Building the Interface for the Digital Asset Shared Ledger

The Client

• Objective: To create a lean and appealing application, demonstrating the powerful capabilities of DASL.
• Services: Research, Interactive Design, User Experience, Front-end development.
• Results: An application with attractive and intuitive design, realising the benefits of tokenization, allowing users to issue, exchange, and settle digital assets on Corda.
• Year: 2019/2020

The Challenge

Our purpose was to create an efficient and innovative tool that solves multiple challenges in the financial industry. We aimed to deliver a broad range of new concepts and functionalities transparently and comprehensively to the end-user, as well as gaining his trust.

The Solution

• About DASL
  DASL is developed by LAB577 and presents a Corda-based, regulatory-friendly digital asset shared ledger. It generates new markets for formerly illiquid assets and decreases risks for financial organisations.
  Watch the brief introduction to DASL and how we created the application.
• Well defined User roles
  ‍By focusing on the needs and mindset of the end-users we were able to create a lean and comprehensive UI. After defining the typical user groups we were able to prioritise and organise all of the functionalities around their specific needs. The final result was two similar interfaces for superusers and basic users. The first is sophisticated and provides lots of functionalities and control, the second is simplified and effortless to use.
• Statuses and System Feedback
  ‍Validating transactions in the blockchain may take some time. Users have to know the status of a transaction at all times. Besides statuses, we keep the user informed about other major events happening at the moment, or updates that have occurred while the user was away.
• Well Designed Microinteractions
  ‍Thought-out microinteractions help the user understand and communicate with the system. Small details are often unnoticeable but they help the users to manage complex tasks or easily understand new concepts.
• Aesthetically Pleasing Interface
  ‍Using a beautiful interface is pleasing for all users. We succeeded in creating the perfect balance between a functional interface and elegant design.

Technologies

DASL UI was built as a single page application with the newest Angular version, which allowed us to use the latest and improved features of the framework. With the help of INDUSTRIA’s Design System, the process of creating the app was much smoother and faster, than a conventional approach. In the middle was braid.js, a JavaScript library that works as a connection between Corda’s functionalities and the application. All of the above, supported us to bring the complex user flows to a simple UI.

• HTML 5
• CSS 3
• Angular
• TypeScript
• Braid.js

Our Process

1. Research and architecture
   Defining the users' priorities and creating a logical structure.
2. Interaction design
   Defining a clear dialogue between the system and the user.
3. User experience design
   Defining the exact functionalities and high-fidelity interactions.
4. UI and graphic design
   Creating the graphic design and visual language of the system.
5. Front-end development
   Developing the final UI using Angular and INDUSTRIA Design System.