iTrade is a crypto trading platform with advanced charting tools and trading capabilities for professional crypto traders.

Problem statement

• A successful trader needs to follow a lot of data feeds to keep up with the latest market trends that usually are spread out over numerous websites, analytical tools, and news aggregators. The informational noise and multi-tasking slow down the trader’s decision-making and disrupt the trading experience resulting in poor trading decisions. To stay focused on the market action the trader needs an all-in-one trading platform that comprises a wide variety of charting tools, market performance analytics, indicators, news, and signals. 

Goals

• iTrade is the all-in-one crypto trading platform that puts the trader at the center of the market action. It provides a single place where the trader can follow and act on indicators, signals, and news. 
• With iTrade, the trader is able to execute complex trading strategies with an intuitive, easy-to-use, yet functional user interface. 
• iTrader is a highly customisable trading platform.
• iTrader is a destruction free-trading platform.

Business model deconstruction

• Get to know your business
• Blueprint the business model

For the business model deconstruction, we use different business canvases like the Lean Canvas. It is a type of business template that lets you quickly sketch out the problems you want to solve and see how you can build the business around them even before jumping into real work. By deconstructing the business model we justify key user problems, and solutions, the unique value proposition of the product, the target audience, revenue streams, and cost centers, as well as distribution channels. It is crucial to be aligned with the client on the key problems, and solutions that we are about to solve.

Product vision definition

During the product vision definition phase, we brainstorm with stakeholders about the product at the highest conceptual level. Based on stakeholder interviews, and multiple brainstorming sessions we define the product vision statement. At this stage, we want to answer the following questions:  what is it, who will use it, and why they will use it?

Inspired by the book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore where we use the famous product vision template: 

• For (target customer) who (statement of need or opportunity), the (product name) is a (product category) that (key benefit, reason to buy).
• Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (statement of primary differentiation).

As a result, we came up with the following statements for iTrade:

• For professional crypto traders who need all-in-one trading experience, iTrader is a crypto trading platform that offers a wide variety of charting tools, market performance analytics, indicators, news, and signals in a single place.
• Unlike regular trading platforms, our product ensures a holistic and destruction-free trading experience.

Business model deconstruction and product vision definition are parts of the Product definition phase. The outcome of this phase is an initial concept sketch (an early, low-fidelity mockup) or a more detailed wireframe that serves as a basis for further discussions. 

The product vision definition phase ends up with a project kick-off meeting to set the stage for the in-depth product design process.

Research and inspiration 

• Get to know your customers
• Discover the market and competitors
• Find out what makes great products great

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The User research reveals the frustrations and pains users experience as they interact with the product and helps to turn them into actionable insights. It focuses on understanding user behaviour, problems, needs, and pains through various techniques like user and stakeholder interviews, observation, surveys, user flow analysis, user feedback, complaints analysis, etc. 

The Competitive and market research. Usually, we take around 8 to 12 competitors (a mix of direct and indirect) for the analysis. The research covers topics like unique value proposition identification,  feature & services matrix, differentiators, strengths, weaknesses, positioning on the market, pricing, reputation, etc. 

The UX research covers a thorough investigation and analysis of existing solutions on the market (competitors) as well as other popular products (e.g. products that solve similar problems). The research includes user website analysis, user onboarding flow, subscription/purchasing flow, subscription management, user task workflow, common UX/UI patterns, user interaction patterns, interaction with related services or products, feature sets, style (color palettes, overall look&feel), layouts, and many more parameters. 

Inspiration. As a part of the UX research, we are looking for inspiration out on the market and documenting findings as storyboards or mood boards. This technique is crucial for the design and prototyping stage because it gives insights into how competitors work, and helps to identify problem areas and opportunities.

Analysis

• Empathize your customers
• Define “who are we building the product for?”
• Explore the customer journey

The goal of the analysis phase is to get insights from data gathered during the research phase where we want to understand “what” users want, think, need, and struggle with to “why” they want, think, and need it. For this purpose, we create user personas and empathy maps.

Story mapping, storyboarding, and journey mapping brainstorming techniques help to visualise the user workflow towards solving her problem or gaining value with a product. We prefer to use the story mapping technique because it’ll become an actionable plan ready for execution. It’s kind of a visual product backlog of user stories where we can slice features into the MVP scope and further releases.

5. Product Design phase

We move to the design phase when we clearly understand users’ needs and pains, wants, and expectations. At this phase, we collaborate closely with the team and stakeholders in an iterative matter to get early feedback on ideas and assumptions generated during previous phases. The design phase includes the following activities:

• Sketching early mockups
• Creating information architecture
• Creating user flows
• Creating wireframes
• Creating prototypes
• Visual concept definition (referencing/mood board)
• Creating a design specification: style definition, typography, colors, etc.
• Creating design systems: visual elements breakdown.

6. Validation 

• Validate product ideas and assumptions
• Build, gather feedback, iterate

The validation is the final and the most important design phase when we test the solution prototype on real users to get feedback. Testing reveals insights that are needed to refine the product vision, users’ problems, and needs. Usually, it’s better to test the high-fidelity design, since it provides more valuable feedback from end-users. The validation phase includes:

• Hallway usability tests
• Testing sessions, interviews
• Surveys
• Analytics

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