Fluent
Designed the system and flows for a crypto-to-banking bridge product — wallet, exchange, and traditional finance integration — from the ground up as a freelance UX/UI designer.
Context
Fluent was attempting something more ambitious than most crypto startups at the time. It wasn’t just another wallet or another exchange. It was trying to bridge the gap between the crypto world and traditional banking—a gap that, at the time, very few were taking seriously. The product combined crypto wallet functionality with exchange trading, but the real bet was on the connection layer: making crypto work alongside traditional financial infrastructure rather than against it.
The project was in preparation stage when I joined. The goal was to get everything design-ready before launch—visual identity, design system, user flows, investor and sales materials.
My Role
Freelance UX/UI Designer. My focus was on building the design system from the ground up: setting up the architecture, organizing the files, structuring components so they would scale. I also worked on the development of user flows and built out mockups for those flows. In parallel, I contributed to the marketing and sales decks the company needed for investors and partners.
I worked under the lead designer—a designer based in the UK with ten years of experience. That mentorship shaped how I think about systems work to this day.
Process
Everything ran in parallel. The decks needed to ship for fundraising. The user flows needed to support the product roadmap. The design system needed to be ready to scale once the product launched. There was no luxury of doing one thing at a time.
The lead designer set the direction. I executed within it and brought my own thinking where it fit. The cadence was tight: design, review, iterate, ship. The senior designer pushed me toward decisions I wouldn’t have made alone—better ones.
Research
Most of the strategic research was led by the senior designer and the founders. My job was to translate their insights into design that worked. That meant understanding the dual-audience problem deeply: crypto-native users who wanted speed and flexibility, and traditional banking users who needed familiarity and trust. The flows had to serve both without compromising either.
Approach
The design system was where I focused most of my energy. I structured it using atomic design principles—building from the smallest units (tokens, primitives) up through molecules, organisms, and templates. Every component had a defined purpose and clear states. Files were organized so any designer joining the team could find what they needed and understand the logic behind it.
That structural thinking was new to me at the time. I had built design systems before, but not with the rigor that the senior designer modeled. He showed me how to think in components, not screens. How to design for reuse from day one. How to make a design system that holds up when the product grows.
Final Design
The design system was the strongest deliverable from this project. Even though Fluent never launched, what we built was production-ready: tokens, components, documentation, user flow mockups, marketing materials. The system was coherent. It would have scaled.
Two or three months after I joined, the company ran out of funding and the project was shut down. The product never went live.
Impact
The product itself had no market impact—it didn’t ship. But the design system became one of the strongest pieces in my portfolio. It’s the project I show when I want to demonstrate how I think about systems work, architecture, and scalability. The fact that it didn’t launch doesn’t change the quality of what we built. It just changes who got to see it.
What I Learned
Atomic design and component thinking. This is the technical skill I took with me. The senior designer reframed how I approach every design system since. You don’t build screens and extract components later. You build components first and let them compose into screens. That shift changed how I work.
How mentorship accelerates skill. Ten years of experience can’t be transferred in two months, but the way someone thinks can be observed and absorbed. Working that closely with a senior designer was the fastest growth period in my early career. I learned more from his decisions than from any course or article.
Startups don’t always finish. Funding disappears. Markets shift. Sometimes good work doesn’t reach users. That’s not a failure of the work—it’s the reality of building inside uncertainty. The lesson is to build well anyway, because the work outlives the project.