An alternative AI & Web3 Telegram client.
Role · Product Designer — onboarding, Lily AI, Premium
Nicegram is an alternative Telegram client: you log in with your existing Telegram account, and the app adds features on top — multi-account, an AI assistant, a crypto wallet, and privacy tools. It's open-source on GitHub, which is part of how it earns trust on privacy.
I worked as a product designer across the app's core flows as part of the team. My areas included onboarding, the Lily AI assistant, the non-custodial Web3 wallet, and the Premium / Premium Plus paywall. The design had to keep each new layer understandable without burying the messaging that people came for in the first place.
The core tension: Nicegram keeps adding powerful but unfamiliar features — AI, crypto, hidden chats — to a product people already know as a chat app. Every new feature is a chance to confuse or scare a user who just wanted a better Telegram. The design job was to introduce advanced features in a way that felt optional, safe, and clearly worth paying for.
AI features — translation, summarization, generation — only deliver value if people reach for them in the right moment. I designed these to live close to the chat context rather than as a separate destination. The monetization layer is a "gem" pack model, so the flow had to make the value of a paid action clear before the paywall, not after.
Looking back, I'd push harder on separating monetization noise from the core messaging experience — the friction users named most often is exactly where trust leaks out. A cleaner default with paid features earned through use, not pushed, would protect the "better Telegram" promise that brings people in.