Long-time readers of the blog might be aware of my fondness for Zcash. And so, it’ll be no surprise to find out that I’ve been helping Zcash app Nighthawk Wallet team make some updates and improvements.
Nighthawk Wallet is a way to store Zcash cryptocurrency on your mobile phone, allowing you to make private payments on-the-go. My contributions began with an effort to rebrand the app.
After reviewing their current branding and then creating a few alternatives. A shortlist of new proposals were vetted with an audience of survey participants – a similar process used when I created the branding for Opera Coast (TIME Magazine) and Opera Max (CNET).
You can see a more complete report out from the branding experimentation and testing by downloading the Nighthawk Wallet Branding Survey (PDF).
This initial research proved out the change to be a positive one with most participants preferring the new proposal and being able to instantly recognise the app as a financial or crypto app – where before it could easily have been mistaken for some sci-fi shooter game on first glance.
Since one of the longer-term goals of the app would be to encourage a broader adoption and bring financial privacy to everyone’s pocket, the research considered people who use financial services like PayPal or Venmo, but are not necessarily cryptocurrency users.
In addition, the results were segmented to ensure female voices were reflected with a 50/50 split (almost) between gendered participants. 85% of female participants use PayPal, 54% use Venmo, 33% use Google Pay – yet just 3% use cryptocurrencies.
It was important to choose a branding that would be well-liked by this segment of the market that feels a need to use digital finance apps, but has not yet made that foray into the cryptocurrency world.
The project is a bit of a slow burn right now and you’ll start to see elements of the new look roll out into the Nighthawk Wallet app soon. It’ll also appear on the Twitter account and through some future tweaks to the app UI too.
The existing app is available to download on the Google Play store and Apple App Store – if you want to grab it and keep your eyes peeled for future improvements.
If you want to chat about Zcash, then join #zcash:gossip.land on Element or message me directly on @matt:gossip.land.
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