Who are Qredo?

An enterprise-level digital asset storage and deployment platform which utilises multi-party computation (MPC) technology to remove the need for a traditional private key. This allows trading firms and institutions to easily manage and collaborate across multiple investment funds and wallets in ways not previously possible in the blockchain/crypto space.

My role and responsibilities

As Part 1 of the Qredo project came to an end, I agreed to join in a permanent capacity, as their new Head of Product Design.

In addition to helping lead the charge towards $80 million of investment, billions in AUM, and millions in daily transactions, I was in charge of building and leading a diverse and happy design team who would work tirelessly to ensure that the product experience was loved and appreciated by our customers.

Opportunities and goals of the project

It may seem odd to see the end of one's time at a company as a fresh start, but during this time at Qredo, my team and I were the pioneers of a project that would go about completely re-platforming the entire customer-facing suite of apps.

Amid generally positive customer feedback, we initiated a process of asking ourselves some pretty straightforward questions about the state of the product. With our culture of mutual trust and freedom to express ourselves honestly, we discovered some relatively severe issues that we wanted to explore further. A team-wide side-of-desk project was initiated, and over the following weeks and months, we toiled through unravelling loads of existing UX patterns and worked on ways things could be improved.

With each newly discovered issue, a broader question of the long-term scalability of the product came to the fore, and with key product and engineering colleagues, a new project and team, "Purple Rain", was formed.

Purple Rain would propose an entirely new platform, which would affect a complete rebuild of the FE and BE backend architecture and introduce a brand new user experience and overarching design system.

Biggest challenge faced

While Purple Rain was a side-of-desk project, Qredo went through a stage of hyper-scaling that saw the company grow from around 35 to almost 200.

As part of this scaling, a bunch of new stakeholders needed to be brought up to speed with the project to ensure everyone had bought into the need for it to be prioritised and kept up to date with its progress. In addition to this, our working practices needed to be updated to keep up with this growth.

Overcoming that challenge

Previously, we'd gotten away without a documented way of working, as the team was of a size where it felt like overkill, but it was clear that now we needed to evolve from "flow" to "process".

Whilst the product and engineering teams worked on how we would get from design to production with high-quality output, in collaboration with the CPO, Lead PM and Head of Research, I worked on how we would go about creating better discovery and exploration phases to ensure that we were designing the right things for the right customers at the right time.

We also set up regular programme reviews where all tasks and sequencing were discussed to ensure stakeholders were up to speed and kept in the know. This helped manage expectations and allowed for Q&A around the likes of overall progress and scheduling of external comms.

Finally, the most crucial development in this evolution was for me and my team to better identify stakeholders and consider how their motivations and expectations should affect how we work and collaborate with them.

The thing I most enjoyed

It may seem counterintuitive, but looking back, my favourite part of this project was when it all got a little bit messy. Relationships became frayed when the pressure was dialled up, and fingers were (rightly or wrongly) pointed.

That's not to say I enjoyed these moments at the time (they were stressful), but in hindsight, I think it's important to experience these sorts of things every now and then so that you can learn from them and grow as a designer and, more importantly, as a leader.

Outcome and learnings

As Purple Rain went live (renamed to New Qredo), it felt like dropping my child at nursery for the first time. There were teething problems, and there were tears, but as the days passed things got better. Over the following months we made further improvements and as we migrated existing customers over, the feedback was positive, and our hard work felt worth it.

But of course, that's not to say it was all plain sailing.

As a company, we had yet to really pinpoint our place in the marketplace, and with the crypto winter well and truly in full flow, the times ahead were always going to be tough.

And with that, in September 2023, along with a number of others, as part of a huge cost-saving exercise, I was let go.

It was a sad moment, but I saw it as an opportunity for another fresh (re)start, this time for me.

What it's like to work with me.

Will is patient, listens well and most importantly challenges Product decisions if data or common sense suggests another course of action.

Oliver Happy

Product Director, Qredo

Always approachable for a chat about new ideas, Will had a knack for spotting potential hitches early and proposing clever solutions.

Deyvid Raychev

Lead Web Developer, Qredo

Will creates an environment where innovation and creativity flourish, encouraging his team to push boundaries and reach new heights.

Ana Espuig

Lead Product Designer, Qredo

Further recommendations and testimonials can be found on my Linkedin profile.

Projects

© 2024 Design by Will Rose Ltd.