0 to 1 • UX STRATEGY • FINTECH • WEB3
Kingdom Studios DeFi Kingdoms
Making on-chain finance feel like an adventure by building a world where every DeFi interaction has a place, a character, and a story.
ROLE
Co-Founder and Lead Product Designer
TEAM
1 Product Designer, 1 CD, 1 PM, 1 UI Designer, 1 Digital Designer, Pixel Artists, 2 Frontend Engineers, 2 Solidity Engineers
SCOPE
End-to-end product design, design system, UX strategy
PLATFORM
Web, Mobile, Wallet, NFT Marketplace
OVERVIEW
By 2021, Uniswap V2 forks were everywhere. Every new DEX was functionally identical with the same token swap interface, the same liquidity pool tables, the same raw financial terminology that made sense to crypto natives and no one else.
The challenge was building one that people actually wanted to spend time in. One that translated the complexity of DeFi into something intuitive, engaging, and worth coming back to.
As Co-Founder and Lead Product Designer, the goals was to create an experience that could onboard users who had never touched DeFi, while remaining credible and functional.
DeFi (decentralized finance) lets people trade, lend, and earn on financial products directly with no bank or middleman. It runs on blockchain technology, meaning on-chain transactions happen through code rather than institutions. By 2021, it was one of the fastest-growing sectors in tech.
PROCESS
Mapping DeFi to a fantasy world
Instead of pages and dashboards, every DeFi function became a zone with a purpose and a character. Users didn't navigate to a "swap" interface page, they entered a realm and visited the NPC Matoya at the Marketplace. They didn't manage liquidity pools, they tended Seeds in the Gardens.
The language of the game replaced the language of finance, lowering the barrier to entry without dumbing down the mechanics underneath.
A typical DEX interface by the lovely Uniswap.
Serendale realm Marketplace zone with NPCs.
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![Video game interface showing a token selection menu with options for common bases with pixel art characters in a forest background.]()
TOKEN SWAPS
Trade with Matoya, the merchant NPC
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![Pixel art depiction of a farm scene with a garden, various plants, flowers, and vegetables, a small building, and characters including a farmer and a person tending the garden.]()
LIQUIDITY POOLS
Plant seeds, watch them grow.
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![Pixel art depiction of a small, enclosed space with a yellow ground, a green turtle-like creature, several rocks, and scattered items including a pink feather, blue gem, and green leaves.]()
STAKING
Deposit tokens, earn tokens
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![Video game menu screen showing options to travel to different locations and manage bridge-related assets, with pixel art background depicting a dockside scene.]()
CROSS-CHAIN BRIDGING
Partner bridges brought into the world
Solving the bridging problem
Cross-chain bridging was one of the biggest pain points in DeFi where users need to leave the platform, find a third-party bridge, and navigate back.
We made partnerships with bridge providers and brought them directly into the game world as the Docks zone. Users could bridge their assets without ever leaving the experience, with the same visual language and character interactions as the rest of the platform.
This dramatically reduced drop-off by 35% at a critical onboarding step.
Building the design system from zero
With a platform spanning web, mobile, wallet, and marketplace, consistency is non-negotiable. While the phenomenal nostalgic pixel art is done by talented pixel artists, the design system architecture consists of design tokens, UI components, interaction patterns, and a scalable front-end component library.
The system accommodates both the fantasy visual language of the game world and the precise functional requirements of financial interfaces: real-time data, transaction states, wallet connections, and error handling.
OUTCOMES
Aug ‘21
LAUNCH
Went live with Marketplace, Gardens, and Jeweler on the blockchain. Immediate traction from the first week.
161%
DEC 2021 WALLET GROWTH IN 14 DAYS
Unique wallets engaging with DeFi Kingdoms grew 161% in just two weeks in December 2021, driven by word-of-mouth and the differentiated experience.
$1B+
MARKET CAP BY DEC 2021
The token reached a $1B market cap and the platform was cited alongside Axie Infinity as one of the two biggest crypto games in the world.
DFK grew fast as top project on the home chain and launched the first blockchain subnet L1 on Avalanche, with a full platform migration to new infrastructure without losing the community. I'm genuinely grateful to a community that stuck with us through the journey, 2M+ users at peak and a billion in on-chain volume strong.
Featured Work
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01 NICE
Led UX for the #1 cloud contact center platform designing omnichannel routing and AI-powered agent tool used by Verizon, Visa, Disney, and Toyota.
ENTERPRISE SAAS · B2B · AI · DESIGN SYSTEMS
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02 NICE AI Copilot for Agents
Led design for the AI Copilot product, surfacing real-time sentiment, next-best-action guidance, and suggested responses, with Salesforce integration.
ENTERPRISE SAAS · B2B · AI · DESIGN SYSTEMS
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![This is a detailed screenshot of a customer experience management dashboard and a small chat window. The dashboard displays various metrics including total cases, resolutions, SLA statistics, call queues, agent statuses, and active agents. It features sections for insights, tasks, agent queue statistics, SLA scores, guidance scores, and active agent details. The small chat window shows a conversation with a customer service agent named Giovanna Daniels, including a video call interface and skill details.]()
03 NICE Supervisor
Redesigned the real-time operations hub for contact center supervisors. Unifying agent monitoring, live intervention, and AI guidance scores into a single scannable surface.
ENTERPRISE SAAS · B2B · DATA VISUALIZATION · AI
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![Pixel art game interface showing a list of tokens for selecting a coin type in a fantasy setting with two characters, one seated and one standing, in a forest background.]()
04 Kingdom Studios
Built the design system from zero for an innovative platform supporting 1B+ transactions with token swaps, staking, NFT marketplace, wallet, and mobile across millions of users.
0 → 1 · WEB3 · UX STRATEGY · DESIGN SYSTEMS
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05 HODL Bonds
Designed end-to-end for a new on-chain financial product letting crypto holders stack what they believe in without trading, custody risk, or unsustainable yield.
0 → 1 · MOBILE · FINTECH · WEB3 · DESIGN SYSTEMS -
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06 meta.us
Established branding and scalable design systems for a global competitive esports platform founded by ex-Blizzard directors, optimizing responsive performance across markets.
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