Futures Grand Tournament
Futures Grand Tournament is a yearly trading competition for Binance futures users. Futures users engage in a month-long trading competition and the teams and individuals with the highest PNL get to split a bonus pool up to 1.8 million USDT. From the business side, this project’s objectives were two-fold: to increase existing user stickiness in a time of crypto market downturn, and to acquire new users. It began in 2020 and has been held one or two times every year.
My role was the project lead in a team of 4 designers: 1 UX designer (me), 1 UI designer, 1 visual designer and 1 3D/Motion designer. The design process was around 2 months from the beginning of the design process to launch.
Project Nature
UX and UI Design on web & mobile
Role
Project Lead, UX Designer
Year
2023
Design Process
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I referred to past retrospective meetings and designs, and summarized unresolved UI and UX issues from previous tournaments. Potential solutions were discussed with other stakeholders to get their understanding and buy-in on adding improvements.
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Together with the other 3 designers, we brainstormed and decided on the the tournament theme together, to decide on a visual language. Our conclusion was “Futures Cyberworld”, to signify that cryptocurrencies are the future and here to stay.
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After discussion with stakeholders, I developed the UI mockup based on new tournament mechanism, campaign modules, and new UX improvements. I oversaw the entire project timeline. UX and UI work were shared between 2 designers, while the creative designer did graphic design, and the key visual was done by the 3D and motion designer.
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After extensive discussions with PM and growth team, we confirmed the mobile version of the UI design and made the web and tablet versions.
UX and UI Audit
Before diving into the UI, I first initiated a UX/UI Audit with the product manager and growth team manager, who were doing this for the first time. As the only person with prior experience doing futures trading competitions, I was very much involved in setting the direction, raising issues and proposing solutions. From our last tournament in May 2022, there were 3 major issues that needed to be resolved:
Issue #1
During previous tournaments, we were unable to acquire many new users during the referral challenge part of the competition. The main reason was because the NFTs, which were an integral part of the challenge, were not a strong incentive.
Issue #2
The largest and winning team in the 2022 tournament had over half of the tournament’s participants, which diluted the prize pool per user. This was because the popup with teams sorted the list from largest to smallest by default, giving the most exposure to the largest team. There was a snowball effect and the team size’s growth compounded over the duration of the tournament.
Issue #3
During previous tournaments, we didn’t receive much qualitative feedback from users, since there were no surveys conducted or any feedback collected from our customer service team.
Effect on UX
NFTs served as multipliers for PNL (e.g. SSR NFTs could multiply the prize pool by 2X) - this was great for old users, but for new users who were unfamiliar with Binance and the tournament rules, it was not a strong incentive. As a result, the number of new users was low.
Effect on UX
Although a large team did help increase the overall number of tournament participants, the prize pool was diluted and each user’s rewards were minimal - less than 10 USDT per person. Overall this negatively affected the UX of participation, especially for returning users who found it disincentivizing to even try.
Effect on UX
We didn’t know what motivated users to join the tournament and didn’t know how exactly to market the tournament, aside from emphasizing the prizes in store for tournament participants.
Proposed Solution
We decided to add a Futures Bonus Reward Center, which provides lower trading fee coupons for both new and old users. Additionally, a 50,000 USDT Welcome Bonus Pool was added so as to attract new users to make their first Futures trade.
Proposed Solution
There was a debate about what to do: coworkers believed that since the default filter “Sort by Largest Team” size increased the number of participants, we should keep it the same. I thought it would be a net negative, since a large team meant each member would receive less. We decided to do an A/B test: In the A/B test, the control version would display Sort by Total Members by default, while the variant version would display Sort by Newest Teams. By comparing these two groups and its user growth, we could determine whether sorting by new teams would make the team sizes more evenly distributed. Aditionally, to even out the team sizes, we decided to add filters: Sort by “Oldest to Newest”, and “Newest to Oldest.”
Proposed Solution
To garner more user feedback, we decided to do a post-tournament survey, which would be displayed on the page after the tournament was over. The survey included questions such as: why they joined, how did they know about FGT, what were the main factors in choosing a team, their opinions on visual design. The answers would help in the next tournament’s design.
Design Impact
1. 35B USDT Trading Volume
The tournament was able to bring in 35 billion USDT worth of trading volume in 3 weeks’ time, of which 11.7 million was in commission.
2. 67,000+ Futures users in ~1700 teams joined the tournament
Futures users from all over the world participated in the 2023 Futures Grand Tournament, despite a historical downturn in the crypto market, in part due to the collapse of LUNA, FTX and a series of other events. The number of teams increased by 42%, compared to the previous tournament.
3. >17,000 new Futures users acquired - a 1490% increase
Thanks due to the rewards for new Futures users and Futures Bonus Center which gave out discounted trading fee vouchers, we were able to acquire more than 17K new Futures users. This was a 1490% increase compared to the previous tournament.
Theme Exploration and UI Mockup
Theme Exploration
In tandem with the UX/UI audit, we each collected references from Pinterest and other cryptocurrency exchanges to create a mood-board for the tournament.
After extensive discussions, we decided on the theme “Futures Cyberworld.” This would utilize Binance’s brand colors, with a dark-colored theme and yellow highlights to signify that cryptocurrencies are a part of the future. The visual theme would incorporate 3D elements for larger images, while smaller graphics such as icons and NFTs would utilize 2D elements.
UI Mockup & Managing Overall Timeline
To create the first UI draft, I referred to the business requirements, tournament mechanism and campaign UI modules, which I then discussed with Growth and PM who gave feedback on what to change. Afterwards, I wrote the briefs for our our graphic and 3D motion designers to work their magic.
I also oversaw the entire timeline by managing the deadlines, holding two design critiques and stand-ups a week to sync internal progress, giving feedback on design, and also coordinating cross-functionally with Growth, marketing, product, and engineers.
Internal & External Feedback
Comment from Users
“The Futures Grand Tournament was excellent - design was good and it was really easy to join.”
Feedback from Marketing Team