Task
Situation
- Tap into the booming crypto + play-to-earn market.
- Build an engaging, gamified experience that would keep users coming back daily, driving both player earnings and company revenue.
- Designing the end-to-end product experience, from gameplay to crypto exchange.
- Creating a unique brand identity for Shibu through character design and storytelling.
- Building the app’s UX flows (gameplay, customizations, leaderboards, in-game purchases).
- Directing a small creative team, sourcing specialists where needed (e.g. character design).
- Designing the sales page and marketing assets to support launch.
As the Senior UX Designer, I was responsible for:
The opportunity was to blend game UX, crypto-exchange UX, and brand storytelling into one seamless product.
A client approached me with a vague but ambitious idea: “I want to design a game about Shibus, but make it crypto.” That was the brief. The concept evolved into Shibu, a crypto-earning word game inspired by Wordle, built around the Shiba Inu character. At the time, the challenge was twofold:
Result
Action
- Delivered a live app that successfully combined a crypto exchange with a gamified Wordle-inspired experience.
- Produced a fully original character-driven brand identity, with custom assets instead of generic templates.
- Showcased my ability to merge creativity with system design, creating dashboards and flows that were functional yet playful.
- Demonstrated how gamification can be engineered to increase user engagement and retention.
- Developed core UX flows: choosing and customizing characters, daily Wordle-style gameplay, earning coins, redeeming rewards, and checking leaderboards.
- Designed the crypto exchange UI, enabling players to cash in/out tokens seamlessly.
- Created gamified mechanics: power-ups, treasure chests, daily doubles, accessory unlocks — designed to boost engagement and retention.
- Directed and art-directed a character design team, creating briefs for each Shibu character and ensuring visual + personality consistency across the brand.
- Oversaw motion graphics (opening chests, branded sequences) to bring characters and interactions to life.
- Maintained brand consistency by applying a clear vision across multiple mediums (UI, characters, motion, marketing).
I led the full UX design of the platform:
Demonstrated how gamification can be engineered to increase user engagement and retention.
