Crypto · Design leadership · 2021–2022
Lead Experience at 3commas: Driving innovation and transforming UX
Rebuilding the design process inside a 130-person crypto product team: matrix management, a real design system, and bot redesigns that moved retention and revenue.
- Under NDAGrid bot, DCA bot, signals, paywallretention and paid conversion went up; numbers under NDA, references on request
- Team process1 month → 1–2 weeksaverage time to design a feature
- QualitativeMatrix managementone designer covering several product teams
- Role
- Lead Product Designer
- Company
- 3commas, crypto trading platform
- Timeline
- May 2021 – Oct 2022
- Team
- Five designers under my management, product managers, engineers, marketing; 300-person company
- Platform
- Web platform, iOS, Android
- Methods & tools
- Figma, Whimsical, Storybook, Jira, Slack, usability testing, A/B testing, heuristic evaluation
Outcome
- Under NDAGrid bot, DCA bot, signals, paywall retention and paid conversion went up; numbers under NDA, references on request
- Team process1 month → 1–2 weeks average time to design a feature
- QualitativeMatrix management one designer covering several product teams
Measured outcome in productionQualitative context: process, volume, lab or qualitativeUnder NDA under NDA
60-second brief
The problem
3commas had more product teams than designers, no defined design process, a design system that lived only in code, and a CEO approval bottleneck. Designing a feature took about a month, and the same UI patterns looked different across grid bots, DCA bots, the terminal and signals. Numbers are under NDA, so this brief is about method.
What I did
- Wrote the team's values as a checklist every mockup is judged against: rationality, consistency, aesthetics, small steps, cheap hypothesis tests, short path to production, predictable results.
- Introduced matrix management: each designer splits time between their product team and cross-team tasks I score by impact, urgency and effort.
- Replaced daily stand-ups with a design sync every two to three days; moved research from product managers to designers as the team grew.
- Ran weekly brainstorms, mentored a junior designer, interviewed candidates to balance skills, argued for and got extra design headcount.
Decisions that mattered
- Grid bot: fewer things on screen, more control.
Added stop-loss and trailing stop-loss, removed the order book and portfolio from the bot screen, made the grid editable with the mouse.
Showcase of the grid bot improvements - DCA bot: speak the industry's language.
Standard terms, extensive tooltips, reordered tabs and a wizard mode for beginners; the wizard shipped after I left, which says something about the idea.
Showcase of the DCA bot improvements - Monetisation: three days of premium, then a limited free tier.
Trial and paywall placement redesigned around the moment users see value; paid conversion went up.
- Signals: show the trader, not just the signal.
Statistics about signal authors cut negative reviews and support tickets.
Working with engineering and product
- Documented every component with all states in Figma and synced tokens with Storybook, so design and code stopped drifting apart.
- Design guidelines and a review ritual closed the gap where developers built one thing and designers assumed another.
- Worked around scarce PM and CEO time with Jira and Slack rituals; decisions by vote with a CEO veto instead of open-ended debate.
Impact
- Under NDAGrid bot, DCA bot, signals, paywall retention and paid conversion went up; numbers under NDA, references on request
- Team process1 month → 1–2 weeks average time to design a feature
- QualitativeMatrix management one designer covering several product teams
A consistent design language across products, higher engagement, paid conversion and retention (figures under NDA), and Copio, a social network for traders, taken to UX prototypes and product-market-fit tests before the CEO changed strategy.
What I took awayA 130-person product team taught me to trust quantitative data and to protect designers' time as fiercely as their pixels.