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Uniswap Onboarding


Uniswap is the largest decentralized trading exchange on a mission to make finances universally accessible.

I designed the UX for first time users of swapping and providing liquidity on Uniswap to onboard the next wave of users into the ecosystem.



How do we lower the barrier to entry to swapping tokens and providing liquidity for new crypto users? There are a few aspects that I believe are essential to consider when designing an onboarding experience:
  • Building confidence. How can we provide the user with a quick win? Shortening the user's time-to-value.
  • Building trust. How can we make the user feel safe? Easy to understand messaging and direction.
  • Building context. How can we make the user feel that our product is a part of their overall user journey? Considering organic engagement vs. users that came from somewhere specific.

  • Audit current experiences across different platforms
  • Outline unified onboarding design vision
  • Sketch low-fidelity wireframes
  • Iterate based on feedback
  • Create high-fidelity design wireframes
  • Build prototypes

I started by auditing existing decentralized exchange experiences. Together with the Uniswap design team, I developed a POV on a good trading and liquidity providing experience by determining patterns that were working well. Some of the issues I found with the current state of Uniswap were around:

1. Confusing, intimidating, or unfamiliar copy
2. Lack of Guidance

I conducted interviews with users who had various levels of experience with crypto. Some of the main learnings from this research were around the complexity of new vocabulary and the introduction of new mental models in web3.
  • Users already have trouble with traditional financial terminology. Decentralized finance has a whole new set of terms that are perceived as even more esoteric.
  • Risk and security are huge barriers to entry, there is still generally a perception that crypto can't be trusted - with narratives ranging from the history of crypto's connection to the dark web to scams and schemes.
  • Most crypto curious users prefer to learn with short form video content (ie. TikTok, Youtube)
  • Those that identify as having moderate to high risk tolerance are more likely to own crypto. Uniswap users are more likely to self-identify in the upper half the risk tolerance scale. How might Uniswap appeal to those who identify as having moderate risk tolerance? We suggest further investigation of this.

After synthesizing research, I sketched out low fidelity explorations of the onboarding, trading, and liquidity providing flows.

I focused on the following in my designs:
- Core usability of the product
- Guiding a new to crypto user through use
- Providing contextual information that helps inform user decision making
- Creating specific interaction zones




With several rounds of feedback from the Uniswap team, I moved from initial wireframes into high fidelity. The final output of the work was a clickable prototype that showcases connecting a wallet, trading tokens, and providing liquidity.