What is experience design and how to create products users return to?

1. Identify friction through real user behavior

Before designing anything, we observe how users actually move, stall, or drop off. We look for: hesitation points, branching decisions, support-triggering moments, and task loops that take longer than they should.

✅ Outcome: A precise map of friction that directly influences retention.

2. Map emotional pacing and cognitive load

Every interface creates an emotional rhythm. High-stress moments, unclear paths, or overloaded screens create anxiety. We model this pacing to understand where users lose confidence and where they need clarity or reassurance.

✅ Outcome: Interactions feel calm, predictable, and cognitively light.

3. Rework flows to compress the time-to-value window

Users decide within seconds whether a product “feels right.” We restructure flows to minimize effort, reduce steps, eliminate dead ends, and highlight the fastest path to success.

✅ Outcome: Tasks that feel effortless, even when the logic underneath is complex.

4. Enhance clarity through hierarchy, spacing, and microcopy

Design communicates long before users start reading. We refine visual weight, typography, layout, and action-oriented microcopy to guide attention exactly where it needs to go.

✅ Outcome: Interfaces users can navigate without instructions and without second thoughts.

5. Build contextual personalization into the experience

Not every user needs the same information at the same time. We adapt flows, content, and UI states based on user type, intent, or frequency of use.

✅ Outcome: A product that feels responsive, intelligent, and relevant to each user.

6. Reinforce consistency through scalable design systems

Once the experience works, we make it repeatable. Design systems ensure that every screen (current or future) shares the same logic, pacing, and visual language.

✅ Outcome: A unified product ecosystem that feels stable, trustworthy, and easy to evolve.

1. High support tickets → Hidden friction

A spike in support requests usually indicates unclear flows or stalled decision points. Users instinctively reach out when:

• steps feel ambiguous
• outcomes aren’t predictable
• system behavior doesn’t match expectations

✏️ What it means: Users can’t progress on their own. The experience, not the feature, is failing.

2. Users skip onboarding → Value isn’t immediately visible

Users will abandon onboarding if it feels long, irrelevant, or overly instructional. When onboarding is skipped, it suggests:

• the core value isn’t obvious
• instructions are too text-heavy
• the experience demands too much upfront effort

✏️ What it means: The product isn’t communicating “why it matters” early enough.

3. Bounce after first session → Cognitive overload

Users leave when the initial interaction feels mentally taxing. This happens when:

• screens contain too many competing elements
• the interface requires reading instead of scanning
• key actions aren’t visually differentiated

✏️ What it means: Users burn cognitive energy before they see value.

4. Misused or abandoned features → Broken mental models

When users repeatedly misuse features, we can attribute this to mismatched mental models: how users think the system works versus how it actually works. This occurs when:

• labels don’t match intent
• buttons imply the wrong outcome
• features behave inconsistently across screens

✏️ What it means: Users can’t predict system behavior, which erodes trust.

5. Low engagement across key workflows → Weak emotional pacing

If users complete tasks but don’t return, the issue is emotional. Signals include:

• flat interaction rhythm
• no sense of progress
• tasks feel effortful even when they’re short

✏️ What it means: The product doesn’t reward use or create momentum.

6. Frequent “dead ends” → Poor journey continuity

When users reach screens with no clear next action, this is a primary cause of drop-offs. Common signs:

• lack of forward paths
• no recommended next steps
• no contextual actions tied to behavior

✏️ What it means: The experience lacks flow, and users are left to guess what comes next.

🔍 If you're struggling with similar “what now?” moments in your product, our bounce rate optimization guide outlines proven fixes.

These patterns appear across industries, but the root problem is always the same:
the product asks users to work harder than they should.

Understanding these signals sets the stage for the Payoneer and Blockbeat transformations where eliminating friction became the fastest path to clarity, confidence, and adoption.

Solution #1: Fixing the friction in Payoneer’s customer experience

Experience design starts with user empathy. And empathy begins with watching what users actually do and why:

• Where they slow down
• Where they hesitate
• Where they give up

That’s exactly what we did with Payoneer, a leading fintech provider serving businesses in over 190 countries.

Their existing system was robust, packed with options, features, and custom logic. But users weren’t navigating it well. Tasks that should’ve taken seconds stretched into minutes. Support tickets were piling up. The problem was friction.

"When users struggle, they don’t blame the interface. They blame the brand. That’s the hidden cost of poor UX."

{{Anna Demianenko}}

Our UX audit revealed a few major issues:

• High cognitive load from overstuffed dashboards and visual clutter
• Fragmented user flows that required too many clicks and context shifts
• Support dependence, with users relying on customer service to complete basic tasks

🔍 Findings like these are typical in audit baselines, and the next step is prioritizing them by severity and impact. In our guide on how to turn UX audit findings into product wins, we explain how we rank issues and build a roadmap that actually ships.

Solution #2: Reworking complexity into clarity

Our approach to Payoneer’s product relaunch focused on making its complexity feel simple and enjoyable. We kept the depth, but reshaped it through hierarchy, visual weight, and screen-to-screen momentum.

That meant:

• Showing what matters now, hiding what doesn’t
• Reworking flows to reduce steps and eliminate dead ends
• Clarifying microcopy to prevent confusion at the point of action

The result was a product experience design that reduced support load, increased user self-sufficiency, and strengthened brand perception through ease of use.

We also helped the Payoneer team implement a scalable design system, improving cross-team velocity and visual consistency across markets.

Solution #3: Making everyday tools instantly useful

The redesigned home screen now delivers immediate utility: balances, currency options, recent transactions, and a built-in calculator are all right there. It's brand-reinforcing: no clicks, no hunting, just clarity.

"We treated the home screen like a command center. If the user opens the app to check something, chances are it’s one of three things. So we made sure all three were immediately visible."

{{Anna Demianenko}}

Key visual decisions, including the careful use of Payoneer's existing color palette, created a UI that's instantly recognizable while being significantly more usable. It made navigation faster, the main screen noticeably easier on the eyes, and reduced support requests.

Alongside redesigning Payoneer’s core screens, we developed a flexible UI system built to scale. We defined visual hierarchies, spacing rules, and reusable components that ensured every screen felt consistent and intuitive. The dark theme, multi-currency balance cards, and interactive widgets weren’t just one-offs; they were part of a shared visual language.

🔍 Moves like multi-currency cards, dark themes, and reusable components all rest on a strong foundation. Our article on UI design principles explains how to build that foundation.

Solution #4: Introducing voice assistant

According to PWC research, 71% of consumers would rather use voice than physically type when searching. To reduce friction even further, Lazarev.agency integrated a built-in voice assistant into the Payoneer platform.

Whether checking a balance, initiating a transfer, or navigating across sections, users can now speak instead of click. The assistant handles queries, routes users to the right place, and enables quick actions for frequent tasks.

This feature proved especially helpful for multitaskers and mobile users, letting them complete core actions without digging through menus. In usability tests, task completion times dropped by up to 23% for frequent flows.

🔍 Voice assistance is just one expression of a bigger movement toward conversational patterns. Our article on conversational UI breaks down why these interfaces help users act faster and with more confidence.

Solution #5: Who said fintech can’t be fun?

To make the Payoneer experience more inviting, Lazarev.agency introduced a full-blown in-app game, centered around a custom mascot: 😺 Payocat.

The goal was to increase retention and encourage repeat visits through something playful, brand-aligned, emotional, and rewarding.

The game had simple rules: collect as many Payoneer coins as possible while dodging obstacles. The more coins users collected, the greater the discount they received on Payoneer services.

In other words, gameplay translated directly into value.

The game struck the right balance between lighthearted and strategic. It reinforced the brand personality, gave users a reason to come back, and turned a finance app into something a little more human.

"People remember how a product made them feel. With Payocat, we gave Payoneer a heartbeat."

{{Anna Demianenko}}

🔍 For more examples of fintech UX patterns that make complex products feel human, see our fintech app design x-ray.

Solution #1: Prioritizing signal

We restructured the way information was presented, transforming a raw stream of news into clear, ranked signals. Instead of firehose feeds, users now saw clusters of stories tied to trends, industries, and coins they followed. Each signal had context: source trustworthiness, relevance score, and timestamp.

To support this, we designed:

• A layered UI that separated noise from signal
• Dynamic filters that adapted to user preferences
• Quick-glance cards showing sentiment and market implications

"In crypto, timing is everything, and you need to know why it matters right now."

‍{{Ostap Oshurko}}

Solution #2: Gamification to drive retention

Unlike the game-based mechanic in Payoneer, Blockbeat focused on rewarding behavior that sustained platform engagement. Reading articles, customizing alerts, saving insights — each interaction contributed to a user’s activity score.

We introduced:

• A crypto dashboard element tracking earned points from core activities
• Milestone badges tied to discovery actions (e.g. "First Portfolio Setup")
• Soft incentives for returning daily or interacting with trending signals

These were subtle UX nudges, a move rooted in interactive experience design, where behavior change is achieved through structure.

Solution #3: Designing for newcomers and crypto veterans alike

Blockbeat's audience ranged from casual investors to hardcore traders. Our interface had to cater to both without fragmenting the experience.

We solved this through:

• Default views were simplified; deeper metrics opened on demand
• Contextual tooltips and onboarding flows for new users
• Predictable patterns that let pros act fast, and beginners learn quickly

Solution #4: UI to support information flow

Visual rhythm was everything. We leaned into whitespace, restrained color usage, and modular layout logic to prevent overload. Signals felt curated, not dumped.

Micro-interactions guided attention without overstimulation. Tagging systems and floating filters allowed for flexible control. Everything was designed to move with the user.

‍🔍 For more examples of how engagement loops, trust cues, and navigational clarity improve crypto retention, explore our in-depth breakdown of crypto app design.