The Problem
Crypto UIs talk to people who already believe.
Every crypto interface defaults to language that assumes the user already trusts and understands the space - APY percentages, staking periods, wallet addresses, protocol names. The brief was the opposite: design for someone who has never touched crypto, doesn't have strong opinions about it, but does want a better way to save. The interface had to earn trust without asking the user to first become fluent in a new vocabulary.
Signature Visual
Walk through the onboarding.
The translation layer.
The core design decision was a systematic translation of every piece of financial/crypto jargon into plain-language equivalents. This wasn't a surface-level copy edit - it meant rethinking which concepts to surface at all, and which to move behind progressive disclosure.
| Before - Raw crypto term | After - Plain language |
|---|---|
| APY: 8.2% | Your money grows 8.2% a year |
| Staking period: 30 days | Locked for 30 days |
| Connect wallet | Link your account |
| Gas fee | Small processing fee (usually under $0.10) |
| Smart contract | Automatic agreement that holds your savings |
Every term the user encountered was run through this translation process before it appeared in the interface.
Outcome
A complete clickable prototype.
The team presented a full clickable prototype covering onboarding through first deposit at the hackathon. No award - but the prototype held up well enough to demo end-to-end, which was the goal. The most transferable output from this project was the jargon translation framework, which could apply to any fintech product entering a category with a steep trust deficit.