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CoinEx spans Web (including H5) and the app on iOS and Android. This upgrade started on Web. The main problems then were:
The brief was to build a more professional, simpler, more current interface language, while still reading as a Web3 exchange. That tone was named “expert style”: the platform should feel like a professional service team, matching the level of service to beginner, intermediate, and advanced users.
I was the lead designer, responsible for the main design output and for exploring the direction. On the team, three designers owned the app; four, including me, owned Web.
01 Users
1. Use less color
Pages stay mostly black and white. Brand green is only a highlight.
2. Cut excess decoration
Campaign and decorative illustrations were removed. Layout and information structure should explain how a feature works.
3. Add micro-interaction feedback
Button press, toasts, and hover on specific elements make actions and results feel responsive. That feedback is not spread across illustrations and pages.
4. Group pages by how they are used
Content is designed differently by type, and features are modular, so a new function is easier to pick up.
5. Differentiate components
Trading pages can use special component sizes and styles, so a very dense screen still fits the system.
02 Problems
The response to those problems: less color, with black and white as the base and brand green as accent; less decoration, so layout and structure explain use; necessary micro-interactions, not decorative ones; pages grouped and modularized by function; trading screens allowed their own component sizes and styles.
Professional, rigorous, minimal, restrained. In short: less is more.
03 Homepage
The homepage kept the original functions and trimmed them. The real change was visual.
04 Other pages
The other pages continue the homepage language: simple, mostly black and white, with brand color as accent. Redundant design from the old version was cut back, and layout and hero style shift with each page’s function.
05 Mobile
The app update started once Web was past the halfway point. I was not deeply in the app redesign—three colleagues owned it. I reviewed the work and joined the discussions that set the direction.
06 Closing
Accepting what isn’t perfect
Every project is imperfect in some way, from the situation or from the limits of what we could do. Here, the gaps came from a few specific causes.
1. The scope was large, and the business understanding was thin
The product was large, across clients and a great many pages. I took it on as soon as I joined, before I understood the business deeply, and there was little time to settle in first.
2. Trust takes time
I had only just joined, so trust was still forming. The leads did not want a long early exploration. They wanted specific pages first, and the overall tone inferred afterward. Real pages force visual tradeoffs, and a style inferred from those tradeoffs will drift from the ideal. A relatively clear direction only appeared around the halfway point. Before that, almost every new page needed another round of discussion.
3. The team was hard to align
A lot of people were involved. I led it, but getting everyone else to understand and follow one design approach was difficult. In a team, one plus one is often less than two. At this scale, written rules and pulling conclusions out in time mattered more than usual.