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Okcoin (OKX)

Okcoin, a US-based crypto exchange, is part of a much larger organization, OKX. In total the team is around 3,000 people spread across the world. In addition, there are several brands that operate under the parent company, OKX. I was hired as a design manger and was very quickly promoted to Head of Product design. My team grew from 1 to 16 nearly overnight including product designers, content designers, researchers, design managers and design systems. My team was mostly focused on the US product when I joined, which changed to an international team and OKX group-level initiatives as my role expanded. Learn more about the group-level reorg and some projects I led below. 

Group Level Reorg

Team 

Executive team across group 

PED Leadership 

Stakeholders 

Executive team

Context

Each of the brands within OKX were operating entirely independent of each other and this was costly and inefficient for the business. This separation created silos of information and multiple ways of doing the same thing. We needed to identify the areas in both the products and processes that could be approached at a group level and leveraged by all of the brands. 

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Solution 

Teams across the business worked together to identify the most problematic departments and products and built a path forward to restructuring. 

The approach was to create internal services at the group level that would service each brand, but from a single cohesive department. KYC, Risk and OTC would each be a group level team. Additionally sitting above each product team would be our Design Systems team. This would also require forming a team to consolidate 3 entirely separate Design Systems into a single system that would be themeable for each brand, which I was part of leading.  

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Impact 

This project would have large impacts across the organization and required planning and a plan plan for implementation which would roll out in stages. It helped to begin getting organized and a path to greatly increased efficiency and collaboration across the business and product.

The Design System team hit the ground running and made huge progress during my time getting to the point of having core product components that were themeable to each brand and tokens created for use in net new projects and a plan for rolling out new system across the existing product. See example in next project.

Group-level Approach to KYC

Team 

3 Product Designers (2 US, 1HK), Head of Design (Me)
1 Design Systems Designer (1 US)
2 Content Designers (2 US)
2 Product Managers (2 HK)
1 BE Eng lead (1 US)
4-5 Engineers (3 US, 2 HK)

Stakeholders 

Executive team

Compliance team 

Risk team 

Legal 

Data 

Product Marketing

Context

Know Your Customer/Client (KYC) verification is a set of standards and requirements used in the investment and financial services industries to ensure brokers have sufficient information about their clients, their risk profiles, and their financial position.

Problems

  • Extremely long and complicated compliance implementation and eng lift

  • Inconsistencies across group in process 

  • Complicated UX

  • Guidance not clear

  • Customers concerned with the amount of personal information required

  • Jumio (service provider) slow during peak times and results in BE issues to verify customers

  • Low conversion rates due to confusing UX, no option to pause/resume, time consuming

  • Hich CS ticket volume

  • Huge dropoff from sign up to start KYC 1 and start KYC 1 to completion KYC 1

  • Of users that complete KYC 1, large percentage take longer than 10 minutes

Goals

  • Build a group-level modular system that would enable our compliance team to define screens via an internal app based on local KYC requirements. 

  • Design a modular customer experience where each requirement for a specific KYC program can be toggled on/off by compliance. 

  • Begin implantation of our group level design system with themeable components for each brand. 

  • Define process for new KYC group-level team. 

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Current Okcoin KYC Audit

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User Flows

Okcoin KYC screens

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Okcoin Screen Selection

Group-level, themeable Design System

Below is an example of two screens pulling components from a single library with specific theming applied for each brand.  

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Business Outcomes

  • Worked with executive leadership and cross-functional partners to identify initiatives to approach from a group-level

  • KYC, payments platform, compliance, risk, design systems

  • Successfully reorganized team across the US & APAC

  • Increased efficiency across the organization for KYC and reduced time to launch a new region from 4-6 months to 3.5 weeks

  • New modular system will enable the compliance team to make updates on the fly as regulations shift

  • Built new product development process to support global team in being more efficient and increasing collaboration 

 

Product Outcomes

  • Reduced customer time to complete KYC by 3 minutes

  • Improved conversion rates by 12% (sign up to purchase first crypto)

  • Delivered fully refreshed experience in 5 weeks for all OKC and OKX regions

  • Implemented group level, themeable design system components used across OKX & OKC

  • Scan ID to fill fields testing very well with customers. Easier to use and reduce fear they will make a mistake

  • CD team worked alongside PD to create consistent messaging and develop a new system for build Lokalize keys

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