Crypto, made calm — guided by AI you can trust.
Lumen is a mobile crypto app for people who find crypto intimidating. An AI guide named Lumi explains every decision in plain language, shows the full cost of a trade before you tap buy, and keeps the whole journey — onboarding, verification, buying, and managing — honest and unhurried. Designed end to end as a complete product, in both light and dark.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Platform
Hybrid · iOS & Android
Scope
End-to-end product design
Year
2026
A first crypto app that explains itself.
Lumen helps a cautious first-timer buy and hold crypto without the usual anxiety. The product is built around one promise: you should never tap a button you don't understand. Lumi — an AI guide — sits one tap away on every screen to explain spreads, fees, holds and signals in human language.
The whole experience was designed as a system: onboarding and KYC, a three-tap buy, a wallet, an explore surface, market news, and a pro charting mode — each shipped in a full light and dark theme so it feels native on any phone.
For most people, buying crypto feels like a trap.
One. Hidden costs. Spreads and network fees are buried, so people never know what a trade actually costs until it's done.
Two. Fear of a wrong move. The vocabulary is hostile and irreversible-feeling — one tap and your money is gone into something you don't understand.
Three. No one to ask. When something looks wrong — a withdrawal on hold, a confusing chart — there's no calm, trustworthy voice to explain what's happening.
I designed for the cautious first-timer.
Lumen isn't for traders. It's for the person who has heard they “should own some Bitcoin,” wants to start small, and is one bad surprise away from closing the app forever. Every decision answered to that person.
Dami Paswani
First-time crypto buyer
Wants to start small · risk-aware · time-poor
Goals
- Buy a little, safely, without studying
- Know the full cost before confirming
- Get a plain answer when confused
Pain Points
- Distrusts hidden fees and spreads
- Scared of an irreversible mistake
- Jargon makes them feel out of place
“I just want to know exactly what it costs and that I didn't mess anything up.”
Lumi · the AI guide
The product's point of view
Explain · reassure · never oversell
What it does
- Translates fees, spreads & holds
- Reads charts into a plain signal
- Reassures during waits & locks
What it never does
- Push a trade or hype a coin
- Hide a cost or bury a risk
- Leave a dead end with no answer
“I'll show you exactly what every trade costs before you tap buy — and explain anything confusing.”
It came down to one question.
Lumen wouldn't win on coin selection or trading power — bigger apps own that. It would win or lose on whether a nervous beginner felt safe, informed and in control at every step.
— Principle 01
Cost before commitment.
No fee is ever a surprise. The full breakdown is shown — and explained — before the buy.
— Principle 02
An honest guide, not a salesman.
Lumi clarifies and reassures. It never hypes a coin or pushes a trade.
— Principle 03
Calm in both modes.
A full light and dark theme, each tuned so the product feels quiet, never frantic.
Lumi — trust, built into the product.
Rather than reassure with marketing copy, Lumen builds trust into the mechanics. Three promises — made on the first screen and kept on every screen after it — carry the entire product.
Two things nobody else does.
Most crypto apps hand a beginner a chart and wish them luck. Lumen does two things no one else does — it brings the analysis to you, and it brings the whole market into one place.
One map a beginner can hold in their head.
The product is organised around six surfaces — onboarding, home, trade, markets, wallet and profile. Lumi reaches across all of them; there's no separate “AI section,” just a guide you can summon anywhere.
From splash to a first confident trade.
The happy path is seven honest states — trust, identity, then a buy where nothing is hidden. Verification never dead-ends: a live status tracker keeps the anxious moment legible, and news or any coin can jump you straight into an action.
Structure first, in grayscale.
Before any colour, I blocked out the riskiest screens as low-fidelity wireframes — proving the layout and hierarchy of the buy flow, verification and the Pro chart while they were still cheap to change. Each one maps directly to a shipped screen.
One system, two modes.
Lumen runs on an electric-indigo primary with a calm violet atmosphere, green for gains and red for losses — defined once as shared tokens so the entire product holds together in both a deep dark theme and a bright light one.
Every screen, in light and dark.
Here is the real, mobile-first product end to end — onboarding and verification, the core tabs, the three-tap buy, and the wallet. Flip the toggle to see every screen redraw in the other theme; both were designed in parallel, never auto-generated.
— Onboarding & verification
— Core & discovery
— The three-tap buy
— Money & account
How I'd prove the bets actually work.
Live metrics sit outside this brief, so I won't claim numbers I never measured. Instead, every risky decision ships with a validation plan: a clear hypothesis, the method I'd run, and the one signal that would tell me I was right.
Beginners understand what a trade costs.
A first-timer can buy without help.
The AI guide reduces anxiety, not adds noise.
A withdrawal hold reassures instead of alarms.
One product, designed end to end.
Core screens, onboarding to wallet
Full themes — light & dark, designed in parallel
Tab architecture a beginner can hold in their head
Taps from intent to owning your first coin
An app for nervous beginners can't just look trustworthy — it has to make the cost and the risk impossible to miss.
What the project taught me.
— 01
Calm is a feature.
For an anxious beginner, restraint — fewer numbers, plainer words, slower moments — did more for trust than any reassuring graphic.
— 02
Transparency beats persuasion.
Showing the full cost upfront, even when it's higher, built more confidence than any "0% fees" headline ever could.
— 03
Two themes, one discipline.
Designing light and dark in parallel forced the token system to be honest — and made every component stronger in both.