Prediction Market
Making probabilistic thinking feel intuitive for people who have never traded before.
- Role
- Product Designer
- Timeline
- 10 weeks · 2024
- Team
- 2 PMs, 3 Engineers, 1 Designer
- Platform
- Responsive Web
- Tools
- Figma, FigJam, Amplitude, Framer
Project overview
Prediction markets let people forecast real-world events, but the category is dominated by dense, trader-oriented interfaces. This project reimagined the experience for curious newcomers, translating probabilities and order books into intuitive, approachable interactions.
Prediction markets are powerful but intimidating — newcomers bounce off jargon-heavy interfaces built for expert traders.
First-time users didn't understand what 'shares' or 'odds' meant in context.
Order-book UIs assumed financial literacy most people don't have.
There was no bridge between casual curiosity and confident participation.
What we set out to achieve
- 01Translate probability into language and visuals anyone can grasp.
- 02Lower the barrier from curiosity to first confident forecast.
- 03Preserve depth for advanced users without overwhelming newcomers.
User & market research
Because the concept was unfamiliar to most people, research focused on mental models — how non-experts reason about likelihood, risk, and reward before they ever see the product.
Concept Testing
Tested language and visual metaphors for 'probability' with 15 non-expert participants.
Competitive Audit
Analyzed 6 existing markets to map the exact moments where newcomers dropped off.
Card Sorting
Ran open card sorts to understand how people naturally categorize events and topics.
newcomers understood the default order book
higher comprehension with % framing
preferred topic-based discovery
Daniel Okafor
31 · Product Manager
“I follow the news obsessively and have opinions — I just don't want to feel like I'm day-trading to share them.”
- +Turn his opinions on events into something tangible
- +Understand his potential upside and risk at a glance
- +Learn as he goes without reading a manual
- −Trading terminology feels gatekept and cold
- −Can't tell a good position from a bad one
- −Existing apps look like Bloomberg terminals
Information architecture & user flow
I reorganized the product around topics and questions rather than tickers and order books, so discovery mirrors how people already think about the news.
Low-fidelity wireframes
Low-fidelity flows focused on the single riskiest moment: placing a first forecast. I prototyped multiple framings of the buy interaction — sliders, cards, and plain-language toggles — to find the least intimidating path.
High-fidelity designs
High-fidelity design leaned on bold data visualization and a confident, editorial style. Probabilities became the hero of each card, and a lavender accent guided attention to primary actions without feeling like a trading terminal.
The final solution
The final experience frames every market as a plain-language question with a clear probability, making forecasting feel more like sharing an informed opinion than trading.
Question-First Cards
Each market leads with a human question and a large, readable probability instead of a ticker.
Visual Forecasting
A simple slider shows potential outcomes in real dollars before you commit.
Topic Discovery
Browse by the subjects you already follow — politics, sports, tech — not by symbols.
Outcomes & impact
newcomer activation rate
drop-off on first forecast
7-day return rate
What I learned
The biggest lesson was that clarity is a feature, not a coat of paint. Reframing the entire product around questions instead of markets did more for accessibility than any single UI tweak could have.