Cointec

A mockup is a picture of a screen. It shows the layout, the colours and where everything sits, but nothing on it does anything. Our task was to take Cointec's mockups and build them into a front end that responds to a real person: buttons that work, content that loads, screens that hold together as someone moves through them.

We built this with React, a JavaScript library for constructing user interfaces out of reusable pieces called components. React suits an application like a trading platform, where parts of the screen need to update in response to what the user does without reloading the whole page.

Working from someone else's designs means staying faithful to their intent while making the practical decisions that only come up once you start building. We kept the finished interface true to the mockups we were handed.

People check trading platforms wherever they happen to be, so the interface had to work as well on a phone as on a desktop. We built the design to be fully responsive, meaning the layout adjusts to fit the screen it is on, whether that is a desktop monitor, a tablet or a mobile.

Once the interface was working, we turned to performance. A trading platform has to feel quick, so we made sure the front end loaded fast and stayed responsive as people moved through it. On the front end that means keeping the amount of code the browser has to download in check and making sure the interface is not doing unnecessary work.

We also added analytics after the build, so Cointec could see how people were actually using the interface. Having that data meant decisions about what to change next could be based on real behaviour rather than guesswork.