Summary
Designing for less noise and more signal
As the first design hire at Nansen, I designed various applications within the Nansen Web3 ecosystem, focusing on the core analytics app and helped reach a $750 million valuation.
Summary
As a solo designer at Nansen, I Designed 0 → 1 products and played a pivotal role in securing $80 million in Series A and B funding.
Transforming Nansen into the go-to tool for crypto investors.
Established Nansen brand from the ground up
I created and managed a team of high-performing designers.
Designed the world's first token gating experience within traditional SaaS product
I helped oversee the acquisition of Apeboard, a portfolio tracker, and assisted in integrating them within the Nansen product team.
Design team
Linlu Liu, Product Designer
Eduarda Delcour, Product Designer
Chris Croft, Jr. Product Designer
Berin Holy, Ilustrator
Petia Dimitrova, Graphic Designer
Marina Starodubova, Product Designer
Keisuke kuroiwai, Web Designer
Design team
2021-2022
Overview
Overview
Nansen provides dashboards designed around specific verticals in the crypto space. It combines on-chain data with a massive and constantly growing database containing millions of wallet labels. Customers pay a subscription to access this data via user-friendly dashboards, direct SQL queries, or APIs.
I worked on many more projects during my time at Nansen; if you're interested in hearing about any of them, reach out to me.
Nansen 1.0
Designing beyond the MVP: Nansen 1.0
Nansen MVP initially used iframes powered by Metabase for their dashboard. While effective, it wasn’t scalable. Although they gained 1000 sign-ups and 200 subscribers, they needed a new app to reach one million users.
To create a scalable, user-friendly interface that works on various devices, instead of using Metabase and iframes.
As a solo member of the design team, I had to work at a fast pace due to the ongoing bull market. We did not have any product managers or owners, so I had to wear many different hats to ensure our customers received what they needed.
However, it was a challenging time for me to follow a structured design process, as I had to make compromises and cut corners to deliver the necessary insights to our customers.
12x increase in revenue
100,000 + new sign-ups
750$ million valuation
For confidentiality reasons, I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.
NFT Discounts
NFT based discounts
Nansen aimed to partner with various NFT project communities with 10+ thousand members and provide their NFT holders with discounted access to Nansen subscriptions.
Design a solution that combines web3 technology, such as NFTs, with web2 technologies like Stripe checkout, allowing users to redeem discounts when checking out with their NFTs seamlessly.
• The flow should follow an already established mental model for redeeming a discount.
• Visible reminders are necessary and should be redeemable even if they decided to skip the discount page.
• Clear terms and conditions during any part of the process.
500 discounts claimed
15% growth in the Nansen community
17% increase new subscriptions
For confidentiality reasons, I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.
Research Portal
Nansen Research
Many VIP and standard tier customers requested access to the research that was produced in-house by a team of specialized Research Analysts, which was only available to the elite Alpha tier of customers. Nansen wanted to make this happen by building.
Design a centralized solution that consolidates research in one location while also granting different access tiers for certain research.
I led design for the MVP and collaborated with the research and engineering team.
2000 new subscribers to the free weekly research
14% users upgraded to the VIP plan
8% increase in renewal across all plans
For confidentiality reasons, I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.
Zach Cheng
UX Manager, Shopify