Path Crypto
Path (prev. Stacked) is a platform designed to make crypto investing secure and accessible to a broad audience. I was a key Product Designer, responsible for the UI/UX across web and mobile applications, as well as the marketing website.
Working in a lean team of two designers and a CGI artist, we built the product from scratch under strict regulatory and compliance constraints, with a clear goal: pass SEC approval while maintaining a user-friendly, intuitive experience for mainstream users.
We successfully achieved both. Following the product announcement, the social media audience grew from 0 to ~150K, and the platform was approved by the SEC.
Here’s the full story behind this work.
In 2021, a Chicago-based company raised $35M in funding and began assembling a team to build a new crypto investment platform — Path (prev. Staked). I joined as a Product Designer, brought in to establish a strong, scalable user experience. At that point, the brand foundation was already in place, including visual direction, color palette, and a friendly, approachable tone.
However, the product itself was still in its early stages. The UI/UX existed only as a set of fragmented concepts, without a cohesive structure or clear user flows.
Our goal was to build the product from scratch under strict regulatory and compliance constraints, with a clear objective: pass SEC approval, while keeping the experience friendly and intuitive for mainstream users.
I worked on UI/UX across the web app and mobile app, collaborating with another designer who owned parallel flows, and a CGI artist who created custom visuals based on our direction. I also fully owned the marketing website, from design to launch, building it in Webflow.
My first priority was to review existing product documentation and inputs from product owners, and translate them into clear, effective user flows. Below is the resulting product map.
Every item and connection in this system was carefully designed with both business outcomes and user satisfaction in mind. Marked items indicate areas designed by my colleague, while the rest was led by me.
This section introduces users to two investment modes, managed and self-directed, allowing them to choose one or combine both, and track their portfolio performance over time. It also features Web3 market and product news, designed to be consumed directly within the interface without redirecting users to external sources.
The experience was designed to handle a full range of states, from empty to highly data-dense scenarios, ensuring clarity and usability at every stage. Special attention was given to edge cases to maximize feature adoption, task success rate, and overall engagement.
This investment mode allows users to independently explore and purchase tokens. My goal was to make the process of discovering the crypto market and executing purchases as smooth, transparent, and conversion-efficient as possible.
The journey centers around a page called Market Watch — Path’s token marketplace, where users can instantly see which assets are trending overall and in real time. This is where the user journey begins when selecting the self-directed path from the Dashboard.
This investment mode focuses on building a personalized portfolio based on a risk assessment. It was designed as a product within the product, with a different interaction model centered on minimal user input. The goal was to enable users to comfortably monitor performance through a widget-based insights.
This section was primarily led and designed by my colleague. I contributed by refining parts of the UI to ensure a consistent look and feel across the product.
We built a native wallet that allows users to freely manage their tokens from the Self-Directed section. Users can track, send, deposit, and swap assets, similar to tools like MetaMask.
The wallet experience and UI were fully designed by me.
All notification types and scenarios were carefully designed within a unified pop-up system to support engagement and timely user awareness. The settings menu and its user flows were also fully structured, covering all key sections to ensure clarity, control, and ease of navigation.
The web app was designed to work seamlessly across a wide range of devices, from mobile phones and tablets to large 4K displays. Clear rules were defined for how layouts and components adapt to different screen sizes and orientations, ensuring consistency, readability, and usability across all contexts.
Since this was a new product built from the ground up, there was no existing usage data to rely on.
The foundation came from stakeholders vision, market research, competitor analysis, and user expectations gathered from reviews and discussions across the DeFi and crypto investment space.
All core functionality was adapted for the iOS app, with a focus on preserving familiar patterns from the web experience. At the same time, mobile-specific UX constraints and Apple Human Interface Guidelines required rethinking several interactions. In many cases, flows had to be redesigned from the ground up to feel native and efficient on mobile.
My task was to clearly communicate the product and company through a cohesive web experience. While the content was provided by product owners, I took full ownership of the visual concept, layout design, art direction, and the complete implementation in Webflow.
The challenge was to maximize CTR while staying fully compliant with SEC regulations. This meant avoiding unrealistic visual promises, dark patterns, or any manipulative design tactics, and instead building trust through clarity and transparency.
Following the product announcement, the social media audience grew from 0 to ~150K followers. Path was recognized as a top fintech company in the Midwest by Purpose Jobs, and successfully passed SEC approval. The audience was later integrated into Gemini.
