8th Wonder
Social Learning for Traders
Social learning platform for traders, courses, community, challenges, and a trading journal, unified through a gamified progression system.
- Role: Design Lead (team of two)
- Year: 2025
- Platform: Web
- Tools: Figma
Background
One Home for Learning, Community, and Practice
8th Wonder is a social learning platform for traders, courses, community, challenges, leaderboards, and a trading journal in one place, all built around game mechanics. I led design on a two-person team, taking it from concept to a complete first version.
The Problem / Objective
The Learning Loop Is Broken
Learning to trade is hard for reasons unrelated to the material itself. Knowledge is fragmented across disconnected tools, the journey is isolating, and there’s no feedback loop to show real progress. The objective was to unify learning, community, and self-tracking, and make it engaging enough to keep people disciplined.
The Design Process
Gamification as the Spine
The defining decision was to gamify the entire experience, not bolt mechanics onto a few screens. Progression, challenges, and leaderboards became the connective tissue, turning learning into visible progress, practice into competition, and the trading journal into a source of momentum. Building it from scratch, I started with wireframes to pressure-test how the many surfaces could coexist without overwhelming users, then moved the validated structure into high-fidelity Figma. As lead, I set the direction and design system for the team.
Outcomes & Impact
Shipped Whole
The platform went out as a complete first version rather than a stripped-back MVP, with courses, community, challenges, leaderboards, and the trading journal all present and connected by the same progression system. Traders signed up and started engaging with challenges from launch, which was the real test of the decision to make game mechanics the spine rather than a layer on top.