Solana DeFi · Lead Product DesignerLed design of the protocol from scratch to $2B+ TVL
Designed the protocol from ground up, built and helped to implement the design system that let them ship features 3× faster.
Six mini-apps wearing the same logo
Kamino started as four screens built around one use case.
Then came Borrow/Lend, Liquidity, Multiply, Long/Short, Portfolio, Points. Every feature got designed in isolation, so every feature invented its own layout. The app read like a patchwork quilt.
We never released the majority of them, but if we would, we'd pay for it:
- Retention. Nothing learned in one module carried to the next.
- Friction before the first transaction, in a product where the first transaction is the point.
- Bounce rate on pages that should have felt familiar.
Most DeFi products die here. The tech scales and the design doesn’t.
The original design language made it worse. It was distinctive, but too individual to repeat.
The fix wasn’t more design. It was less.
Instead of properly designing every inconsistent page, I went looking for the pattern already there.
It was one sentence: data on the left, actions on the right. Every page in a DeFi app is someone reading a position, then acting on it.
Three products above got the same skeleton. Learn one and you know all three.
From there the app collapsed into something you can hold in your head:
- 3–4 reusable layouts covering 99% of the app
- Two components, cards and table rows, carrying ~80% of the interface
- One navigation model, so a new product meant a new entry, not a new shell
When a product feels messy, the answer is rarely “add”. It’s “find the rule that was already there”.
A library the team could build from
A rule only holds if following it is cheaper than breaking it. So it got a library. Colours, gradients, typography, spacing, radii, then every component the product used.
Buttons, inputs, dropdowns, tabs, and a ton of other building blocks, each one with its states, not just its happy path.
- Modules got assembled instead of drawn
- Handoff got shorter. Engineers worked from named components, not screenshots
- Consistency stopped being something to police in review
One product, six surfaces
LP positions, strategy performance, portfolio, marketing surfaces, mobile, everything. Everything cooked with love and precision.
“Why does design even matter for a DeFi app?”
A founder asked me that once. Like people come for yield, not looks.
Kamino is my answer. When the redesign started, the team had features fully designed and developed, but they never released them cause they didn't play well together. Not blocked on engineering. Blocked on the interface. The old structure couldn’t take any of them without breaking three other things.
The new foundation shipped the whole backlog to production. After that the team kept shipping without me.
Still running three years later
- Fewer unique layouts, so the product is predictable to use and cheap to extend
- Adding a feature became assembly, not redesign
- A component library that cut module time and shortened every handoff
Three name changes, two design-language revisions and three concept overhauls later, most of that system is still in production. I last opened the file in 2024.
“Harry was the lead designer for 3 of our platform projects — building our design system from the ground up, crafting Kamino’s UX, and following through with front-end devs on execution. His UX and UI leadership played a key part in Kamino’s growth. Comes highly recommended.”
Dawid Snyders
Head of Product & Marketing, Kamino
Tell me what you're building
Send your product and I'll record a Loom with the highest-leverage fixes in 48 hours. Free, and no pitch.
Or if you only have the idea, I'll gladly help you with the design strategy on a quick session.
- Video review in 48h
- No charge, no strings attached
- 1 slot open for October