A cyberpunk RPG re-designed for Web3, with the research, onboarding and design system behind the first NFT game of its kind
Blockade Games
2021 – 2023
Product design
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Case Study
Funded Trading, Designed to Win Investment
Led the end-to-end design of Viperium, a native mobile trading app built around a funded-capital model: users trade with the platform's money and unlock more capital by hitting transparent performance targets. Viperium was preparing to raise investment and needed a complete, convincing app design fast, both to wow investors and to give engineering something real to build. In a few weeks I took the product from concept to a full, build-ready design: onboarding, trading flows, risk management, a tier progression system, and the component library underpinning it all. The app is now in development and working through App Store approval, with the finished product set to lead the investment raise.
- My role
- Lead Product Designer (freelance)
- Team
Client founders + engineering; I owned all design
- Duration
- A few weeks, 2026
- Status
In development; awaiting App Store approval ahead of the investment raise
Context & Challenge
Viperium's model is distinctive: a one-time $100 subscription unlocks a $1,000 funded account, and each 10% gain advances the user a tier, with credit scaling to $1,000,000 and half of profits paid out as withdrawable cash. Losses are capped and partly covered by the platform.
The company was preparing to raise funding, and the pitch needed more than a deck. They needed an app design polished and complete enough to convince investors the product was real, on a timeline of weeks rather than months. That became the true design brief: investor-grade quality, engineering-ready detail, no time for throwaway work. The design also had to teach an unfamiliar model, since concepts like credit tiers and funded capital don't exist in mainstream trading apps, while staying out of the way of experienced traders.
Approach
I set one principle before any screens were drawn, and held the whole design to it: design for confidence, not anxiety, through relentless transparency. Every decision that follows, from how risk is shown to how progression works, traces back to it.
Learn the model before designing it.
Funded trading brought concepts that were new to me: credit tiers, drawdown caps, profit splits, the mechanics of how a platform funds a trader and covers their losses. Rather than design around that gap, I closed it first, working through it with AI over successive passes, feeding in the client's documents, testing my understanding back against them, and asking for references from comparable products until I could reason about the model rather than just repeat it. With that understanding in place I used AI to produce the next artefact: a guide to the screens the product needed and the wireframe content for each one, covering what every screen had to say and which states it had to handle. That became the brief I designed against. AI compressed the exploratory weeks into days; the design judgement, system and UI are mine.
Foundations first.
With a tight timeline and a team waiting to build, I started with a design system rather than screens: a dark-mode-first palette (deep navy base, a single purple accent for primary actions, semantic red/green for buy/sell and gain/loss), a deliberately small type scale, an elevation and blur system so cards read as layers without visual noise, and a component library with defined variants and states. Every subsequent flow was assembly and refinement, not reinvention, and engineering got a consistent spec from day one.
Sell the model before asking for anything.
The four-step onboarding pitches the entire proposition in under 15 seconds: start with funded capital, trade with built-in protection, hit clear goals to unlock more funding, grow skills without stress. One idea per screen, before the user ever sees a chart. The same sequence doubles as the investor story.
Make risk visible at the moment of decision.
The order flow captures amount, take-profit and stop-loss on a single screen with live estimated profit and loss, so risk is confronted before committing rather than buried in a confirmation step. Market, Limit and Stop are a segmented choice rather than a dropdown, because order type is the decision that most affects risk. Buy and Sell are colour-coded end to end, from price buttons through to confirmation.
Design the unhappy paths as first-class screens.
Insufficient funds, market closed, validation errors: each got a designed state with a clear next action rather than a generic error toast. In a product handling money, the edge cases are where trust is won or lost.
Turn capital limits into motivation.
The differentiating design idea: account limits are usually the most joyless screen in a trading product, so I designed them as the most motivating one. The tier system is a visible ladder ("Your Road to $1,000,000") rather than an opaque approval process, and each tier shows its unlock target and exactly what it grants: higher credit, higher position limits, new order types. A routine constraint became the screen users come back to. A Learn hub sits on the dashboard alongside live positions, so skill-building lives next to the trading rather than in a buried help section.
Collaboration
Working directly with the founders and engineering team, I kept the loop tight: design system tokens and components were structured for direct handoff, flows were walked through with engineering as they were designed rather than at the end, and scope decisions were made together against the fundraising and build timeline.
Outcomes & Impact
- Delivered a complete, build-ready product design (50+ screens across onboarding, trading, order management, progression and account) in a few weeks, in time to support the funding push.
- The design gives the raise a tangible product to show, turning the pitch from a promise into something investors can hold.
- The design system became the engineering reference for the build, now underway.
- Every core flow includes designed empty, error and edge states, reducing ambiguity and back-and-forth during development.
- The tier progression design turned the platform's commercial mechanic, staged capital access, into the product's most distinctive user-facing feature.
Reflection
The funded model lives or dies on trust: users are asked to believe targets are fair and progression is real, and investors are asked to believe the product can carry the model. The principle held. The biggest design lever wasn't any single screen; it was transparency applied everywhere. Risk shown before commitment, progression shown as an explicit ladder, and no state left undesigned.
Key Learnings
- When design is part of a fundraise, polish and completeness are the deliverable. A smaller set of flawless flows beats broad but rough coverage.
- Building the system before the screens is faster, not slower, on compressed timelines, especially with engineering building in parallel.
- Unfamiliar business models need the product to do the explaining. Onboarding, empty states and progression UI carried the conceptual load so the pitch didn't have to.
Testimonials
“I would put James on any problem that requires detailed thinking and systemic, organized design. Plus, he's just a likeable chill guy.”
Garrett Schultz
Creative Director & Art Curator
“James Newton lead the change in the way we designed products at Blockade Games.”
Kyle Chivers
Operations Officer at Blockade Games
“James excels at simplifying... complexities for users, with designs that both explain to and inspire the user.”
Benjamin Heidorn
CTO, Co-Founder at Blockade Games
“James is a practiced designer with a unique combination of skills and life experiences — a strong creative energy paired with a keen sense for aesthetic harmony. I would recommend James without hesitation.”
Adam Smith
CTO & Co-Founder at Similie
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© 2026 James Newton. Product Design
b1eb0d6 · 2 aug 2026 · colophon · design system