foreign
[Music]
to you I have no idea how to talk to
girls at parties but I can talk to you
about how to talk to users in your app
I'm Alex also known as Absa if you have
seen it from my head from my pin and
from my badge here
so I have an interesting curious story
on ethereum because you could say that
my resume is a long list of flopped
projects and a long list of dead and
failed projects but I'm very proud of
each one of them because from from each
one of them they were built with bricks
that have outgrown and outlived the
original projects that they they were
like and and I think you don't actually
see that in other Industries it's this
this wonderful thing I think about
working on open source but most of all
I'm a designer and I think
the role of the designers in the space
is you need to be a translator right
you're connecting the users
you need to both understand the project
and good enough that you can translate
it into simplest words for the users but
you also have to talk to the user and
figure out what's really missing what
what what is the real hurt what is the
real problem and you need to take back
that to the engineers who might often
not see that because they are not
typical users they are power users and
often they will tell you things like oh
this we can solve that this is
impossible and it's your job as a
designer to understand what you're
saying understand what the users they're
saying to figure out a way that you can
talk back to the engineers in a way that
transmits the needs of the user users
and if needed you should also be able to
talk to the CEO and that's where easy
research is very important because you
can go there to the test and say you
know what we're taking this approach but
it tested this other approach and people
were a lot less lost by doing that and
that's why I think it's so important and
I think What If it creates sort of what
I call this design gear in which you
have user experience which is this idea
of how we want things to work and then
you use that to build your UI which
mostly are what the pixels are you're
pushing pixels around on painting stuff
right and then use that UI to test with
real users to figure out okay how much
the experience I wanted to give is
experience that they had
and that you keep turning on that gear
and at some point you should be
connected to the dev gear and like
sometimes you'll be pushing that gear
and helping them get along by just doing
a lot of tests before they build it
sometimes they will be coming back to
you with with things so it's a little a
two-way year if your Dev team is just
coming to you saying we've built this
product make it pretty then something is
going very wrong in that company and and
I think anyone can do it and I mean if
you have a startup with three people
you're just a CEO you don't even have a
designer just a CEO the CTO and like a
Dev guy you can still do it with like
online tools and I hope to give them to
you and the first thing I need to you
need to remind is whenever you're
talking to a user this is not teaching
your users how to do your app this is
not a tutorial this is not a moment
where you're trying to do a marketing on
board people you're listening to them
speak you're not explaining your app and
you need to remember that your app is
being tested not you so it's not oh do
you think you can do this in this app do
you think you can click this button it's
really it's about do you think this app
will allow you to do this do you think
that can you put money in this thing
right use generic words like that and
classic user research is basically
there's like one main way one-way mirror
rooms with big prototypes or even like
paper prototypes that you build around
and just get random people in the office
but if you don't have an office it
becomes a lot harder and I had to learn
that the hard way when I spend like
mostly a year working balance or doing
user research and like there are great
tools online you want to give them a few
for you your ability Hub is a great
place where you can learn those things
for instance five second test just show
your app for five seconds and ask
questions you'd be surprised how much
of before they can read your copy before
they can even understand your app how
much they already form an impression by
just looking at it and knowing okay you
are like an investment thing you're like
a game you're like a social media but
just taking a look at five seconds then
you can go one one one thing further and
just ask the user for a first click and
just and by this point it's just a plain
image like this can be like that image
You're just showing to your investors
before you build that product because
they want to test it and you can figure
out that oh if everyone is clicking on
your hero image instead of the button
that you want them to click maybe you
shouldn't have a hero image maybe you
should just show the information they
want and then from that you can do
navigation tests which it's just slides
that you can try to see where people are
going and one of the nice things the
navigation test is that you can use them
to Benchmark your competitors you can
just screenshot the flow a typical flow
of your competitors and then screenshots
the the flow that you want your your app
have to do to death and just see is it
any better is it faster are people more
confused sometimes you don't even want
to you just want to see how much people
are clicking on the wrong link that's
more important than the right links
but mostly a lot of user research is
actually talking directly to people with
online meetings online meetings of
course we schedule meeting with calendly
get like a demo on the zoom or Google
Hangouts but there's also a great
website called user brain which allows
you to give them a link give them a
script and then like about a few minutes
they will give you a video of someone
using your app and looking at it and
describing and it allows you again this
great feedback cycle there were days in
which you wake up at design a little bit
put a prototype in throw it to the user
throw it to user brain go back to like
check my emails come back half an hour
later and they were like three or four
uh videos of people struggling with the
Prototype they just built and honestly
just need often three to five users it's
not a number of Numbers Game you get
most insights with like three or five
numbers and then you can just go there
fix it and create like a new user user
user thing and like get get your coffee
and then when you come back it's like
it's still early in the morning you've
already like run that prototype a few
times
and it's not
the reason that often you get those fast
videos on user brains because they are
like you have to pay them you almost in
most case you have to pay user brain may
like may be expensive but you know what
what's more expensive is spending weeks
of engineering building something that
it shouldn't have been built in the
first place sometimes when you're just
having a Google Hangout calls you can
like be creative I've I've tried giving
nfts to people that I created I gave
them I promised them to pay gas fees and
which like when gases were expensive
that was a very nice thing and I I just
with offering people hey I want to give
you money I want to give you money to
watch you do stuff
which is weird
right and that's that's where you your
users might feel a little bit
uncomfortable with that because there's
a lot of things that scammers and user
researchers who have in common like both
of them are promising easy money to do
something like in 10 minutes they are
asking you to click on Shady link like
figma length or whatever that is they're
asking you to download some browser
thing that you allows me to show your
app and see you while you watch your
wallet right so your users might be like
the only difference is one of them wants
to see your type or password the other
doesn't
how do you overcome that first of all
try to use your yourself as as like at
The Leverage like if you have a
reputation just tell them look I am a
real person I'm not a scanner you know
me from whatever or sometimes I would
start uh a meeting by telling them how
to be safe on the internet like how do
like how do how can you do do a Google
Hangout and share just one screen
instead of the whole just one window
inside of the whole screen or just tell
them I don't want to see your never show
your passphrase get your metamask window
in somewhere else and you can also be
creative in many ways so there was a
point in which I wanted to know is there
a way that we can like I poo the
balancer is a defy app and had this
pause and we had like there's a lot of
information that goes in a pool and I
was wondering can you like translate
that into a tiny icon I wanted to know
how small the icon can be and I created
a little game the Prototype game which I
just ask users can you find the die the
fastest person to find all the dies in
like it is Google capture thing will win
and of course I didn't care for people
who find it to find the dice what I
cared is that as each step was
progressing I was making the icon tinier
tinier until at some point all they had
to work with was the true color gradient
and they still found it and it's a great
way for you to understand oh my God like
you you can reduce it a lot by just
making it small right
and another super important thing is
that options are never equal will often
happen that you have a system in which
there are two modes right balancer had
two modes in which you had deposit money
doesn't actually matter what the modes
are because for the user it's just
right it's just random noise for them
and the wrong way to do it is just to
ask the user to like if we have two
modes on the system we have two modes on
the UI and that's often the worst way to
do it first of all you can do a little a
better job by just selecting a default
just it forces you to think about the
default forces you to think about which
one is better often I've seen people who
would think that mode a would be more
important because everyone on the team
was using both a but turns out mode B
was the most common because most users
don't have all the tokens or have
connected their wallets or have their
own all the things that most people in
your like Dev Department have
but a better way is don't make it a true
story thing just make a check box and
then you have to explain it in a tooltip
no never try to like your users do not
read and there's this often this mistake
of thinking that your users they must
understand your app when the opposite is
true you must understand your users and
try to reduce whatever explanation is
there into like a five word explanation
but a better yet is instead of having
your users pick a choice just allow your
users to do whatever they want and just
add later a little thing saying hey
click this button and we'll like I see
you're trying to do X click this button
you save money or something like that
often you could get even worse when you
have like multiple options there so try
to make them in different ways maybe one
is a check box and the other is an
action you have like one big submit
button maybe you have choose the bit
bottoms notice that the submit I also
picked the I also picked the default in
both of them because like one is big one
is the normal
something it's also great if you're a
designer who can code a little bit you
should try framer which is an odd on the
wonderful thing because often in an app
you are thinking about some sort of
behavior and
is there a way they can like make the
video go
okay can you yeah just click there
often you're thinking about something
and then in the end
yeah it's going you're thinking about a
behavior that you can only understand
when you see it so this is why I was
testing a thing where I realized oh you
can put money in many ways you can
select it by the amount of tokens you
have the percentage of tokens the dollar
value maybe you can click on on the on
the on the total and you can type it and
you can scroll it and it was like a
wonderful idea on the design space but
of course when I tested with users they
were all confused on weight I clicked
this and I clicked click that and it's
all confusing right but it's it's the
kind of behavior you only understand
when you actually make it work with real
oh yeah this can you click the video
there thank you
uh
and then
hello yeah thank you so and then I
realized that there's a lot of things
you can do but just testing the behavior
of people you just allow people to they
click around and do whatever they want
and just allow them to click around and
check hey if you click this button
suddenly your numbers will change here
because numbers are also UI if there's a
button there and you realize oh if I
click this then this goes up this goes
this goes down it really simply works
and you can do a lot of things like that
in which you can like and those are the
sort of behaviors you only realize when
you are like just running a live app and
that's something that you can do as a
designer hour Loan in your office and
then keep testing it keep testing it
keep testing it and it's it's it's
really important
don't overdo it because I've seen cases
where everything is clickable everything
is great and the user is just clicking
things around he has no understanding of
what they're doing but they're just glad
that they they like they disable it
becomes a game of can I disable all the
warnings right I'm gonna click around
until all the warnings are gone other
things there's always like a baseball
moment whenever you're talking to user
and I think this is one of them where we
had like a little box just setting all
the actions that have happened and then
I realized that users are a bit confused
about that and then you realize that
they don't know that this is a feed of
actions they think that this is an I
mean do of things that they should be
doing and then yeah maybe you should we
can redesign it as a social feed and
that's another thing in which uh like
you come back to your product team and
they was gonna say it's thoroughly
impossible because not everyone has ens
name not every anesthe name has photos
that's okay you can solve that just give
the nickname nickname just call them
whales give them emojis right the
problem is just make it look like it's
something more that they expected like
activity
and finally there are a lot of ways and
a lot of moments in which you're
struggling with words struggling with
trying to understand and explain a
concept to your users or even to
yourself that you actually don't need to
then you need to take a different
approach a lot of my time I spend in
Balance I was thinking about what is
impairment loss every defy product has
this issue I'll call it Divergence loss
in which you put money but if like one
token goes up by 10 and the order goes
up by 20 in the end you lose money by
putting it in the pool instead of just
keeping it with yours and then when they
try to explain it it feels weird they
put it like graphs like this but in the
end like what the user wants to know
it's not whatever is impairment loss
they want to know something very simple
I have one token a I have one token B
and that's the value that they have
together that portfolio over like a
month or like in dollars liters whatever
right and you if I had invested in your
app that's how much money I would have
and of course you can see that the user
is better off by not investing in that
and that's true for most D5 apps and I
think that's a great pattern because I
think most apps don't actually try to
solve that problem because they realize
that by solving that by visualization
the user will might realize that oh my
God they're losing money it should not
be putting my money on on this uni swap
pool right
and that's the wrong wrong way to think
it you need to think in a different way
in real life that's not the whole story
there's there's not only the Divergence
loss thing there's also like fees you
collect some fees as things are traded
sometimes like that can pick up for the
diverse loss thing some other protocols
will give out liquidity incentives right
just by the fact that they are you're
using it they're going to give you like
other tokens and some others will like
put your tokens to work to put in on
staking platforms on dating platforms
and it's all sort of complicated and
it's all sort of complicated to explain
often they will still look this is the
API this is APB this is the impairment
loss this is the amount of tokens you
get in terms of measuring tokens this
amount of things you have measuring
dollars but really what the user just
wants to know it's what I called it's
like rainbow short that I develop which
is just
the the dotted line is what would happen
with my tokens if I did nothing and the
color bars are everything that this app
does for you and the interesting thing
about this is that that little
difference I'm not sure you can see it
before the the gray the bottom gray
bottom green and the dotted line is
impermanent loss that's how you
visualize it that's the best way I've
learned to visualize it but the funny
thing is that by finding the best way to
visualize it I learned that you don't
actually need to visualize it you don't
actually need to explain it to the users
right all you need all they care about
is not the bottom of the bar it's the
top of the bar if and that helps you
explain what the product is your
products just taking that and doing all
that stuff to make your money work for
you right
and then you can take all the other
information like the volume trading Etc
and put it in a you know in an order
and I think that was one of the that was
one of the best ways I could explain to
someone how your API Works in 25
protocol and I haven't seen anyone do
like a solution like this if if you're a
defy guy just feel free to use it right
but my point here is that in order to
get there you need both to understand
deeply the product by just understanding
okay this is this is what we do this is
what this Divergent what is Divergence
loss but you also need to understand the
the user what does the user really want
to know right what do they really care
about they just care about how much
money they made and I think you were in
the middle trying to connect something
that is complicated with something that
the user wants into something that is
roughly easy to look and other grading
sites I've had is
often never treat an unknown variable as
zero very very often you're usually just
the fact that you don't know how many
tokens you have in your user wallet
doesn't mean that they have zero tokens
maybe just because that information
hasn't loaded yet that doesn't mean it's
zero and often I've seen users fall into
errors because they were like they would
open the app there are a bunch of errors
and those errors were not like active
errors it was just that because the
users were had not collected or
something had not loaded a lot of issues
are like that don't tell users show them
things as I either said before is like
often instead of trying to explain your
user how to do it just allow them to
click around and like if if you want to
have a look if you click this button
this thing will happen just allow them
to click the button and they will see
the things it will happen because
numbers are also UI right and I think
that it goes for both of them
often I would ask a user saying look
what if this number represents and you
would think a little bit and think I
think this number represents that number
multiply that that number and they would
like do it on their head and if if it
made sense they would yeah that's that's
it I found it they would be gratified so
often just showing numbers and allowing
people to think with numbers or just
saying look this this way is cheaper
than that other way that's the best UI
you have right if you just like you can
put like a red button but if they tell
you this way it's five dollars cheaper
they will find and click that that
little like that little icon there and
users love to see other users like just
allow them to see action in your app
like they always would love when you say
oh I had a user would would say that you
liked watching the activity on a pool
because they he knews that every time I
used to traded he was going to get a few
cents on that and he was like Yay
someone traded I just got a little more
more money on that and if you do it live
do you love it and finally avoid great
patterns often not solving an issue is
an issue and I think a lot of D5
protocols do this because like they are
not sure how to solve it or they are not
sure
or as I say like by solving it showing
them the information the user might
realize it's not a good idea just think
about it you can thoroughly solve that
that's the main message I want to tell
you is that like as a designer your goal
is to connect both sides and as a as a
developer or as a CEO or anyone in your
company you can be that Designer you can
be someone who can try to always connect
and talk directly with users because
you have to know your non-customers also
just the people in your Discord server
they are not your Market fit right
they're often people who like are
already most knowledgeable about your
project what you really want is people
who don't understand the product and you
need to go there and grab them and make
them understand the product
and that's it thank you you can find me
on Twitter at after and I really like
thank the whole balancer team that
helped me during the year and the whole
ins community that I've been working on
the past year thank you
[Applause]
I think I have time for questions
hey Alex great talk
um we will try to utilize the stuff that
you said in rotkey but I'm really
curious how can I get girls at parties
like that that's what I came to know
I'm sorry I lied about talking to girls
at parties I only know how to talk to
users
um I have no idea all the other okay
I'll keep searching thanks a lot
other question
hey great talk uh can you tell about
good ways to reach users online
that don't seem like a scam
yes so I often had this problem because
like every week I was having to reach
out to users and at some point I started
like reaching out to a Discord community
and reach out to Twitter there's a point
in which people are just getting like
you just can keep keep asking people to
click and click hey can you click this
link can you do me a favor can you click
this can you participate on this test
you have to be creative there are some
apps that you just give you out like
that like like user brain or usability
Hub they you can just pay and they will
get users for you often you have to like
I think incentivization is a good good
thing there just tell look whoever
clicks this link and completes this form
you get a a b and c like schedule a
meeting with me you get ten dollars like
complete this form and you get like one
die uh like talk to me with one hour and
I will like there was a woman I I one
day one time I promised everyone I would
pay every gas fee or whatever they did
while they were I was watching and one
guy literally said oh my God I'm like on
the video he could say okay that's great
I'm gonna I'm gonna be withdrawing and
depositing a ton of stuff because the
gas fees are expensive and I know you're
you're you're buying it you're paying
for me but it eventually it was a
because he was like oh damn I I need to
follow those instructions that he just
can't do whatever I want and then just
by seeing him like going and withdrawing
his money and Etc it was super useful
information and yes I paid his gas fees
and he was everyone was happy so you
just need to be creative I guess
hi Alex here
nice to meet you
um do you think
with web 3 user research should we or is
any different from web 2 user research
I think one of the main things I've seen
it different is that
there are a lot of apps that you you
allow you to like record someone like
just clicking around the website right
but in order to that you you only get
people who don't have like a wallet
ready right and often if you want to see
someone actually using website with a
wallet you need to be recording them on
a Google Hangout and then as I say they
will be
uneasy about that because you're like
why do you want me watch like two
transactions and it's complicated
because they might be worried about you
like getting some information I think
that was the main difference for me it
was first of all making sure that I was
reaching those the people who had uh who
had like metamath who had everything
installed but those were precisely the
people who would not be like very likely
to just like be using their wallet while
some way weird guy was watching
uh I wanted to ask you I mean you just
mentioned the tools that uh I mean you
can use to record the users and so on uh
do you think I mean we also have the the
team from rodkey here that are focusing
a lot on privacy uh do you think
especially when we talk about defy and
about users interacting with their own
funds do you think that's a that that's
something that users might feel I know
that their privacy is bridged or just
following them and recording their
actions on the website
yes uh and like their privacy is being
breached because you're recording so I I
think you're not talking necessarily
about uh user research you're talking
about more analytics and I think I
actually think that user research can
help solve a lot of the problems with
analytics right if you just create a
website with a bunch of trackers
everywhere you get basically the same
information that you get if you just
watch five users use your website with
the difference is that those five users
have consented to be in your research
thing while when you do analytics you're
making your websites lower and you're
collecting a bunch of information that
can be used against every single user in
a future leak or something like that
right so that connects like their their
IP address to their to their to their
transaction things and I think that's a
lot more dangerous so I think just like
if you're trying to analyze an app just
a blockchain app you can just do on
channel analytics that is already public
and do use the research that you could
you probably have almost the same
insights as the the like a super Google
analytic thing
that's it
thank you thank you thanks everyone
[Applause]