Educating through UI — tooltip and modal overhaul

Role: Content Design Lead
Company: OKX
Project type: Content audit and overhaul
Timeline: Q1 2025

🧩 1. The Challenge

The OKX app had accumulated dozens of disconnected educational tooltips and modals over time — some outdated, others too technical, and many inconsistent in tone and structure.

  • Problem: Users were ignoring or dismissing tooltips, missing key product explanations.

  • Pain points:

    • Redundant or conflicting messaging

    • Inconsistent voice, tone, and hierarchy

    • Low engagement or click-through on educational CTAs

    • UX debt across flows due to uncoordinated growth

 

BEFORE

AFTER

 

BEFORE (left) and AFTER (right)

 

BEFORE

AFTER

 

🔍 2. The Audit

I led a full audit of the product’s education surface area, which included:

  • 🧾 Inventory of all tooltips and modals across mobile and web (100+ instances)

  • 📊 UX evaluation: clarity, hierarchy, actionability

  • 🧠 Content strategy review: audience, voice/tone alignment

  • 🧱 Taxonomy breakdown: what kind of help (intro, tip, warning, guidance, CTA)?

Key findings:

  • Over 60% of modals were duplicative or poorly timed

  • Tooltips lacked clear formatting or consistent voice

  • Some content used outdated terms that no longer reflected OKX’s positioning

🧠 3. The Strategy

I developed a content and interaction framework to guide redesign:

  • Modals → For “What just happened?” or “What comes next?”

  • Tooltips → Quick-hit context, micro-coaching

  • Tone → Supportive, concise, never alarmist

  • Principles:

    • Lead with user need, not internal logic

    • Never say “simply” unless it actually is

    • Show, don’t just tell — visuals preferred when available

✍️ 4. The Execution

Working closely with Product Design and PMs, I:

  • Rewrote every tooltip/modal from the ground up

  • Introduced a modular content system with components for title/body/CTA patterns

  • Set up Figma-ready templates for scalable reuse

  • Integrated localization best practices for global rollout

  • Aligned with brand voice updates and regulatory UX compliance

📈 5. The Impact

  • ✂️ Reduced total modals/tooltips by 40% (no loss of critical info)

  • 📊 Increased tooltip engagement (users clicking “learn more”) by [X]%

  • 🧭 Created a scalable UX education content framework for future features

  • 🌍 Set the foundation for consistent localization across 15+ languages

🎯 6. What I Learned

  • Users crave clarity—but timing is everything

  • Tooltips and modals should earn their place, not just explain complexity

  • Creating a system beats rewriting copy one-off: it scales, unifies, and empowers teams