Novi | Bitcoin

2021-2022

Novi was Meta’s peer to peer remittences app. By supporting money transfers with blockchain, Novi allowed people to send money around the world, to anyone, instantly, with no fees. In 2021 I joined to the team where I gained experience working in a 0-1 space, learned about blockchain technology and helped shape a new design system. My team’s project was introducing the ability to buy and sell Bitcoin as an affordable and accessible investment opportunity for Novi users.

I was the only product designer on the project. I lead a content designer and UX researcher through the full design process to deliver end-to-end flows for the new feature.

Context

Problem

Many remittance apps are primarily transactional. While these apps help remitters stay connected to their loved ones, they don’t help their users save, invest or grow the money they are receiving. Currently, these apps don’t provide pathways to establish healthier financial behaviors and leave remitters in a constant cycle of providing for their loved ones.

Opportunity

Novi has the opportunity to be more than a pass through payment service. To be a partner in helping store, plan, save, and celebrate with our customers whether they are together or apart.

Supporting Bitcoin in Novi is a compelling investment product because:

  • Accessibility - Bitcoin is a borderless product that is investable even in fractional quantities

  • Proven demand - Novi’s target demographics have been quickly adopting Bitcoin

  • Portfolio relevancy - Bitcoin is emerging as a store of value for both consumer and institutional wealth

Vision

Introduce a Bitcoin experience that differentiates itself from the market by:

  • Demystifying Bitcoin. Empower crypto skeptics, curious and newbies to invest responsibly and safely in Bitcoin by providing education and guidance

  • Eliminating barriers to transact. Meet users where they are across Novi, WhatsApp and Messenger to offer solutions that are the easiest to use, lowest cost, and most trusted to buy/sell/send and manage risk with Bitcoin

  • Help fintech forwards evangelize. Establish Meta’s payments apps (Novi, WhatsApp and Messenger) as the best platforms for crypto explorers and enthusiasts to creatively engage others to experience owning Bitcoin

Project set up

Role:

Product designer

Team:

Product manager, content designer, UX researcher and 1 engineering team of ~7 engineers.

Responsibilities:

  • Set project calendar and sequencing for deliverable milestones

  • Introduced and drove design process for the team that included research, leadership reviews, and regular feedback sessions with engineering

  • Conducted competitor analysis and set strategy to differentiate our Bitcoin product from the market through education

  • Worked with UXR to conduct 2 rounds of user research to inform final product 

  • Partnered with other Novi designers to expand the Novi design system to support new components including educational units and an interactive graph

  • Directed external vendor to provide illustrative assets 

  • Delivered end-to-end designs for a new tab in the app and the Bitcoin feature that felt consistent with the existing Novi experience

  • Worked closely with engineering during development to ensure the final build was polished and high quality

What we built

Introductory education

The new Invest tab (pre-buy/post buy)

Quick buy flow

Sell flow

Price alerts

Satoshi switcher

Impact

  • Met the team goal of launching the Bitcoin feature into internal dogfooding at the end of 2021

  • Ensured the new tab would scale beyond the MVP to support the ability to buy, sell and hold multiple cryptocurrencies

  • When I joined the team, engineering had already started on a previous version of the feature. I preserved engineering progress on the project while setting clear expectations and timelines for when the rest of the design would be finalized

  • The introduction of my process ensured designs were informed by UXR, leadership was aligned and informed on our approach and engineering was unblocked

  • Although the Novi project ended in early 2022, my team’s work on the Bitcoin feature positioned us to pivot to support NFTs in Instagram

Process examples

A selection of some of the iterations and alternate directions I explored during my design process for this project.