The story begins when I was running some user research for RIDE.CAPITAL, in which I got to interview traders and investors who were expressing their concern that they own a certain amount of money, but don’t know how much of it they get to keep.
My initial thought was, “We should be able to calculate this”.
After the company went bust, I decided to embark on a journey: To be able to show all traders their current tax liability and their true after-tax performance.
I went and studied the capital markets landscape through the German taxation angle:
I ran a survey around 80+ redditors active on trading subreddits with questions regarding how well they know their tax position. My hypothesis was that traders don’t know their current tax exposure and therefore cannot do anything about it. The results were very much in favor of my assumptions:
When RIDE.CAPITAL went bust, I took a cap hat with me - I don’t know why, but this cap hat found itself on the logo, as a relic from the past which came along - like the initial discovery of the painpoint of the traders.
Wearing my designer hat - I chose these colors as they’re calm and clean and versatile enough to support the complexity of the interface I will be building. I needed lots of neutrals but few primary colors to be able to create a proper hierarchy. I love neutrals which have a slight tint to them and are not fully gray.