Dexter (Decentralized Exchange)
Duration
3 months
Services
User research, Wireframe, Prototyping, Testing
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Design Team
Dexter is a decentralized exchange designed to make trading and managing digital assets easier within the Persistence ecosystem.
I worked across the product experience from the initial structure and user flows through interface exploration, visual direction, typography, iconography and the final product design.
The work involved turning a complex trading experience into a clearer, more approachable interface while establishing a visual system that could scale across the product.
THE CHALLENGE
Building a decentralized exchange meant bringing several complex interactions into one product experience.
Users needed to be able to understand assets, trading pairs, balances and transaction states while moving through the product with confidence.
The challenge was to create an interface that could handle the complexity of a DEX without making the experience feel overwhelming.
This meant thinking beyond the trading screen itself and establishing a broader product structure that could support areas such as trading, assets, portfolios and other account-level information.
The product also needed a distinct visual identity. Rather than relying on a conventional financial interface, Dexter needed a system that felt native to the product and could carry across the different experiences within the platform.
DESIGN APPROACH
I started by mapping the core product flows and the different states users would encounter throughout the experience.
Product Flows
The initial flow diagrams helped break down the key interactions and dependencies within the product.
Rather than designing individual screens in isolation, I used these flows to understand how users would move between actions, information and transaction states.
This helped establish the underlying structure before moving into detailed interface design.
Information Architecture
The product was organised around the core tasks users would need to perform within the exchange.
The early explorations focused on how trading information, asset information and account-level data could be presented without competing for attention.
This also helped establish a foundation for the different product areas that would eventually make up the Dexter experience.
Early Interface Exploration
I explored several approaches to the interface before settling on the final direction.
The early wireframes focused on hierarchy, layout and information density rather than visual styling. These explorations helped determine how the trading experience, asset information, tables and account details could work together.
DESIGN EXPLORATION
Once the product structure was established, I moved into visual exploration. The goal was to create an interface that felt distinctly Dexter while remaining functional and easy to navigate.
Visual Direction
The visual exploration moved from the initial wireframes into a darker interface with strong blue tones and contrasting accent colours.
The design language was supported by the surrounding visual world of Dexter, including the illustrated landscape and character-driven imagery.
This gave the product a more recognisable identity while maintaining the clarity required for a financial product.
Colour
I explored a broader colour palette before establishing the colours used in the final interface.
The palette was designed to provide enough contrast between backgrounds, surfaces, actions and data while also giving different states and interactions their own visual cues.
The exploration included both neutral interface colours and brighter accent colours for important actions and states.
Typography & Iconography
Typography and iconography were treated as part of the product system rather than as isolated visual details. The typography needed to remain legible across dense trading interfaces, tables and supporting information. Icons were explored alongside the interface to establish a consistent visual language for navigation, actions and product information.
Final Design
The final Dexter experience brought the product structure and visual direction together into a unified interface.
Trading Experience
The primary trading interface was designed around the core exchange interaction, giving users a clear path through selecting assets, reviewing the transaction and completing the trade.
The interface used a structured hierarchy to separate the primary action from supporting information.
The surrounding visual treatment helped establish Dexter's identity without distracting from the trading experience.
Portfolio & Asset Views
Beyond trading, the product needed to give users a clear view of their assets and activity.
The final designs introduced structured tables and information modules for presenting account and asset information.
This allowed users to move between the active trading experience and broader views of their holdings without losing the overall product context.
Supporting Product Views
The final system extended beyond the primary trading screen into additional product areas.
These screens used the same navigation, typography, colours, components and interaction patterns to create a consistent experience across Dexter.
This was important as the product grew, because new screens could build on an established system rather than introducing a new visual language each time.
Transaction State
Transaction feedback was also designed as part of the core experience.
The final interface included a dedicated transaction state that provided feedback while an action was being processed.
This helped make the transition between initiating a transaction and receiving confirmation more understandable to the user.
WHAT WE CHOSE NOT TO DO
The original Dexter work contains several explorations that did not become part of the final interface.
Rather than presenting every exploration as a final direction, I would use the earlier wireframes, interface variations and colour explorations to show how the product evolved.
The final design intentionally moved toward a more focused interface instead of carrying every visual direction explored during the process into the finished product.
Important: I would keep this section relatively short on the actual portfolio. The current source does not explicitly document the reasons behind every rejected direction, so I would not invent detailed rationale here.
IMPACT & LEARNINGS
Dexter was an end-to-end product design exercise that required thinking across product structure, interaction design and visual systems rather than treating the interface as a collection of individual screens.
Working through the flows, wireframes, visual explorations and final interface helped establish a more consistent experience across the product.
Learnings
Designing a DEX reinforced the importance of establishing the product structure before refining the visual layer. The complexity of trading, assets and transaction states becomes much easier to manage when the underlying flows and hierarchy are clear.
I also learned how important a strong visual system can be when designing a technically complex product. Typography, colour, iconography and reusable interface patterns helped create consistency while allowing different parts of the product to serve different purposes.
Most importantly, Dexter gave me experience designing a product from the ground up, from early flows and wireframes through to the final interface.
