UI & UX Design
Design Stakeholder
5 Stakeholders
2020-2021
Various components that make up the Rewards wallet
Brave Rewards at the time I arrived was still in the initial design state which was hindering the product both visually and functionally. We wanted to refresh the Rewards product for users to enable planned features to be included and allow the product to scale more effectively. This process took the entirety of my time working at Brave and included many iterations, rounds of user testing and many stakeholder discussions.
Brave Rewards at the time I arrived was still in the initial design state which was hindering the product both visually and functionally. We wanted to refresh the Rewards product for users to enable planned features to be included and allow the product to scale more effectively. This process took the entirety of my time working at Brave and included many iterations, rounds of user testing and many stakeholder discussions.
Wallet notification, Tipping view & Summary of user activity (from left)
Up until this point, the Rewards wallet has been serving its purpose but lacked important elements which includes:
To tackle the design solutions for the posed issues above, I spend much of my time around information architecture and how to best present grouped UI elements.
Establishing a new layout with wider controls for users and richer personalization for the content creators.
Explorations of various panel components figuring out how to handle what needed to be on the top level 'card' view. Balancing what users wanted but being able to ease that cognitive load was also at the forefront of my thinking.
Various components that make up the Rewards wallet
Improved messaging on estimated monthly earnings & status of those funds
A big win for this panel redesign was displaying and tracking estimated earnings up front and center. No longer will users need to dig around sublayers of screens to get this information, which was a large outcry from active users. This seemingly small pixel feature was a step in the right direction of communicating more effectively with Rewards product users.
The display of estimated earnings was complex from a design and technical perspective, but the return on investment in the form of new found user trust and transparency is always worth the effort.
When I joined Brave, one of my first big projects was tackling the redesign of the tipping banner. The meeting point of creators and supporters in the Basic Attention Token economy. As long a user had an available balance in their Rewards wallet, they could go to any of the supported sites and decide to tip them one time or on a recurring basis.
Refreshed tipping banner includes default backgrounds & clearer tipping controls
The tipping banner UI that existed at that time was fairly bare bones, lacking necessary features (such as tipping frequency) and less then engaging experience. The main design changes included included the following:
I began by exploring various layout and positioning concepts for the tipping banner with my key goals in mind.
The design had to effectively juggle a content snippet, creator profile and tipping controls all while providing the space to showcase artwork.
As someone who enjoys challenges, this one really got the noodle going. I tried various constructions and combinations of the banner elements in an attempt to figure out the right balance with an effort in making the artwork shine.
Explorations on layout & positioning to configure the best design
New banner ushered more adaptable UX & visually interesting UI
The final layout design was able to solve the issues above while still retain familiar elements from the prior design. We now have a rotating selection of default banner backgrounds to keep things fresh and a larger canvas for creators to shine. Users now have the option to add a custom tip amount as well as defining one time or monthly tips right from this screen.
Creators in the ecosystem can personalize their tipping banners!
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Looking back on my time building and improving on the Brave Rewards ecosystem, I can say it was instrumental for my career going forward. This was the first time I was up close and personal with crypto users, KYC & custodial architecture. My designs played a big role in confirming and addressing key pain points. Whether it was better messaging in the wallet, improving creator visibility in the tipping banner or a clearer and succinct KYC experience. Beyond the material improvements just mentioned, it was great fun building parts of the Brave browser and Brave Search to boot.
As a designer in this fast moving industry, it is vital to look back and improve moving forward. After my time at Brave I have learned to stand firm in my design decisions, prioritizing users over pretty pixels and focusing on making crypto as frictionless as possible for the next billion users.
