Meet the Team: Vadim Fedotov
By: Nicholas Donahue
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Meet The Team, Social Media, Bitcoin

In blockchain companies, product designers work directly with the implementation teams. They’re often responsible for the management of the entire project lifecycle, and their decisions affect the sentiment of blockchain community towards the project. The most challenging positions for designers within the blockchain space is consumer facing projects where product takes a forefront.

This is especially true with products like exchanges and social networks where usability directly affects adoption. In the case of Hilo, a social platform for crypto traders, the role of product is owned by Vadim Fedotov. With over 15 years of experience in product, he has an important role in Hilo’s development team. Vadim’s hands on role will not just affect how Hilo as a platform looks, but how it works as well. His day to day decisions influence how users will interact with Hilo as a platform. Vadim thinks through the entire user journey to make the Hilo experience as memorable as possible; from user-flows to features sets.

Hilo is a social platform dedicated to providing crowd-sourced insights into the crypto markets. Users on Hilo can track their portfolio, follow the decisions of influencers, and discuss pricing changes of specific coins in real time. Vadim will personally initiate and launch many of these features and learning about his thought process can provide insight into the ideas that influence Hilo as a platform.

In this interview series we spoke with Vadim to learn about the factors that influence his decision making process. We wanted to explore what makes him tick and his approach to creating and managing the user experience within Hilo.

Who are you, what is your role at Hilo?

I’m leading Product & Design initiatives as the CPO on the founding Hilo team.

What were you working on prior to Hilo?

I was previously the Head of Product Design & UX, at a startup in the event ticketing space. Prior to that I worked with various companies on product and design teams, most recently the Linux Foundation. I’ve been in Product design for 15 years, helping shape how people interact with software.

Why did you decide to work on Hilo?

I’ve been wanting to get into crypto space for while now. For me, it was ideal help build a people-centric product like Hilo.io. It’s at a cross-section of goals for me: working on a product offering valuable experiences, and ultimately helping drive mass adoption of cryptocurrency. Hilo will demystify the space.

What is the biggest problem that Hilo.io aims to solve?

Ray Eames once said “What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.” Our goal is to make a functional source of information for crypto traders and new market entrants. The ease of using Hilo will be a key factor in researching new coins and learning more about the markets. We hope to create a lasting solution for all users and create tangible value in the form of timely signals and insights.

What personal experiences will help you in building Hilo?

I believe that I have an innate ability to solve problems in effective and novel ways alongside others. The entire Hilo team has good working chemistry that allows us to work in a nimble fashion. I attribute my problem solving skills to my experience in managing the entire product lifecycle at multiple companies and learning the ins and outs of designing compelling experiences for users.

What do you see as the biggest potential challenges Hilo faces as a project?

Growth and user retention will largely affect the scale of impact Hilo has as a project. These factors can be directly attributed to how usable the platform is and how much value we provide for users in our experience.

What other companies in the blockchain space do you think highly of?

Coinbase, Ledger, Civic, Delta, CoinLoop, so many cropping up every day. All of these companies continuously strive to create awesome user experiences via carefully considered UX. Their products create value for experienced crypto investors, but their products are also designed to be simple and accessible enough to attract the “next-billion” users that are just entering the blockchain community.

Who or what influences or inspires you outside of crypto?

Anything that’s engineered to bring people together in a positive way or solves for a greater good is inspirational in my book. Anyone who believes that they can bring value through positivity, admirable craftsmanship into this world is inspiring. Charles and Ray Eames (as a couple) were inspiring in creating design that produced all of the above, and they brought their craft and novelty to the world with impeccable timing. As far as people who also help solve other types of problems, I admire: Simon Sinek, Marty Cagan, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Is there any trait or skill that you’ve developed or improved working on this project?

Working on the Hilo team allows me to collaborate with others in a variety of different disciplines. Leading discovery sessions with a team in the very early stages has taught me different ways of thinking about problems. Coming from a UX background, the whiteboard is where I figure things out. It also helps to translate my thoughts in a visual manner so everyone can get better insight into topics at hand.

Why is “now” an ideal time for Hilo?

There is a great deal of pent up demand for people trying to enter the cryptocurrency space but the user experience and blockchain scaling limitations have kept those people from joining the market. Hilo.io will allow new users to explore and learn about crypto through an experience and design that is pleasing and easy to use.

Our chat with Vadim gave us some interesting viewpoints on what it’s like to manage a consumer facing product in the crypto space. Hilo as a team counts on our team members like Vadim to create a compelling user-centric experience around our social crypto platform. We’ll continue to follow team-members like Vadim throughout our development process and document our progress as a project.

About Hilo.io:

Hilo.io is a social platform for crypto traders. The landscape of crypto tools is fragmented making it hard for new people to get into crypto. Hilo wants to change this and make crypto useful and accessible for everyone. Our platform acts as a dashboard allowing for users to track friends, manage your portfolio, learn about new coins, and catch up on all things crypto.

Sign up for the Whitelist & Beta: https://www.hilo.io

Join our discussion on Telegram: https://t.me/HiloCrypto