Alterscope

Alterscope — Designing Clarity in Chaos: A Journey Through the Redesign of a DeFi Risk Intelligence Platform

A Platform with Potential, Buried Under Complexity

When Alterscope first reached out to us, they weren’t lacking vision—they had that in spades. What they lacked was clarity.

Their alpha product was already doing something remarkable: aggregating complex data across blockchain protocols, chains, and liquidity pools in real-time. It was a powerhouse of DeFi risk intelligence. But to the users—portfolio analysts, risk managers, DeFi protocol teams—it felt like walking into a control room with no labels on the buttons.

Insights were hidden behind layers of obscure UX patterns. Navigation felt like guesswork. Despite the brilliance of what was happening behind the scenes, users felt lost.

Alterscope had three weeks to refine the product into something investors could understand, trust, and believe in. That’s when we stepped in—with one clear goal: transform a dense, technical alpha into a compelling, user-centered experience.

User Research: Listening Between the Lines

Before we laid down a single wireframe or defined a visual style, we committed ourselves to understanding the people who would use Alterscope. We knew that designing for DeFi isn’t about making things pretty—it’s about making the complex understandable, and making critical decisions feel safe and supported.

To do that, we had to first immerse ourselves in the minds of our users. Who were they? What kept them up at night? What did "clarity" actually mean in the context of real-time financial risk?

Framing the Research: Defining Who and What to Ask

We began by building a map of our user personas:

• Protocol engineers managing smart contract architectures
• DeFi analysts overseeing on-chain exposure and token liquidity
• Portfolio managers assessing risk across multi-chain strategies
• Crypto-native researchers who thrive in spreadsheets and block explorers

Each of these users had distinct workflows, but they shared one thing in common: they needed visibility into a system that rarely reveals itself clearly.

We developed tailored interview scripts for each persona, focused on five core areas:

1. Current workflows around risk analysis and asset management
2. Pain points when using the alpha version of Alterscope
3. Mental models for interpreting DeFi data and interdependencies
4. Decision-making triggers — what makes them act on data
5. Trust signals — what builds or breaks confidence in a platform

Conducting the Interviews: Beyond the Surface

Over the span of a week, we conducted 12 in-depth, one-on-one interviews via Zoom, each lasting between 45 and 90 minutes. We recorded all sessions (with permission) and took simultaneous observational notes to capture emotional cues and hesitations.

These conversations were rich, and often surprising.

• A protocol engineer shared that he often had “ten tabs open and four dashboards running” just to triangulate one liquidity anomaly.
• An analyst confessed, “I’m scared to act on this [Alterscope alpha] data. I don’t know what’s driving the numbers.”
• A portfolio manager described risk exposure as “a web of dominoes—but I’m looking at it through a keyhole.”

These weren’t just usability issues. They were deep trust gaps, emotional stressors, and systemic frictions that design had to address.

Transcript Analysis: Turning Stories Into Signals

After the interviews, we generated full transcripts and moved into qualitative analysis mode.

Using a digital whiteboard and an affinity mapping framework, we broke the transcripts into hundreds of atomic insights—quotes, observations, pain points, and desires.

We tagged each insight by theme:

• Cognitive Load (“I can’t tell what’s important on this screen.”)
• Navigation Confusion (“Where am I supposed to start?”)
• Terminology Disconnect (“This term means something different in my context.”)
• Visual Ambiguity (“I don’t know what this graph is trying to tell me.”)
• Missing Features (“I want to see chain correlation over time, not just a snapshot.”)

These insights were then grouped into patterns, allowing us to surface recurring issues and latent needs. This wasn’t just data—it was a narrative of frustration and aspiration
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Problem Prioritization: From Pain Points to Design Mandates

We took our affinity clusters and distilled them into a prioritized list of core design problems. Each one was supported by multiple user quotes and observations:

PriorityProblem StatementEvidence from Interviews1Users cannot easily identify or interpret key metrics at a glance“I don’t know what to look at first.”2Navigation is unintuitive and does not reflect mental models“I feel like I’m clicking around blindly.”3Data visualizations are dense, inconsistent, and visually unclear“The chart looks cool, but what’s it actually telling me?”4Lack of contextual guidance breaks trust in insights“I don’t act on something I don’t fully understand.”5Important interdependencies are buried in static views“I want to explore how protocols are linked, not just see them in a list.”

These became our design imperatives—guidelines that informed every UX decision, every layout, every component.

Bringing Users Into the Design Loop

Our research didn't end with interviews. We brought several participants into the next stages of the process:

• Wireframe feedback sessions to validate flow and comprehension
• Terminology reviews to align on shared language
• Micro-interaction testing to ensure trust wasn’t broken by visual ambiguity

They became co-creators, not just informants. And the result was a product that felt like it was built for them—because, in many ways, it was.

Takeaway

Too often, user research is treated as a checkbox. For us, it was the foundation.

Every pixel of the final Alterscope redesign was anchored in real human insight—stories of confusion, uncertainty, and the deep desire for clarity in a trustless system. That’s what made our design not only more beautiful, but more believable.

Because in DeFi, you’re not just designing tools—you’re designing trust.

From Insight to Interface

Wireframing: Thinking in Structures, Not Styles

Armed with insights, we sketched, scrapped, and sketched again.

We created low-fidelity wireframes that focused on information hierarchy, not aesthetics. Our approach was storytelling through layout:

• What’s the first thing the user needs to see?
• What decision are they making here—and what data helps them make it?
• How do we visually communicate interdependencies in DeFi without overwhelming the viewer?

We prototyped multiple flows around critical use cases like:

• Tracing protocol exposure in a risk event
• Comparing risk metrics across chains and pools
• Monitoring liquidity slippage over time

Each prototype was validated in mini-feedback loops with internal testers and external users. We worked in clickable wireframes, refining based on comprehension and user recall—not just preference.

High-Fidelity Design: Building Trust Through Clarity

Once the structure was sound, we shifted into visual design. This wasn’t about decoration—it was about building trust through consistency, accessibility, and thoughtful visual storytelling.

What We Designed:

• A responsive dashboard with flexible modules for real-time risk indicators

• Dual-mode interface (light/dark), tailored for both office and analyst environments

• Visual metaphors for protocol interdependency that used motion, not confusion

• Collapsible deep-dive panels so experts could explore, while casual users weren’t overwhelmed

We created a full design system, documented and modular, allowing engineers to ship fast and iterate confidently.

Testing, Tuning, and Transforming

Design Validation: Making the Invisible, Obvious

To ensure we weren’t designing in an echo chamber, we launched a series of moderated usability tests with both old and new users. Our metrics of success weren’t vanity-driven—they were grounded in cognition:

• Can users complete key tasks without guidance?
• Can they articulate what they’re seeing and why it matters?
• Do they trust the data being shown to them?

We used tools like Maze and Lookback for asynchronous feedback and heatmaps to gauge attention. These tests led to quick, data-driven refinements—like adjusting label terminology, tweaking layout alignment, and reinforcing UI transitions to improve interpretability.

What Changed:

• A platform once intimidating to users became an intuitive, trusted tool for decision-making.
• Investor demos, once reliant on explanations, now spoke for themselves.
• The redesigned interface was described as “a Bloomberg Terminal for DeFi”—a mark of both trust and clarity.
• Fully redesigned website
• The proof of concept raised $2,8M.

What Lasted:

Beyond the launch, the modular design system and our user-centered approach became embedded in Alterscope’s product culture. Their internal teams now use the design language and research tools we established to continue improving the product.

Designing for decentralized finance is never just about screens—it’s about surfacing the signal from the noise. In Alterscope’s case, that meant translating real-time data into human-readable insights, and technical complexity into visual clarity.

Our biggest lesson? You don’t design great products by knowing all the answers. You design them by knowing the right people to ask—and listening deeply.

This project wasn’t just a sprint. It was a story of transformation—of a product, a team, and the way DeFi sees risk itself.

Pitching with Precision: Turning Vision into $2.8M

At the intersection of storytelling and product strategy lies a challenge every startup faces: How do you explain a highly technical, visionary product to investors who don’t live inside your ecosystem?

With Alterscope, that challenge was even greater. We weren’t just describing a product—we were introducing a new category: real-time, multi-layer risk intelligence for DeFi ecosystems.

To bridge that gap, we designed not just a pitch deck, but a fully immersive proof-of-concept demo experience. Together, they didn’t just explain Alterscope—they proved it.

From Abstraction to Action: The Proof of Concept

While the core platform was still being rebuilt from the ground up, the team needed a way to visually and interactively demonstrate its future state to investors—without waiting for full development.

So we designed a high-fidelity, clickable proof of concept, tailored for investor use cases:

• Scenario-driven navigation: Users could simulate the detection of a cascading liquidity risk across protocols and chains.
• Interactive overlays explained the purpose behind each screen, guiding the viewer through the logic of real-time decision-making.
• Fictional-yet-plausible data gave the experience the feel of a live dashboard—one that could already help navigate billion-dollar decisions.
• The PoC was built with reusability in mind: perfect for investor meetings, demo days, and stakeholder previews.

This demo became more than a tool. It was a visual conversation starter, translating technical depth into intuitive moments of “Oh—I get it now.”

Crafting the Pitch: Designing Belief

In parallel, we redesigned Alterscope’s investor pitch deck to sync perfectly with the proof of concept—so every chart, claim, and ambition was visually anchored in a tangible experience.

What We Delivered:

• A refined narrative arc:
  • The Problem: Risk in DeFi is fragmented, opaque, and reactive.
  • The Solution: Alterscope provides real-time visibility and predictive insight into protocol interdependencies.
  • The Vision: A new layer of financial intelligence across decentralized ecosystems.
• Minimalist, high-impact slide design: Sharp typography, restrained color palette, bold whitespace—letting each concept breathe and land.
• Custom visuals and micro-diagrams: From protocol maps to liquidity flow visualizations, every slide was anchored in our broader design system to signal precision and intentionality.
• Tight alignment with demo experience: Slides referenced elements the audience could explore later in the clickable prototype, reinforcing credibility.

The result was a deck that didn’t just say, “Here’s our product”—it showed investors what was coming, and invited them to step inside that future.

Outcome: Design as a Fundraising Multiplier

With the proof of concept and pitch deck in hand, Alterscope began a focused investor roadshow. The response was immediate and emphatic:

• Multiple investors cited the deck and demo as “the most polished, well-thought-out” materials they’d seen in the space.
• Demo walkthroughs gave founders a powerful narrative tool—something that felt live, real, and differentiated from typical MVP screenshots.
• The design artifacts created alignment across technical and non-technical stakeholders, helping the team close faster and more confidently.

Within weeks, Alterscope secured $2.8 million in seed funding, backed by top-tier blockchain and fintech investors.

Why It Worked:

Design wasn’t decoration—it was translation, acceleration, and trust-building:

✅ It translated complexity into clarity
✅ It accelerated investor understanding
✅ It built trust through consistency, polish, and proof

Because when you’re pitching a future that doesn’t exist yet, the design is what makes it believable.