics : 7%
Amount of Bitcoin Purchased for First Time Buyer
Before Basics : $1
After Basics : $1.75
Average Number of Lesson Per Customer
2.4 lessons
Average Lesson Completion Per Customer
85%
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Next Steps
Beyond Basics: Continuing the Journey
Flex the Framework
We designed and built a high performing education framework, so let's use it! We can now use it to create new lessons that map onto other parts of our customer's journey.
Internal Expansion
Bitcoin Basics impact goes beyond its initial scope, driving a company-wide wave of financial literacy efforts powered by its proven framework.
Investing in the Future
Through our efforts with Bitcoin Basics, we're successfully opening the door to Bitcoin for new users. However, our journey doesn't end there. Our intention is to continue to empower these individuals to grow their understanding and engagement through further personalized learning experiences.
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