SITUATION_
A former co-worker reached out to me asking if I was available to create a visual identity and UI/UX designs for their startup. They had a functional prototype built using the Material Design library, and a scope document for near-term and long-term feature planning.
understanding the product
In short, Elara (then unnamed) is a B2B infrastructure tool for developers working on blockchain applications. The core features of the platform provide easy deployment of test chains and dev environments, automated network connections and settings, and provides tools for testing new features and monitoring chain performance.
This service would create more efficient workflows, lower overhead costs, and less developer time spent on boilerplate tasks such as setting up and deploying chains.
Aligning on MVP features
Working closely with the two founders, we narrowed down the scope of the initial feature document, to ensure we could launch the product as fast as possible. This meant cutting features such as mobile support, complex inspector tools, a chain explorer, and a code playground tool. These features would be included in a 2.0 version, and prioritized based on user feedback.
RESEARCH_
I conducted competitive research and discovery interviews to better understand both the product landscape and the needs of users.
COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
Many similar products, like alchemy.com and tenderly.co, have complex user flows, a lot of features, and IA that felt unintuitive to a first-time user. This helped identify the need to bring our core actions directly to the dashboard, instead of burying them in modals, or individual pages.
USER GOALS & NEEDS
Through feedback from prospective users, and the company's founders, I identified actions that would be used the most; setting up an environment, editing an existing environment, and filtering/sorting through the transactions in the mempool.
UX DESIGN_
Wireframes
Creating wireframes let us quickly iterate on solutions and find solutions to different challenges. We aligned on a vertical primary nav to allow users to see all available workspace views, and navigate between projects quickly.
On the home dashboard view we prioritized the "current plan" card to clearly visualize the limits of a user's current plan, and communicate the value in upgrading.
BRANDING_
Round 1
My initial logo explorations focused combining the name Elara, one of Jupiter’s moon, with the concepts of structure, progress, and forward-thinking. Initial feedback on this design was that it was too “boxy and blocky”, and “looked like a ninja-star”.
Round 2
For the second round I borrowed elements from the greek name and alphabet to bring more character to the typography, and created a more abstract, mature, welcoming, and scalable logomark using interlinking shapes.
SOLUTION_
The final UX direction balanced the business needs by highlighting premium services and upsell opportunities, with the user needs by providing helpful statistics, at-a-glance information, and reducing interaction costs for common actions.
The final deliverables, all contained in a single Figma file, contained pixel-perfect UI for each screen and modal, a set of common re-used components, and a branding package that included an SVG logo, color tokens, and typography styles.
