Solana Name Service (SNS)

Designing a Scalable Web3 Identity Platform

Year

Mar 2025 - Apr 2026

Role

UI/UX and Graphic Designer

Tools

Figma

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Illustrator

Industry

Web3 Identity / Naming Infrastructure

Company Context

Solana Name Service (SNS) is a Web3 platform that simplifies how people interact with blockchain technology. Instead of using long and complex wallet addresses, users can create human-readable names (e.g. yourname.sol) that act as both a payment address and a digital identity. This makes sending assets, receiving payments, and interacting with decentralized applications significantly easier and more intuitive.

Beyond simplifying transactions, SNS also functions as an identity layer—allowing users to connect wallets, profiles, and on-chain activity under a single name. At the time of the project, SNS was an evolving product with an established foundation, expanding toward a more complete identity and utility system. As new features were introduced, the focus shifted toward creating a more cohesive and scalable experience—helping users better understand ownership, manage their identities, and navigate the platform with greater clarity.

Project Overview

Solana Name Service (SNS) is a Web3 platform that enables users to register human-readable domain names and use them as both wallet addresses and digital identities. At the time of the project, the product was already live and functional, but parts of the experience required refinement—particularly as new features were being introduced and the platform continued to expand.

The scope of the project involved improving existing flows, designing new features, and ensuring that different parts of the platform connect more seamlessly. As the product evolved, a key challenge was maintaining clarity while introducing new capabilities—making sure updates did not add unnecessary complexity or fragmentation across the experience.

The goal was to create a more structured and scalable system—simplifying how users interact with domains and identity, while establishing a consistent foundation that supports future growth.

My Role & Responsibilities

As the sole UI/UX Designer on the team, I led the design across the entire SNS platform, working closely with the product manager to translate product direction into structured user experiences. While the PM defined feature priorities and conducted research, I was responsible for shaping how those ideas were executed—designing end-to-end flows, refining interactions, and ensuring the overall experience remained clear and cohesive.

My role extended beyond interface design into building the foundation for how the product evolves. This included creating and maintaining the design system, defining design workflows, and establishing processes for collaboration, review, and developer handoff. I also supported marketing and visual design needs, ensuring consistency across both product and brand touchpoints.

Key responsibilities:

Led end-to-end UI/UX design across the full platform
Designed user flows in collaboration with the product manager
Created and maintained a scalable design system
Defined design processes (Figma structure, reviews, and handoff to developers)
Ensured consistency across features and evolving product areas
Designed high-fidelity UI and improved overall usability and clarity
Supported marketing and visual asset creation

The Problem

As SNS evolved into a platform that combines domain management with digital identity, the product became increasingly complex. While new features expanded its capabilities, the overall experience struggled to keep up—making it harder to maintain clarity, consistency, and ease of use across the platform.

Growing Product Complexity

As new features were introduced, the platform began to feel more difficult to navigate. Without a clear structure to support this growth, users—especially those unfamiliar with Web3—found it harder to understand how different parts of the product connect and where to take action.

Fragmented User Flows

In an effort to make actions easily accessible, many features were exposed at once without clear guidance. This made the experience feel overwhelming rather than intuitive. Without proper onboarding and familiar interaction patterns, users were left to figure out workflows on their own, increasing friction and uncertainty.

Lack of Scalable Design Foundation

The absence of a unified design system made it difficult to maintain consistency as the product grew. Introducing new features often required reworking existing patterns, slowing down iteration and making the experience harder to standardize.

Inconsistent UI and Interaction Patterns

Different parts of the platform followed varying design and interaction patterns, creating a fragmented experience. As a result, users had to relearn how similar actions worked across different areas, reducing usability and overall confidence.

Design Goals

To address the platform’s growing complexity and lack of structure, the design focused on creating a more scalable and cohesive system. The goal was to simplify how users interact with SNS while improving clarity across features, ensuring the experience remains intuitive as the product continues to evolve.

Simplify and Structure the Experience

Reduce cognitive overload by organizing features into a clearer structure and introducing hierarchy across the platform. This helps users understand where to go and what actions to take, especially in a product that combines multiple concepts like domain management and digital identity.

Improve User Flows

Streamline key user journeys by simplifying interactions and reducing unnecessary steps. By applying familiar UI/UX patterns, the experience becomes easier to follow, allowing users to complete actions without needing to learn new or unfamiliar behaviors.

Build a Scalable Design Foundation

Establish a design system and standardized patterns to ensure consistency across the platform. This creates a foundation that supports future feature expansion, making it easier to introduce new functionality without disrupting existing experiences.

Unify the Product Experience

Create stronger connections between different features so the platform feels cohesive rather than fragmented. This helps users better understand how different parts of the product relate to each other, reducing confusion and improving overall usability.

Design Process

Designing SNS required more than improving individual screens—it involved restructuring how the product works as a whole. With an existing product already in place, the process focused on identifying gaps in flows, simplifying interactions, and creating a system that can scale as new features are introduced.

Understanding the Existing Product

The process began by reviewing the current platform and working closely with the product manager to understand feature requirements, existing issues, and areas that needed improvement. This helped identify gaps in structure, usability, and how different parts of the product connect.

Structuring Flows Before UI

Before moving into design, user flows were mapped to define how users interact with the platform across different features. Aligning these flows with the product manager ensured clarity in direction, allowing design decisions to be based on structured journeys rather than isolated screens.

Designing with a Scalable System

Designs were created in high fidelity using a design system to maintain consistency across the platform. Reusable components and standardized interaction patterns were established to support scalability, making it easier to introduce new features without disrupting existing experiences.

Building Process and Collaboration

Beyond interface design, the process also included defining how design work is structured and delivered. This involved organizing Figma files, separating work-in-progress from finalized designs, establishing review workflows with the product manager, and ensuring clear handoff to developers—improving efficiency and alignment across the team.

The Solution

To address the platform’s complexity and lack of clarity, the design focused on structuring Jobledger into a more cohesive and intuitive system. Rather than treating features as separate components, the approach centered on connecting workflows across talent and employer experiences, ensuring users can navigate and complete tasks more naturally.

The solution emphasized simplifying interactions, standardizing patterns, and organizing features into a unified structure. This allowed the platform to support multiple user types and workflows—while maintaining clarity, reducing friction, and enabling the system to scale as new features are introduced.

Scalable Design System

Establishing consistency and enabling product growth

To address inconsistencies and support the platform’s growth, a design system was created to standardize UI components and establish a consistent visual language across the product. This provided a unified foundation for designing new features while improving clarity and usability across existing ones.

Key UX Decisions

Built reusable components (e.g. buttons, inputs, cards) to ensure consistency across features
Defined typography and color styles to create a cohesive visual system
Applied consistent patterns across different product areas to reduce variation
Designed components with scalability in mind to support future feature expansion

Result

Improved consistency across the platform
Reduced design and development effort when introducing new features
Made the experience more predictable and easier for users to understand

Unified Search & Discovery

Transforming search into a scalable and actionable experience

The original search experience was focused on a single-result lookup, making it difficult for users to explore alternatives or take broader actions. As the platform expanded, this approach became limiting—lacking flexibility, scalability, and efficient ways to interact with multiple results.

The redesigned experience shifts search into a more dynamic and system-level interaction, allowing users to discover, compare, and act on multiple results within a single flow. By improving information density and introducing intelligent recommendations, the experience becomes faster, more flexible, and better suited for both simple and advanced use cases.

Key UX Decisions

Shifted from single-result search to a multi-result discovery system
Introduced AI-powered recommendations to surface relevant alternatives
Redesigned layout to display more results with clearer hierarchy and status indicators
Added bulk selection to enable faster actions for power users
Expanded search into a global entry point across multiple SNS features

Result

Improved speed and efficiency when searching and evaluating domains
Enabled better discovery of alternatives, increasing chances of successful actions
Created a more scalable search experience that supports future feature expansion

Old Search

New Search

Asset Management System

Separating identity and trading experiences

With the introduction of the SNS Marketplace, users needed a way to manage domains in a trading context—distinct from the identity-focused experience in SNS.id. While “My Domains” provides a simple overview of ownership and identity, it was not designed to support marketplace actions such as listings, offers, and transaction activity, creating a gap in how users manage their assets.

The solution was to introduce a structured portfolio system tailored for trading. By separating identity and marketplace contexts, the experience allows users to clearly understand what they own, what is listed, and what actions they can take—while keeping complex states manageable and easy to navigate.

Key UX Decisions

Separated identity (SNS.id) and marketplace contexts to align with different user intents
Organized portfolio into clear sections (listings, offers, activity) to manage complexity
Used grid view for browsing and table view for detailed management and actions
Introduced clear status indicators (listed, owned, offers) to improve visibility
Enabled direct actions within each item to reduce friction in managing assets

Result

Improved clarity between ownership and trading experiences
Reduced complexity when managing multiple domains and states
Enabled more efficient and intuitive marketplace interactions

My Portfolio - Items

My Portfolio - Listings

My Portfolio - Offers Received

My Portfolio - Offers Made

My Portfolio - Activity

Structured Identity Experience

Prioritizing identity through clearer hierarchy

The original domain details page contained multiple features and settings within a single, dense layout. While tabs were present, the experience still lacked clear hierarchy, making it difficult for users to understand what information was most important—especially in an identity-focused context.

The redesign shifted the experience to better reflect the role of SNS.id as an identity platform rather than a trading interface. Key identity elements—such as social links, addresses, ownership, and records—were prioritized and surfaced clearly, while secondary configurations were organized into focused sections. This created a more structured and intuitive experience that aligns with how users perceive and manage their identity.

Key UX Decisions

Reorganized layout to prioritize identity-related information (socials, ownership, records)
Introduced clearer hierarchy between primary information and secondary settings
Grouped related features into focused sections to reduce cognitive load
Refined tab structure to separate configuration tasks into manageable views
Shifted layout to support identity-first interaction rather than feature-heavy presentation

Result

Improved clarity in how users understand and manage their identity
Reduced cognitive overload by limiting what is shown at each step
Created a more structured and scalable experience aligned with SNS.id’s purpose

Old Domain Details - Profile Info

New Domain Details - Profile Info

Impact & Results

The redesign established a clearer and more structured foundation across SNS, improving how users interact with both identity and marketplace features. By simplifying flows, organizing information, and introducing consistent patterns, the platform became easier to understand and navigate—reducing overall complexity across the experience.

From a user perspective, the improvements led to a more intuitive and efficient experience. Users can navigate more easily, understand available actions more quickly, and interact with the platform with greater confidence—especially when managing domains across different contexts such as identity and trading.

Key Outcomes

Improved usability and clarity across core platform experiences
Reduced complexity in multi-feature workflows
Created a more cohesive experience between identity and marketplace interactions
Established a scalable design system to support future feature expansion
Improved consistency across UI patterns and interactions
Enabled faster and more efficient design and development workflows through better structure and handoff

Reflection & Key Learnings

Working on SNS reinforced the importance of designing for complex and evolving systems. As the platform combines identity and marketplace experiences, the challenge was not just improving individual features, but structuring how they connect into a cohesive and scalable product. This strengthened my ability to think beyond screens and focus on clarity, hierarchy, and long-term scalability.

One of the key challenges was managing growing complexity while maintaining consistency across the platform. As new features were introduced, aligning them into a unified system without overwhelming users required continuous prioritization and thoughtful decision-making. This experience improved my ability to balance simplicity and flexibility, ensuring the product remains intuitive while supporting more advanced use cases.

Looking back, I would place greater emphasis on early validation and clearer prioritization of features. While the project established a strong foundation, earlier alignment on structure and user feedback could have further improved efficiency and decision-making throughout the process. Overall, this project strengthened my confidence in designing scalable, system-driven products and reinforced the value of structured thinking in complex environments.