foreign
[Music]
hello everyone
we have encountered some issues but
as designers and researchers we are
accustomed to this basically we have
iterated so
good to see so many new faces uh I am a
product designer and a researcher I am
one of the co-founders of the web3 ux
user research panels and I am leading
the ux design and ux research for the
threshold Network which was formerly
known as keep Network and new Cipher I
am also part of the team who's building
tbtc which is the first fully
decentralized Bitcoin to ethereum bridge
I like to say about my job that is to
transform extremely complex products
into palatable bits I've been designing
for around 10 years now and
um I've been in the ethereum space since
2018.
my goal is to make explorative research
part of
all of the web 3 products
yeah
Okay so
today's talk is about a new
collaboration flow between designers
developers and business developers it's
a critique brought to the way things are
currently handled we'll try to go
together
um over what could be the issues of the
present building process how they affect
the product life cycle and we will
explore how might we collaborate better
from the start and how to be more
inclusive today's talk is an open
conversation hopefully this subject will
set the wheels in motion and I would be
happy to hear any ideas suggestions on
how we
better the proposed approach
okay
so the future of Wave 3 ux why do we
even talk about this is there an issue
so anecdotally 70 of the user experience
of a web 3 protocol ordap is dictated by
the smart contract smart contracts are
usually not upgradable so the experience
should be Flawless from the start if you
are not familiar with how this could be
translated to then
um the user experience in web 3 is made
of the entire user flow and user Journey
the number of transactions until the
goal is reached which in web 2
e-commerce means the number of clicks
the gas spent by the users and the
displayed information
so
what is the current ux situation in web
3
the products are extremely complex and
difficult and the development teams are
more focused on solving the problems
which are localized at the Smart
contract
um and there are many levels in between
the smart contract and the user so this
is what's happening the development team
meets decides how to uh how the protocol
or dap will work they write the smart
contract
um and afterwards they send it to the
audit usually there are multiple all
these done in average two to four and
after the code has been audited and
fixed it fixed the development team
decides to bring the design to the table
so basically design is brought when all
the user Journeys all the user
interactions all of the interaction
experience has been set in stone and
there is no way to go back at this point
so there is a tendency for technology to
lead the product versus the other way
around this means that there is a high
likelihood of over engineering and
unfortunately ux becomes the a byproduct
tech people do not have the priority to
put themselves in the user's shoes which
is not really an issue unless the entire
experience depends on them
so this is the current flow and let's
check what are the downsides of this
flow
so
the teams are siled which means there is
zero collaboration any findings from
research design research that require
redesigning the experience is impossible
because the smart contract has been
audited and fixed so there is no turning
back
design can improve the experience only
by adding explanations and ux writing
gimmicks
um design unfortunately can only
cosmetize the product it cannot
fundamentally improve the experience
product building time is longer because
everything is cascading and onboarding
and retention of new web3 users is low
due to the unfortunate and clunky
experience and steep learning curve
so
we learned why most of the ux resides in
the smart contract we learn the current
situation in the ethereum product
building and the issues of the current
flow so how might we improve the state
of web 3 ux
so first of all we all need to be
open-minded and flexible to replace our
common behaviors this means stepping out
of our comfort zones by changing this
bit on track
the deliverable
the deliverable is the user-facing
product not the technical not the smart
contract not the back-end product
so having a goal a Target to get to a
desired ideal outcome is a great place
to start from
so
this is not the product
this is the product
so let's try to find out about a
different way of thinking
first of all I would like to start from
a process that has been proven to work
very well this is the Double Diamond
process the Double Diamond which was
popularized by the British design
Council in 2005.
um
this process is based on a diverge
converge process developed by the
linguist Bella vanity
this methodology suggests that a product
process should have four phases
Discovery and definition which together
make the explorative and Divergent phase
and then development and delivery which
together make the iterative and
convergent phase
so explorative design helps us do the
right thing iterative design helps us do
the thing right this is my Mantra and I
think this should become everybody
else's mantra
so what could be a flow that respects
the two important phases in a product
development cycle and it can also
respond to the web 3 environment needs
so this is a product flow I am proposing
that follows the explorative and
iterative phases and which I believe
with would definitely improve a lot the
web 3 product development so what let's
break it down
so in the explorative Divergent phase
everyone is brought to the table from
the start design development and
business
a designer will facilitate stakeholder
interviews and each team will map out
their requirements the user needs
technical constraints business goals
they are all considered and taken into
account
user Journeys are created based on each
team's insights and requirements evm
constraints security issues user needs
pain points kpis and business
requirements all of these elements are
Incorporated in a high-level user
Journey map that will Mark each step a
user needs to take in order to achieve
their desired goal the user Journeys
assumed needs and pain points are probed
in explorative research by speaking to
real people
this is a very impactful moment in the
process since we are moving from merely
assuming things to actually spending
time and observing the people who will
in the end use our product so in this
type of the process we're testing our
ideas and this may be the moment in
which we might need to Pivot we might
find out that maybe this is not the way
to go
so
afterwards all of the Unearthed insights
and findings will be incorporated into
the new user Journeys
so research has been conducted
assumptions have been probed findings
had been Incorporated in the into the
new user journey and all of the
stakeholders have validated them now the
interactive phase can start
so the new user journey is validated
with the users and with the stakeholders
on our are now becoming the backbone of
the Project based on these documents and
artifacts the development team and the
design team can start working in
parallel
the design prototype and smart contract
writing is a very important step in
which the two teams will need to have
constant check-ins and will need to
accommodate each other's findings so
basically
the design team will test the Prototype
will have some findings they will
communicate them to the smart contract
developers the smart contract developers
will incorporate these findings into the
smart contract and then they will find
Solutions of course maybe some Technical
Solutions will won't be necessarily
perfectly answering to the new needs
that have been discovered so they will
also
communicate these new issues and
findings to the design team so there
needs to be a constant back and forth in
between these teams and there needs to
be constant collaboration between the
design team and the development team
so
the benefits of the proposed flow are
the following the team is fully
integrated and not siled there is
constant collaboration and back and
forth between the design team and the
development team there are shorter
building times and of course more time
for research and testing
so if this sounds like a good approach I
invite you to adopt the methodology and
adapt it to your organization we need to
think of this proposal as a work in
progress which will be shaped up by our
experiences and needs let's consider
this our explorative phase
um if you plan to adopt this methodology
and implement it in your organization
please let me know what were your
struggles
um which parts of the process worked and
which didn't
what did you have to do to adapt it to
your own company needs what were the
struggles or of challenging the status
quo did you encounter any any resistance
all in all I would love to hear from
your experiences with this process
because the goal is to evolve it into an
adoptable adaptable and helpful process
to the entire web 3 space
so some great news from the threshold
Network and the tbtc team
my team was convinced about the benefits
of this new methodology so it was
decided to adopt it and implement it
into our product development process
starting 2023 and this means I will also
share with you my experiences of
adopting and adopting adapting the
process
um some thoughts of from my colleague
Doug who is a great supporter of ux in
our organization
um he's talking about this methodology
and he says there is no hoping and
guessing only principled aligned
movement that values the user Above All
Else
and some more good news
um threshold network has open source its
entire ux research and past ux studies
you can find here user research
guidelines all of the past studies that
I've conducted for keep and threshold
Network and different helpful artifacts
never forget this love your users thank
you
[Applause]
thank you Sasha amazing presentation so
there's a few minutes left maybe
somebody has questions
yes I always have questions how long
would you expect this to take on average
I understand it's an exploration by
nature but do you have any Intuition or
feeling for how long you would take an
exploration versus iteration
so you mean explorative phase what like
okay so generative user research should
take
two three weeks at most
which is not a lot and it's very
easy to implement the findings
afterwards so you need to start with
this it can take even less than that but
the most time that it takes is finding
the the
participants that are meeting the user
profile that you're trying to to build
for yeah
so it doesn't add to the building
process it's actually
um
it shortens it because you know what to
build from the start and you know what
people are needing and you know if your
ideas are actually viable and I don't
know responding to the market need
yeah
I have a question thank you uh basically
on the face of integrating users
what's your proposal for testnet versus
mainnet or
of inclusion of the users because we
realize that when users are on test net
and we when we are on this kind of user
testing the users as they are not
integrating with real money or real
assets their concerns are Way Beyond the
when they are on my net but when you are
on minute you should have already a
functional solution that should work so
what's your take on that so I think it's
best to to do usability tests on testnet
but try to make it as real as possible
like what you're testing will be
mirroring your product that you're
deploying on mainnet and the thing is
that if you're giving the users testnet
tokens and everything and they will go
to to the entire experience at some
point they will forget that they are
actually testing so you will get very
good insights you will find what's
fearful and scary for them because
basically we are designing for fear so I
really I'm a big champion of testing on
test Nets yeah okay thank you yep
yo great presentation
um is there a generative research
supposed to align with the Sprint cycles
that a product team might have or is it
something that goes like again like in
parallel and doesn't have to match up
with agile I think it it should be part
of this Prince cycle or it can be
agnostic of the Sprint cycle
so you would like start up a like a
regenerative research campaign even if
it's even if it's outside of the cycles
of the product yeah yeah exactly I think
it should be in parallel okay cool cool
uh I have a question yeah I want to ask
how do you reach out to the correct
personas
how we find them and how many
different personas are you considering
to make a research it's very difficult
uh in my point of view
so
we don't have a huge pool of
participants so first of all I think we
should stick to the most important
Persona that we have and then after
you're building your user profile and
you know who you want to build for then
I think you should use a screener and
also web3 ux which is our user research
panel it actually started from this need
and this hurdle that is very hard to
find participants so yeah screeners and
then a pool where these people are and
try to invite them can't wait to talk
about this more after the con okay sure
amazing thank you so much Sasha thank
you
[Applause]