TL;DR
- What was at stake
- Users who think their money is gone call support or leave, right when a new financial product most needs their trust.
- What changed
- The client relabeled its transaction states and moved the product explainer ahead of wallet setup. UX and compliance also became one workstream.
- My role
- Research lead and strategic advisor, from the audit through the executive roadmap and implementation support
- Timeline
- 6 weeks: 1 of discovery, 2 of research, 1 of synthesis, 2 of readout and implementation support
Weeks to compliance approval, measured. UX and compliance reviewed changes together instead of one after the other.
Friction points found and ranked by combined UX and regulatory risk, each with an owner. 11 were in transaction states.
Relabeled transaction states, and onboarding that explains the investment before asking for a wallet.
The roadmap also projected a 22% lift in 90-day retention and about half as many support tickets. Those are projections, not measured results.
Most of the friction came after people sent money, when they couldn’t tell whether it was moving.
- 1“Processing” with no steps or time estimate, so a normal 2 to 15 minute wait looked like a frozen page
- 2The balance didn’t move during settlement, which read as “it didn’t go through”
- 3“Pending” and “Processing” used for different states, and failed and in-progress looked nearly the same
- 1A progress bar with the three real phases and an estimated time
- 2An “In settlement” balance, so locked money stays visible
- 3Plain-language notes at the moment of uncertainty
Read the full case study
How the roadmap was built
All 17 findings went on one list, ranked by combined risk, and each got an owner in product, content, or compliance.
“Pending for more than a few seconds means something went wrong.”
Card payments and bank logins feel instant, so a delay reads as a dropped connection or lost funds.
Blockchain validation and compliant custodial clearing take minutes to hours.
A progress bar showing the three phases (network confirmation, compliance check, minting) with estimated time ranges.
“If my balance hasn’t updated, the transaction didn’t happen.”
Balances change the moment you click Submit.
Funds sit locked in escrow while the underlying real-world asset rails settle.
An “In settlement” balance showing locked and available funds right after the transaction starts.
“I need to set up my wallet before I understand the investment.”
Security setup always comes before the details of what you’re buying.
Understanding the investment doesn’t require a wallet. The wallet is only needed to transact.
Onboarding re-sequenced to explain yield structure and asset backing before asking for a wallet connection or KYC.
“The legal fine print is generic boilerplate I can skip.”
Disclosures are standard FDIC and FINRA language that protects the platform.
Smart contract interactions and tokenized holdings carry specific, non-reversible risks.
Short disclosures placed at the point of decision, such as the lockup period shown right on the submit button.
Users needed plain-language transaction states. Compliance needed precise regulatory wording. Putting both on one roadmap meant every label had to pass both tests.
The client expected onboarding to be the problem
The biggest risk of losing users is in onboarding.
Transaction states held almost three times as many friction points as onboarding.
People bring a banking mental model, so a normal settlement delay reads as lost money.
What would have changed my mindIf people had read the pending state correctly and still left, the problem would have been somewhere else, probably onboarding, as the client thought.
Participants expected money to move as soon as they clicked Submit, and a spinner with no time estimate looked like an error.
Traditional finance on the surface, blockchain underneath
The client let people invest in real-world assets through blockchain-based tokens, inside a regulated framework. The interface looked like a familiar banking app. Underneath, settlement happened in stages over minutes to hours, and the screen didn’t show those stages.
I was brought in before launch to audit onboarding and the full transaction flow, find the friction most likely to hurt retention, and deliver a roadmap ranked by both UX and regulatory risk.
Comparing what the screen said with what people understood
The interface worked. Buttons did what they should, and nothing was visually broken. So rather than run a standard usability review, I looked at the gap between what each screen communicated and what someone used to a bank app would take from it:
- A walkthrough of every state from first deposit through withdrawal
- Mapping the expectations people brought from traditional finance
- A step-by-step review of onboarding order and disclosures
- A review of the regulatory language against what users actually understood
I also ran in-depth, contextual sessions with 9 people who matched the platform’s target investor profile, to see where their expectations didn’t match how the product worked.
Pointed to transactions as the retention risk, so they got most of the research time.
Showed where people’s expectations and the product split apart.
Set the order of fixes.
Moved the fixes into the build.
The walkthrough had already mapped every transaction state, so the nine sessions could focus on which ones people misread.
11 of 17 friction points came from one place
Most were about what the screen showed while money was moving. Every state was technically accurate, and people still panicked at normal delays.
“I refreshed the page three times because I thought the transaction errored out. There was no progress bar or estimated time, so I assumed I had mistyped something and lost my funds. I was really starting to freak out!”
“It was weird when it asked me to link a Web3 wallet before explaining how the underlying tokenized asset actually generates yield. It felt backward. I wanted to understand the financial product before dealing with the tech setup.”
Each state as users experienced it before the redesign. Friction numbers link to the audit matrix below.
A confirmation screen with a “Submitted” checkmark.
“My money has been transferred and my position is active.”
A loading spinner labeled “Processing…” with no timer.
“The page froze, or my transaction failed and my funds are lost.”
The dashboard, still showing the balance from before the transaction.
“It didn’t go through. My balance hasn’t changed.”
A quiet balance update in the transaction history.
“I guess it worked, but I’m not sure when it finished or what fees were taken.”
Not shown here: the other onboarding and regulatory items, and #08, which is in the withdrawal flow.
8 high, 6 medium, and 3 low. Product owned 10, content 4, and compliance 3.
| # | Friction point | Area | Severity | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Ambiguous “Processing” vs. “Pending” terminology | Transaction | High | Content |
| 02 | Settlement window duration never communicated | Transaction | High | Product |
| 03 | Same visual design for final and temporary errors | Transaction | High | Product |
| 04 | Balance display hides locked positions during settlement | Transaction | High | Product |
| 05 | Network delay indistinguishable from a rejected transaction | Transaction | High | Product |
| 12 | Wallet creation conflated with account registration | Onboarding | High | Product |
| 13 | Asset explainer comes after wallet connection | Onboarding | High | Product |
| 16 | Risk boilerplate not calibrated to tokenized assets | Regulatory | High | Compliance |
| 06 | No proactive notice when settlement runs long | Transaction | Medium | Product |
| 07 | Compressed transaction history hides past pending details | Transaction | Medium | Product |
| 08 | Withdrawal flow hides how long a position stays locked | Transaction | Medium | Product |
| 09 | Returning mid-flow shows no summary of where things stand | Transaction | Medium | Product |
| 14 | First deposit assumes TradFi settlement expectations | Onboarding | Medium | Content |
| 17 | Regulatory status of a position unclear before confirming | Regulatory | Medium | Compliance |
| 10 | Unexplained gap between on-chain and platform status | Transaction | Low | Content |
| 11 | No guidance during peak settlement times | Transaction | Low | Content |
| 15 | Consent disclosures lack progressive disclosure | Onboarding | Low | Compliance |
Impact
This project showed me that clear transaction screens and regulatory safety sometimes need the same fix. For the product and engineering teams, the audit settled debates about the experience and turned them into a prioritized list of fixes, each with an owner.
Hindsight
People who skipped the explainer during onboarding were the ones most likely to panic at a pending state. Running both reviews together would have connected those findings sooner.The explainer fix and the pending-state fix could have been treated as one problem from the start.
The regulatory findings mattered more than their count of two suggests. Comprehension testing on the disclosure language would have given that recommendation stronger evidence. Time and budget didn’t allow it, and it’s the piece I’d add first.Compliance would have had user evidence, not just my read, for the two items most likely to get argued down.
With two more weeks
Compare post-launch support tickets with the roadmap’s projection.
Put the “In settlement” balance in front of first-time depositors moving their own money.
Give the withdrawal flow the same state-by-state review deposits got.