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Vault12 is a mobile app that harnesses a group of friends or personal devices to protect digital assets.
-Yes- that means bitcoin.
Product Design Lead, Creative Direction, Branding, Copywriting
I was hired as the first employee and product designer to create an MVP of a mobile app that utlilzed a unique method of securing digital assets.
The challenge was to take a complicated cryptographic method of distributing data and use it to design an incentive driven security product with a social spin. Vault12’s approach doesn’t use centralized servers for security purposes. This created both a unique product to the market, as well as unique experience by pushing people to communicate both in real life as well as in-app.
I approach each project first with a discovery stage. This is categorized by empathy driven interviews and desk research to determine who the users are, what their needs might be. The discovery stage is equal parts psychology and market research. Getting the temperature of the market, evaluating the competitive landscape and determining fit are all important vectors to consider.
After analysing the discovery stage insigts, I begin conceptualizing a solution by whiteboarding user flows, wireframing screens, and mapping the products architecture. With an architecture in place, it becomes much easier to add brand styles and typography, visual elements, colors and animations.
Product design is an iteritive process built on feedback from users, measured impact, and efficacy of approach. I like to test theories early in my process, and continue to test and respond throughout the product lifecycle. Acting and reacting are the best ways to hone product market fit.
- ✦ Design an MVP for a social-based vault
- ✦ Educate users on new concepts like social unlock/restore, and threshold security policies
- ✦ Explore Incentivization
- ✦ Get traction with the community
The fruit dealer was a catch-all profile for the everyday shop owner. More specifically referring to retail shops in developing nations. They may rely on cryptocurrency as a means of payment if their economy or political situation is unstable.
Key Interests: Simplicity, Incentivization,
This was more loosely and broadly defined as the group of users that required secure asset storage for geopolitical, financial, personal or other interests. The crypto community has a wide array of personalities, skillsets and interests.
Key Interests: Flexibility, High Security, Customization
As both investors in Vault12 and target users, these two represent crypto owners that hold a large amount of digital assets and require significant security.
The Winklevoss twins had been noted as manually writing down and splitting up their keys across various locations.
Key Interests: Policy Configurability, Accessibility
The current Vault12 release is an expansive app loaded with a number of features, states and uses. It was imperative to build a solid foundation early-on that the product could scale on.
Early wireframes depict some of our explorations into the gamification of security policies as incentives, which became the launchpad for our crypto-based incentive program.
Our first iteration of the interface was more visually literal to a bank vault- using a vault door as a base to display a users Guardian set-up. The assumption was that this was more approachable, delightful, and effective at commiunicating to the user.
We still hadn't focused much on the brand, but wanted to breath a little life into the interface to excite investors and early testers. While the design did succeed in building a buzz, it was still a bit too immature, and would need to see a facelift with a strong identity before going to market.
- ✦ Mature the product design
✦ Integrate new features: Subscription plan, Crypto-Incentives, File Storage, Guardian Management, Edge Cases
✦ Desktop & Tablet
- ✦ Scale design efforts from product to marketing
✦ Partner Integration
Since this product forks into different types of users on set-up, we wanted to make sure there was a clear distinction in the path a user was choosing. We organized the three paths by their varying level of importance, with Creation first, to fuel growth.
Setting up a security policy can be done with local devices , or by adding friends from a contact book. Adding friends as Guardians requires an extra interaction outside of the application via SMS or Email invitations.
Setting up a security policy can be done with local devices , or by adding friends from a contact book. Adding friends as Guardians requires an extra interaction outside of the application via SMS or Email invitations.
One of the core functionalities of Vault12 is the process of unlocking and restoring assets. Both of these features require a user to initiate the unlock sequence which sends a confirmation request to their guardians. As a security precaution, vault owners are meant to make a follow up phone call. The number of required guardians is based on the vault owners policy.
The sole job of Guardians, and one which they are compensated for with the cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) is to respond to requests by Vault Owners. Guardians have a dedicated dashboard that houses all communications for each of the Vault Owners they are guarding. Requests come in the form of unlocks of assets or full vault restores.
The new brand needed to convey our core message with simplicity, trust and delight. We designed a logo as a symbol of bringing together entities to form a protective barrier. The logo maintains a strong mark reflective of a trustworthy banking product.
We wanted the brand to scale to our long term strategy with enterprise partnerships that potentially require us to differentiate our verticals.
The crypto industry is branded in some ways by volatility. To legitimize ourselves is a hostile environment, we wanted core colors that would be both remarkable as well as communicate a brand that is trustworthy, secure, and approachable.
Because our Alpha users were more receptive to traditional security products, we wanted to choose a font such as IBM Plex Sans to communicate safety, security and innovation. The rigid letterforms and near monospacing really anchor that message.
For launch we needed to scale our marketing efforts to attract the community. I worked with a few talented designers and illustrators to bring the Vault12 to the next level with an engaging new marketing site.
Credits: Julien Renvoye, Design & Illustration
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// Made in New York City // Product Design : Creative Direction : User Experience : User Interface // Current Status : 🤭 // If you build it, they will come // Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved. R Brandon Forant // Made in New York City // Product Design : Creative Direction : User Experience : User Interface // Current Status : 🤭 // If you build it, they will come // Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved. R Brandon Forant // Made in New York City // Product Design : Creative Direction : User Experience : User Interface // Current Status : 🤭 // If you build it, they will come // Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved. R Brandon Forant // Made in New York City // Product Design : Creative Direction : User Experience : User Interface // Current Status : 🤭 // If you build it, they will come // Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved. R Brandon Forant // Made in New York City // Product Design : Creative Direction : User Experience : User Interface // Current Status : 🤭 // If you build it, they will come // Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved. R Brandon Forant
