thank you everyone for for joining today
we're gonna talk about how to onboard
ace taking user in under five minutes
but first a quick introduction my name
is Adam I grew up in New Haven
Connecticut I currently live in Brooklyn
I got involved in live pier pretty early
on building products and tools for the
community and these days I'm doing
product engineering and design with a
real focus on the token holder
experience
hi I'm Swan I was born in China I grew
up in Texas and now I'm in San Francisco
and how I heard about the blockchain
world was at the end of last year and I
really got involved in life here earlier
this year and just never looked back
so now I'm working on a life here
research and design under the community
grant actually license mine so we got a
couple really exciting things on the
agenda for you today first we're gonna
delve into what are some of the
onboarding problems across the entire
ecosystem because this is really not an
isolated incident and then secondly
we're gonna be really excited to share
with you how life here really imagined
its own sneaking out redesign cool so
there's a pretty decent amount of you
here quick show of hands who here runs a
mining operation okay and who here has
recently staked token on a prove mistake
Network okay so a lot more hands I think
I think is perfectly illustrates
basically how much brute mistake has
really lowered the barrier to entry to
participate in these these open
decentralized networks so in the case of
live peer that's a video infrastructure
network but there's lots of really
exciting proof of stake networks being
being built out today that we think will
be really integral to our everyday lives
as really citizens of the internet so
here's a short list this is really just
the tip of the iceberg but there's a
public proof of stake network for smart
contract platforms for value exchange
for data query processing
for blockchain interoperability so yeah
we think staking is here to stay and we
believe strongly it's yeah it's here to
stay we think it's pretty cool and we're
looking forward to seeing the first
million users on boarded and
participating in these networks but
there's a problem
staking user interfaces so the gateway
to to participate in securing these
networks kind of sucked for the for the
most part and that makes onboarding
really hard so studies have shown that
if it takes more than five minutes to
onboard a user they'll most likely the
most likely drop off or give up so we're
gonna have a real hard time onboarding
the first you know million staking users
if it takes more than five minutes to to
stake so so why do who's taking apps
suck we surveyed this sort of burgeoning
landscape of staking apps and we
surfaced really four main problems that
have really been impeding the onboarding
process and for users and nearly all of
them so problem number one is a really
verbose and inconsistent language system
being used so staking bonding on bonds
on stake baking cycle around era epoch
delegator there's a lot of jargon and I
think like these words are great but
they're pretty reverse verbose and often
redundant like stake and bond really
mean the same thing and they're not
being employed consistently and this is
leaving users pretty confused number two
it's really hard to evaluate delegates
so in most proof of stakes systems a
delegate is represented by their very
dress so this is just a randomly
generated string and so the absence of a
social identity layer for example a name
a bio or an avatar or URL makes it
really difficult for users to evaluate
who to stake towards and this is like
you know web 2.0 this is like a given
but it's in a lot of these apps we saw
there it's not available
problem number three it's really
difficult to evaluate the benefits of
staking so staking apps are not
effectively showing users what they
stand to gain by staking staking
represents an opportunity to own equity
and voting influence in public networks
that you know we think we believe
strongly our society will will run on
one day and it also represents an
opportunity to do work and potentially
even earn a living on these networks
whether that's validating blockchain
transactions or in the case of live peer
transcoding and distributing video so
these are awesome opportunities but
staking apps are not doing a good job
communicating them before user users
actually stake and finally we notice a
really disconnected onboarding funnel so
most staking apps suffer from non
integrated complex onboarding or no
onboarding at all so there's a lot of
steps connecting your wallet acquiring
tokens staking apps you really need to
lead users through these steps in
applica like a good salsa dancing
partner so this is an actual
conversation I had with a friend of mine
he asked me how to stake on live here
and I didn't feel really confident in
the the onboarding tutorial on the
staking app so I just sent him step by
step instructions and I'm sure many of
you have gone through this process you
know step one get a wallet step two from
the wallet step three acquire a token
step four the proof tokens for staking
step 5
evaluate your your delegate step 6
make sure to manage your awards you know
sign up for notifications so my friend
he did give up and like I don't blame
him it's like come on that's a lot of
steps so yeah I think the stakes are too
high
no pun intended the stakes are too high
for to allow users to drop off like this
so you know how can we help how can we
design for these problems how can we
help onboard new staking users in under
five minutes
I'm so glad you asked Adam because
that's exactly what we set out to do in
reimagining the life he's sticking up
yes and we're super excited to share
with you also our results so maybe
before we get into that what is life
here anyway and for those of you who
don't know life here is peer to peer
live video encoding and what that means
is we are a protocol and open source
protocol that any video developer in the
world can use to incorporate live video
into their project or app now how does
staking play a role in life here to
understand that let's just go through a
scenario
pretend you're watching a streaming
version of the World Cup in 2020 or
traveling time you know traveling into
the future and between the camera and
Qatar that's on the football field and
streaming that live to you your device
there's this multi-billion dollar market
in ensuring this quality video streaming
experience for you and now how that
happens is there's a footage of the vo
football game playing out there and it
has to be reformatted in order for it to
work on all these different devices and
that's called encoding the current
services that are centralized make this
insanely expensive now what life here
does is take unused infrastructure
that's out there and make the
computation so cheap that it's just a
fraction of the cost of what it is today
and we use a delegated proof of stake
system so when you stake like your token
you ensure the quality of the service
and you secure the network okay so let's
take a look at the current seeking
experience this here is a previous
Explorer and what you do here is you
stick token you manage your rewards etc
etc and there are over 2,600 token
holders currently participating in every
day there are more people but there are
still a lot of problems with the sinking
Explorer and as I mentioned we don't
really are we're not really exempt from
all of the you know same the problems
that are going on in the ecosystem so
currently more than 70% of the users
don't make it past the first page so we
know this from our analytics and more
than 90% the users who are staking had
to rely on the community and some human
input to even just get through the
staking first experience probably
something else is more shocking is
the first steak experience can take
anywhere between 30 minutes to upwards
of three days for some unfortunate users
who are truly lost so that's not
acceptable and that led us to formulate
these two North Stars for where we want
to be so the two key targets for us in
our staking a design would be we want
all of the users or sorry eight out of
ten users to be able to complete staking
autonomously supported by the interface
alone and that means no human
intervention they just figure it out the
second thing is that we want more than
50% of the users to be able to stick in
under five minutes and as we said this
is a really key thing for us so how do
we go about accomplishing this right
these two goals well as a good human
centered designer we asked the first
question first which is for whom are we
designing anyway
and we went to our community for that we
did generative research with 30
community members who are currently
stickers and figured out that our
audience really has this investor
mindset and we further sub segmented
them and figured out who our early
adopters are in the community and
another way to resent this audience is
to look at their experience with staking
in general because we want to design for
multiple levels of experience so we have
new users and experienced users which
we'll share with you how we factor that
into the hoenn boarding ok a second
category of information that we looked
at is what are all of the other apps
doing right because we don't want to
reinvent the wheel want to take what's
good some of the apps that we looked at
our cosmos Tazo some of the bigger
sticking apps that we know but we also
looked at investment apps which are
relevant to what our users are already
familiar with we looked at the UI relate
to the onboarding flow we looked at the
information architecture and also the
sticking interactions and thirdly and
most importantly we really wanted to
figure out what are the user pain points
and that's key to all of the designs
decisions that we made so we went about
constructing the user during from
beginning to end and that means when
they first got involved and engaged with
life here as a brand all the way to the
end when they State took it and some of
the problems we surfaced are pretty
similar to what's going on
out there on all the other sticking apps
people don't understand the ROI like
what am I even getting out of the stick
and they don't understand how to
evaluate who to stick towards anyway
they don't really they can't finish the
first sticking experience which is a
huge problem and lastly the confusing
terminology detracted greatly from the
experience awesome so based on these
these user pain points that show on just
described we identified really five
areas that we felt we could really
improve the onboarding experience for
this this new staking app so I'll go
through them so number one we introduced
a more intuitive information
architecture that really Shepard's users
to where they need to go so they're over
like 14 views but if you really boil it
down there's like three high-level views
so there's the orchestrator is list view
which orchestrators in the live peer
protocol are the delegates there's the
orchestrator profile and the token
holder profile a key takeaway here is
that you'll notice there's a call to
action to steak or on steak on each one
of these views so whether you're
evaluating transcoders or managing your
your existing steak that core value
proposition is always available and
highly visible so this was just an
important design consideration in
getting users staked in under five
minutes
we established a language system so this
was I mean it's small but important so
this was really just an exercise in
reaching consensus with the team on on
you know vernacular so removing certain
words and renaming others we introduced
opt-in identity using using a project
called three bucks
so this accomplishes really two things
so number one it helps users evaluate
who to stake to and then it gives
orchestrators campaigns greater
visibility into the app so they don't
have to go digging off app we introduced
what we're calling a staking widget so
this really accomplishes three things
number one it
it allows you to connect your wallets
number to it it it helps you understand
what you're getting from staking before
you actually stake so in the case of
life here that's projected rewards
projected earned fees voting power and
then thirdly it leads directly into the
staking interaction so this is kind of
like a mini app in and of itself and we
really like it because it it I think
lends itself to embedding in other
applications so if you're an
Orchestrator running a note in a live
care network we can see you you know
embedding this on your own site to
campaign for for a token holders now
that we've seen how the information
architecture have been reorganized and
how the UI elements have been really
designed to support onboarding and
understanding let's see how all those
elements kind of pulled together into a
cohesive onboarding experience and what
we did here was creating an onboarding
tutorial and as Adam mentioned we always
have just one call to action there's no
distraction but for the onboarding we
give people a place to start and that is
over there so once you've launched this
tutorial we kind of learned this key
lesson which is you can't have the same
onboarding experience for everyone
so as we remember we had two key
audiences experience levels that we
wanted to sign for and that is new users
and experienced users new users really
can't do without a lot of hand-holding
but experienced users are boggled down
by all the explanations that they don't
need so here's how we solve for that
problem once you launch the tutorial
which is for everyone then you get a
choose-your-own-adventure so for the
experienced users they get a quick guide
really really quick out of glance you
know for what the four steps are
onboarding and then for the new users
who really need a lot more support they
get a step-by-step walkthrough to help
them completes taking interaction for
the first time so let's take a look at
how that works so this is the first step
we'll just enter the amount that you
want to stick in the sticking widget and
also figure out what the ROI is for the
experienced user it's a very simple
suggestion and showing you where to you
know input that information for the new
user would give a lot more in-depth
explanation so this way they understand
what they're due
okay step two we want to choose an
Orchestrator from the list so we explain
how to choose the orchestrator and that
you can also click here to go into the
detail view and further evaluate yes
further evaluate the orchestrator and
all of their activities to see their
campaigns there because the identity and
this just like really helps you
contextualize who you're evaluating so
the third step is a really important
step which is we tell them explicitly to
go ahead and stick the orchestrator that
they chose and after this step is where
all the fun happens we get this huge yay
you have completed staking lots of
confetti user delight so people love
this and voila we have now completed
staking for a new user and then lastly
but not least we finished strong by
helping people understand that the
staking fund continues on you still have
a management app basically where you can
see you're seeking activities how did
that change over time this anything
change what your rewards are over time
etc so that concludes our onboarding
tutorial
thank you
so yeah results really quickly we did
find in our early usability testing that
8 out of 10 users were able to complete
staking autonomously so that means just
really without asking any questions and
he was old number to 60% over 60% of
users were able to completes taking in
under five minutes
and this particular stay car actually
completed in under one minute so you
have future challenges you know
obviously onboarding is just one piece
of the puzzle how do you help retain
users after they've staked and and
really encourage active participation
staking is not a passive activity you
have to be really vigilant and you know
make sure your delegate is performing up
to par and playing by the rules
otherwise you like them risk losing some
of your stake designing for governance
interactions so in life here and in most
pre Pacific protocols your stake also
represents your voting power so you know
for future governance proposals how can
we design to encourage this type of
participation in the network and finally
you know in a world where there's
hundreds of staking protocols it's going
to be increasingly important to make it
as easy as possible for users to really
jump from one staking app to another and
still feel at home if you have it feel
familiar so this is gonna require
reaching consensus with other staking
protocols and other projects and really
coalesced around proven design patterns
and a shared language and we're really
looking forward to to working with you
guys and and other teams in the space
and to make this a reality and help
onboard you know the first million
staking users huge thanks to the live
pure team and community without whom
this talk would not have been possible
and also a huge huge thanks to you the
audience members and as Adam mentioned
we really want to collaborate with you
to make staking better for everyone
so if you want to take our challenge we
have this challenge out for everyone at
Def Con
to stick like your token in under one
minute so if you're curious about that
come find us afterwards thank you so
much come find us on Twitter and yes
hurrah
you