Designing trust into a market that didn't exist.
DBFEX trades whiskey barrels that sit in a warehouse for a decade. S2DO led product design: the valuation UX, the compliance onboarding, the secondary market and the system that held it together.
Nobody buys what they can't see or price.
Verification gates, then a market that never closes.
Compliance is usually where fintech UX collapses. Here it became the proof: every gate a user clears is visible to everyone they trade with. The flow was drawn as a ledger, because that is how this audience already reads risk.
The skeleton under the floor.
Every screen was structured so the number a user acts on is never more than a glance from the evidence behind it.
Total asset value leads, appreciation sits under it, inventory reads as scannable rows.
Valuation at the top, its reasoning directly beneath, provenance as a dated timeline.
Negotiation reads as a thread, so both sides see exactly where a deal stands.
A system money can be read through.
Financial UI has no room for ambiguity, so the system starts from numerals: tabular figures, fixed decimal alignment, and exactly one treatment each for gain, loss and pending. Roles are shown in a palette chosen for this case study, not the product's own.
What shipped.
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Further platform screens available on request under NDA.
A pioneering marketplace in the spirits industry, where maturing barrels can be valued, bought, sold and exited early with the transparency investors expect from any other asset class.