Overview
A swap that routes across hundreds of liquidity sources is powerful and unforgiving — misread one number and someone loses real money. I reworked the core swap and confirmation flows on the 1inch web app to cut the noise and put the few values that decide a trade — rate, price impact, what you actually receive — where people look first. Everything shipped inside the existing design system.
Context
1inch aggregates liquidity from hundreds of sources: multi-route swaps, slippage control, gas optimization, advanced trading modes. Every new feature added power and, with it, one more thing to read before you commit. On a normal app that's friction. On a swap that moves real money, it's the difference between someone acting and someone backing out.
Problem
The analytics and support feedback kept pointing at the same screens. People stalled while configuring a swap, dropped out of the advanced modes back to the simple ones, and couldn't quickly tell what a rate or a preset actually meant. On top of that, patterns differed feature to feature, so nothing felt predictable — and on a high-risk transaction, unpredictable reads as unsafe.
Key issues included
- •Too much to read and decide before confirming a swap
- •People bailing out of advanced modes back to the basic flow
- •Rates, presets, and price impact were hard to scan at a glance
- •Patterns changed between features, so nothing felt predictable
My Responsibility
I owned the UX of the core swap flows end to end, plus the system-level improvements that came out of it.
You can't get this right without both sides: how someone reads a trade before they commit, and how the mechanics underneath actually work.
Solution
I reworked the swap experience around one idea: at every step, make the next decision obvious and safe to commit to. That meant surfacing the few numbers that actually decide a trade and tucking the rest away until they're needed. Everything went through the existing design system, so it shipped without spinning up a parallel UI.
Approach
- •Pulled the drop-off data across swap and confirmation — it kept landing on the same handful of moments of hesitation
- •Rebuilt the hierarchy so the three values that decide a trade — rate, price impact, what you receive — sit where the eye lands first
- •Put the advanced settings behind progressive disclosure instead of dumping every parameter on screen at once
- •Standardized the swap-related components so the flow felt the same everywhere, and kept it all inside the design system
Increasing Fusion Swap Adoption
Context
1inch is a DeFi aggregator operating at massive scale, combining hundreds of liquidity sources and serving millions of users. One of the key strategic directions was increasing adoption of Fusion swaps — a more profitable and technically advanced swap mode compared to the default (legacy) flow. Despite clear business advantages, Fusion usage remained relatively low, indicating friction in user understanding and interaction with the interface.
Problem
Product analytics revealed that less than 20% of users were actively using Fusion mode, despite it being positioned as the key value driver of the platform.
A deeper look showed:
- •Users frequently opened Fusion but abandoned the flow
- •Many users switched back to legacy mode before confirming a swap
- •Advanced settings and pricing controls introduced high cognitive load
- •The value of Fusion presets was not obvious at the decision-making moment
What I Did (Hands-on Work)
I worked end-to-end on improving the Fusion swap experience, combining data analysis, UX research, interface design, and validation.
1. Behavioral Analysis & Analytics
Analyzed detailed user flow data to identify drop-off points. Mapped transitions between Fusion, Custom, and Legacy modes. Identified critical moments where users abandoned or downgraded the swap flow. This helped isolate where and why users were leaving Fusion.
2. UX Research & User Journey Mapping
Conducted internal reviews and usability sessions, collecting qualitative feedback from users and stakeholders. Reviewed real swap scenarios to understand confusion around presets, hesitation caused by advanced parameters, and lack of confidence at the confirmation stage. Created a detailed user journey from opening Fusion to swap confirmation, mapping emotional states, hesitation points, and trust signals. This combined research approach revealed critical friction points where users lost confidence or abandoned the flow.
3. UX & UI Design Improvements
I redesigned key parts of the Fusion swap interface with a focus on clarity, confidence, and progressive disclosure: simplified presentation of rate ranges and outcomes, improved visibility and meaning of Fusion presets, reduced visual noise in advanced settings, made critical values (receive / min receive / rate impact) easier to scan, and designed clearer separation between default and advanced decision paths. All changes were implemented within the existing design system and aligned with platform-wide UI standards.
4. Solution Design & Implementation
Based on insights from user journey mapping and interview feedback, I translated identified friction points into specific design solutions. The journey map revealed that users needed clearer value communication at preset selection, more confidence signals during rate calculation, and simplified decision paths at confirmation. Interview insights about confusion around presets led to redesigning preset presentation with clearer value propositions. Hesitation points around advanced parameters informed the progressive disclosure pattern. The lack of confidence at confirmation stage drove the addition of clear transaction summary and trust indicators. Each design decision directly addressed a specific pain point identified in the research phase.
Implementation followed an iterative approach: initial designs were validated through internal reviews, refined based on feedback, and tested with target users to ensure each change reduced friction rather than adding complexity. The final solution maintained design system consistency while addressing all critical user journey pain points.
Result & Impact
After it shipped:
- •Fusion adoption rose from that sub-20% baseline — the exact post-launch number is under NDA
- •Fewer people opened Fusion and then dropped back to the legacy flow
- •In usability sessions, people could explain what a preset did before committing to it
- •The advanced settings stopped being the thing that pushed people out of the flow
Impact
- •Fewer people abandoned the advanced swap flows
- •Confirmation felt clearer, and people committed with more confidence
- •Dense financial parameters got easier to read at a glance
- •The standardized components let other swap features move faster
- •Changes were checked against product analytics and internal feedback
Reflection
"In DeFi people aren't really scared of complexity. They're scared of losing real money because a number sat in the wrong place. Most of the work here wasn't about stripping things out — it was making each step feel safe enough to actually commit to."
