Overview
I took high-level technical requirements from the CTO and distilled them into information architecture, a feature set, user stories, and shipping designs. That meant designing the Exchange page itself, Fuel Bundles for bulk purchases, a Fuel Orders page for players to track their activity, onboarding and guides so new players weren’t thrown straight into an orderbook, the Fuel Crate claiming flow for landholder rewards, and a full ledger so every transaction could be audited.
To make the system approachable for players who weren’t crypto-native, I designed a simplified “basic” mode that strips the interface back to buying fuel at market without exposing advanced controls. Advanced traders keep the full experience; everyone else gets a streamlined one. After MVP launch we iterated quickly on community feedback, with price-per-fuel clarity becoming the biggest post-launch focus.
Outcome
The Fuel Exchange launched as a streamlined marketplace with a user-friendly interface for buying and selling. Iterations driven by player feedback refined pricing transparency and order flows, and it became an integral piece of the IlluviDEX ecosystem supporting smoother gameplay in Illuvium Overworld.
What I learned
Translating a CTO’s technical brief into a product real people could use sharpened how I work with engineering: the job isn’t to simplify the system, it’s to find the right surface for each type of user. Basic mode wasn’t a concession — it was the design thesis. The post-launch iteration loop also reinforced something that keeps showing up for me: community feedback on financial UX is almost always a signal that something specific feels dishonest, not that the feature is wrong.