RockPool

Product Design

Context

NFTs, or "non-fungible tokens", can vary widely, encompassing everything from music and art to digital properties and even tangible assets like apartments or concert tickets. RockPool is a pioneering tool that enables collective investments in NFTs of any scale or price.

My Role

At Nftfy, I led the entire product design lifecycle for RockPool, a web3 product designed to transform how people invest in NFTs collectively, from concept (0-1) to launch.

Goals

- Address the issue of low liquidity in NFT markets.
- Reduce the risks associated with investing in NFTs.
- Demonstrate the expansive potential of NFT technology—from today’s art pieces to tomorrow’s real estate and other tangible assets.

Outcomes

- Boosted company revenue by 27%.
- Initial pools secured NFTs valued at $69,830 and $10,684 within just a few hours.
- Originally envisioned as an add-on, RockPool has become the flagship product of our company.

Background

Following its Series A funding, Nftfy faced the challenge of developing a 0-1 product that would appeal to daily NFT users. Our opportunity tree led us to tackle this challenge:

How could we enhance liquidity for NFT users while minimizing their risks?

Guerrilla Research - Understanding user needs & competitor analysis

We initiated this phase with user interviews and competitor benchmarking to grasp our community’s pain points.

Our questions included:
- Which NFT-related tools do you use, and what do you like about them?
- Are you familiar with Nftfy? If so, how would you describe us?
- Do you have concerns about NFTs? Please elaborate.
- What functionalities do you wish your NFTs had that they currently lack?

10
Users
interviewed
3
Web3 communities
consulted
5+
Competitor products
analyzed
2-3
Team members
involved

Personas & key insights and flows

We identified three main personas and distilled key insights for each:

Creator
John Harrington
NFT Artist

Seeks more frequent sales to increase earnings through volume trade.

Investor
Rose Biers
Web3 Enthusiast

Aims to dilute investment risks.

Curator
Maria Fernandes
Art Professor

Seeks recognition and rewards for curating valuable NFTs.

Ideation - Crazy 8s with multidisciplinary view

I led a co-design brainstorming session with representatives from engineering, product, customer service, and business to co-create 34 innovative ideas, focusing on feasibility and user-centered design.

Design Critique and MVP Development

Presenting various prototype iterations in Figma to a cross-functional team of seven, we refined and adapted the designs culminating in an MVP. Under a tight schedule, the engineering team developed a beta version for community testing.

Usability Tests

The beta product underwent real-world testing with actual assets and cryptocurrency by experienced NFT users, who were enthusiastic about owning a share of previously inaccessible NFTs.

MVP Launch & Iterative Improvements

Post-beta, the positive feedback led to an official MVP launch, with continuous enhancements based on user behavior:Recognizing a trend towards purchasing "Floor NFTs," we automated this feature. To aid better decision-making, we implemented user-requested filters.

Before and After Implementation

After a research with users about wich filter they would like to use, analysing what type of filters our competitors had and making tests to validate it, we built an updraded filter. We also contributed to our design system and created a new component that could be useful for all products at the company.

Before

No filters, only sections and an input for OpenSea NFTs.

After (1)

Implemented filters crucial for informed decision-making.

After (2)

Possibility to search, select network and types.

We also contributed with another component (mobile tables, 1st screen) with the buy floor feature:

Floor Pools

CTA with most relevant data to fast decision

Analytics

Detailed data to help safe decision making

Floor Pool

Easily add funds to the pool of desired collection

Learnings and conclusion

Working with web3 users and decentralized products might seem strange at first, because:
- No register or log in. Users "log in" with 3rd part crypto wallets that you can't control or gather data from.
- You might think it will be hard to contact people for interviews and similar things. But the community are eager to co-create with you. They strive for it. - Actually, if you don't co-create with your community often, the chances are your product are going to fall in desuse.
- This was the first mobile-first product, with 86% of users accessing via mobile devices.

Thank you for reading!