Sketchin

A Bitcoin portfolio made easy

We have helped Conio create a mobile wallet with a strong identity and a service system tailored to its customers’ needs.

We have helped Conio create a mobile wallet with a strong identity and a service system tailored to its customers’ needs.

A cryptocurrency wallet

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are now popular. In 2016 when we started our project with Conio, only a few people knew something about these currencies and even less were owners or traders.   

Conio was then a young startup, bursting with knowledge on cryptocurrencies and blockchain, with a challenging mission: to spread the opportunity represented by Bitcoins and, ça va sans dire, to persuade people to invest.

Even now, people don’t completely understand what Bitcoins are. They merely want to buy and use them, speculate on them, follow the trading trends and hopefully become wealthy as if the money was created out of thin air.

San Francisco Design Week Award - 2018
San Francisco Design Week Award - 2018

Outcome

Our task was not simple: we have been asked to find an easy way to represent the idea of Bitcoins and, at the same time, to design a user-friendly mobile app that served as Bitcoin wallet to buy, sell and use the cryptocurrency.

seeds of funding in euro
6M
award at San Francisco Design Week as the Best Fintech App in 2018.
One

Giving shape to an idea

One of the main problems we have faced is that Bitcoins are immaterial: there are no coins or notes that represent them.

Money is a symbol: it has value because people accept it as a symbolic medium of exchange, and having something physical helps us give substance to an idea.

We have thus decided to use the metaphor of the coin to let people understand that even bitcoins are actual and valuable money. The interface shows rolling coins, and their quantity indicates the number of bitcoins owned.

To further enhance the idea of physicality, the coins produce a jingling sound when they roll, as if they were real.

Growing trust

The cryptocurrencies are perceived as complicated, nerdy, and people are often distrustful about them. There is no official regulation, the network is peer-to-peer, and transactions take place between users directly, without any intermediary.

Hence, our design had to increase trust, lower the feeling of uneasiness and make the wallet simple, cool and fun to use.

We then opted for round shapes and bright colours to convey those messages.

Trading made easy

Most of the users couldn’t care less about blockchain and mining. They want to trade and take advantage of their Bitcoin capital.

When we designed the app, we preferred a minimal interface and simple interactions to reduce the cognitive burden and let the users focus on a few essential information.

We created an experience that could be easy to understand by everyone, not only by tech-savvy people with the knack for finance.

We ended the project in 2016. Conio has developed the outcomes ever since, and the app has evolved in the meantime, changing its interface and adding more functions.

But you know: design is a verb, and things have to change to remain relevant.

Project numbers

weekly iterations, from research to strategy to implementation
4
designers in the Sketchin team
Five
co-founders involved in the project
Two

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