[Music]
good morning everybody thanks for coming
out this morning first of all a special
thank you to Def Con and all the
organizers for having me here the
hospitality so far has been great I'd
also like to make a public statement
here that it's great to see some
minority groups strongly represented
here I've noticed the increase in woman
and non-white guys here at Def Con which
is very positive and I think diversity
is a is an important thing for us to
progress so keep it up and let's go
together strong in this one so crypto
kitties launched the alpha just over a
year ago and it was really wild we had
tons of fun doing it and for many people
it was actually the first time that they
ever interacted with the blockchain in
general and for us we felt that we were
onto something new a lot has happened
since then you know we've had we've had
many lessons that we learned and I'm
here today to talk to you about some of
them our community and our ecosystem has
also grown significantly we've had third
party apps like kitty hats come and
expose his idea of extensibility of
non-functional tokens we've had crypto
girls who came along and did this whole
physical representation of NFC's which
was pretty cool we've had tons of fine
arts we've even had people who have gone
out and gotten Kitty tattoos which was
crazy and our team has also grown since
then so I want to give a special shout
outs our team over there we hail from 20
different countries eight 18 plus
different countries 20 different a plus
different languages and over 60
employees so big shout out to the team
all ranging from a variety of different
backgrounds
different experiences and whatnot so
like I said I'm here today to talk to
you about user experience and blockchain
and instead of rattling off a bunch of
bullet points I'm gonna have a little
bit of a philosophical discussion I'm
gonna break this down into three
overarching lessons and these lessons
are going to be very kind of
human-to-human relatable because I
believe that if we can think and build
our products for humans then they're
gonna be much stronger so lesson one is
titled talk and I'll begin this lesson
by telling you a little bit about myself
so my name is Nick I'm one of the
founding members of crypto kitties and
I'm the lead front-end engineer over the
kitty then I was born and raised in the
Caribbean on a small island called
Trinidad and I spent 19 warm years in
the tropics I had a very strong interest
in arts and sciences and at the age of
19 I left Trinidad and I went to
Montreal to study mechanical engineering
when I came back to Trinidad I decided
to go to the other side of my brain and
start a fashion brown so I was designing
apparel producing it selling it and
through apparel design I decided to
learn how to do web development cuz I
wanted to sell my clothes online
eventually I got a job as a web
developer at an advertising agency on a
year and a half later I quit that job
and I went traveling around the world
during that time I built up a technical
blog that had I think about half a
million readers per month in in its peak
and that was a time for me to really
discover what did I want in this
industry I came back to Trinidad at some
points and then once the Bay Area for a
few months and in November of 2019 I
joined axioms and as a front-end
engineer initially I'd worked out of the
Chilean office and then I work in sure
enough for six months as well and in
January 2017 I move of
I moved to Vancouver and I sacrifice all
the Sun and warmth for a little bit of
snow and cold but it was a really good
choice for me because several months
later we were scheming crypto kitties
and in December of last year we launched
we released the cats into the wild so
why am I telling you this what relevance
is my life story have to use your
experience well the way I think is that
now that you know a little bit about me
we've established a little bit of a
human connection and the more that you
get to know me anymore that I get to
know you the easier it's going to be for
us a bill or a relationship so I'll tell
you a little bit about crypto kitties
yes it was an app yes it was a product
that we developed yes we just put cats
on the blockchain but for us you know we
did a lot more we gave these cats names
we gave them a story and people felt
really strong connection so Katie said
they owned because they had a story and
the interesting thing in this space so
we use a lot of technical words like
interoperability and extensibility and
whatnot but outside of this room outside
of DEFCON nobody understands that but by
crafting narratives and crafting stories
for the cats of the ecosystem we bring
meaning on we bring the life and we
establish this really good human
connection so lesson one concludes with
give whatever you're building a
personality give it a voice let it tell
stories because storytelling is
important for establishing a human
connection on a human connection it's
really important for building a long
term relationship
lesson two will be about listening you
know we are we just went over talking
how do you talk to establish a
connection but you have to return a
favor you have to listen to the people
that you talk to so in the summer of
2017 cryptokeys which released her
masses I'm just going to get a little
water excuse me sorry can I get a sip
thank you
apologies sir in December of 2017
cryptokeys was launched to the masses
and by December of twenty by December
8th three days later we were literally
on fire I had been working for about six
weeks straight with my team pulling like
16-hour days you know we were pretty
exhausted by then and I remember it was
a Saturday or she's trying to have a
normal day I was out buying little
groceries getting a little bottle of
wine you know I wanted to relax and then
I got a few text messages from some of
my co-workers saying that Genesis which
was cat number one of crypto kitties I
just sold for a hundred and twenty
thousand dollars and I knew at that
point that any sign of a relaxation was
like officially out the window and it
showed you know I mean in that first
month we had one point six million in
web traffic we had over 200 thousand
wallets created and we had 52 thousand
new kitty owners you know I mean things
really skyrocketed it was high time for
us and for crypto kitties and you know
we had to deal with that I mean at that
point it was immediately exposed that
you know the network couldn't handle the
traffic different gas knows were just
completely failing because of man pools
getting clogged our API which was
listening to events on Sabbath nodes was
just not picking up the events anymore
our front end was just not showing the
correct data as a result of that and it
was a nightmare you know users were so
new to this thing that they were just
burning money on gas they had no idea
what they were doing at that point I
think in the first two or three months
or so users had spent over two million
dollars in gas
some people were spending up to ten
times more in gas without even realizing
it like 10 times more than they should
have
I'm tons of it
was wasted on failed transactions you
know this is such a new environment for
users
they just didn't know and we were kind
of freaking out you know we're dealing
with people's money we're dealing with
completely new technology here what do
we do so we have three options number
one is just have him burn gas you know
let it be but that was a big note from
our part because we are we were dealing
with people's money and we have to
protect people a lot better when when
it's when things are new and especially
when we're dealing with money option
number two was to go for like a more
preventative measure entirely we try to
control the you are a little bit and
prevent users from conducting
transactions that we knew or that we
assumed it might be guaranteed to fail
but this also backfired because you know
because of these multiple layers of our
information travel from the blockchain
all the way up to your applications info
just gets lost along the way and
especially when guest instances fail
over and then API goes down she's a
heavy traffic and the front end is just
assuming the wrong information so we
were we ended up in a situation where we
were literally blocking people from you
know buying and breathing their cats and
that was also that that was also a bad
thing so option three can assist
somewhere in the middle or not really in
the middle but it's more like let's
let's take the lessons of option one and
two and apply it and let's give some
user education and guidance here you
know let's let's let's teach users like
what is it that they're into in this new
space and during the alpha of cryptokeys
we made we made a couple wrong
assumptions you know we thought that our
users would just kind of get it yeah we
were testing whether they would like the
pictures of the cats and whether they
would get down with this ol cat breeding
thing and and they did but we we did
make a couple of sumption they would
kind of get the whole blockchain thing
and we were wrong they were actually
confused you know there was a lot of
newness
and a lot of unfamiliarity around that
technology but as soon as we give people
a little bit of guidance they felt a lot
more comfortable they started to fall in
love the messages that we were getting
through our various social channels at
that point were hilarious you know
people were just fascinated by the sole
ownership of NFC's on the blockchain you
know oh I own this it's got this piece
of digital arts you know and that user
guidance really paid off big time for us
we took that as a lesson to introduce
more and more guidance throughout the
app during it throughout the web app
during its lifecycle development
lifecycle we started to talk about gas
and we had these birthing fees for cats
as well we continuously educated people
about that you know we got them educated
through the onboarding and that's
everything and people started to have
this growing familiarity with the
ecosystem and one of the most important
things for us that was missing early on
was what was happening after I interact
what was happening after I transact in a
normal typical like client-server
application you know you you do
something and you immediately have
feedback you know if you buying some
kind of eBook on online you know you
immediately get this email with your PDF
of your book if you are buying something
on Amazon you know you get this shipping
receipt and you you you have this
comfort that it's a that it's gonna be
in the mail in a couple days or so but
with blockchain and with with buying and
FTS on the web you are you go out there
you do this transaction you send it off
to the mysterious blockchain and then
like that's it you know the everyday use
is just oh what the hell just happened
you know so we started to introduce this
thing about what happens after I
transact you know we started to give
them this Activity Feed where they say
listen you have attempted to do
something you can go track it on
scan and you can see the progress of it
and I'll give a little bit of
tangibility to the whole purchase thing
for users and they felt a lot more
comfortable we follow that up with
giving them emails about when the
transactions were successful and that
gave them a second degree of comfort so
I'll conclude lesson 2 by saying users
need guidance when they're in unknown
territory they need lots of guidance and
education when they uncomfortable
this is concepts that I like to refer to
as the failure path and in engineering
and design the failure path is a is a
path that the user takes where they make
continuously wrong steps it could be
things like entering an invalid email
followed by entering a weak password
following by clicking the wrong button
you know it if you if your users
continuously take wrong steps your UI
and like the user experience could
become pretty daunting and terrifying
very quickly and if we can guide users
through that failure path you know if we
could make each step of the way Pleasant
for them and educate them as to why they
ended up in this situation as opposed to
presenting them with random error
messages that bear no meaning then they
would feel a lot more comfortable they
were started gain familiarity with the
surroundings so lesson 3 is about
connecting I talk to you and then I
listen to you our relationship is
becoming established how do we build a
deeper connection on how do we grow that
connection and strengthen it so in an
ideal world you know we tell our story
through our products we gain the users
interest and we guide them through the
early stages you know we get them
through some simple onboarding flows and
then off they go you know through
onboarding and guidance they're able to
start interacting with the
most important parts of your apps
immediately they are able to start
engaging and I'm having fun and getting
integrated into whatever it is you're
building but in blockchain
it's not straightforward at all it's it
is really a hazy maze before they can
actually start engaging with anything
after we get visitors and after we get
them to do whatever signup flow exists
at all we have to introduce them to
wallets because in blockchain you can't
do anything with all the wallets you
know you have to have a wallet to store
your NF TS or to store whatever token it
is your apisa is is running and in order
to engage with with any token at all you
need cryptocurrency so this new user who
was just immediate was first of all just
interested in cats now they are learning
about wallets and Krypton cryptocurrency
so we get them to sign up for our app a
wallet and coinbase to buy some bison
crypto you know they finally get through
to that they managed to get some ether
you know maybe it takes them a couple of
days because you have to validate that
credit card and then you know they have
to UM
pile the ether itself and then after
they buy it they are like okay what's
this I have to wait you know I have just
given money and I have to wait to get
something in return and that's that's
very unusual for people and at this
point you know that they are wrapping
the hair around this thing and and they
already kind of lost the plots they are
wondering well which one is the wallets
and which one is a app I don't really
remember you know and then finally after
that maybe like three or four days later
they can they can interact you know they
can they can get involved they can play
the game and that's just that is so
unusual for you so it feels like we've
we've literally gone backwards you know
at cryptic it is for us we've we've
spent days onboarding people through
conversations and messages you know and
say hey well this is what this thing
does and this is what this thing does
you know and it's shocking that that
people stick it through you know I mean
it's good news that people stick it
through it's a positive sign it's a
reassurance for us that uh that it could
catch on but but look at the step say
you know and at every one of these steps
there are huge drop-offs and at some
steps you can't even control the
drop-off right because a third party
applications this is it's totally out of
your control at this point it's starting
to become like cognitive overload you
know in lesson two we spoke about
guidance but now there's too much
guidance there's too much education you
know people came to this app because
really they just wanted to buy some cute
cats and now they have a PhD and
cryptocurrency on wallets
unlike blockchain you know and they
didn't want that like the majority of
users just don't want that on the
numbers show the current state of the
ecosystem reflects that a year ago we
had 52,000 new kitty owners within the
first month but today the DEA use of the
top 100 apps combined are less than
10,000 on the number of cryptokey these
players are a small portion of that but
you know we're in this together you know
we're a tight community here and I
believe that together we can address
these problems but the big question is
obviously how so has anybody app use a
gameboy oh very nice so my experience
with Game Boy in the 90s growing up was
I got it I put a game inside I switched
it on and I started to play and it was a
very kind of a natural feeling you know
I I didn't have to go and read the
Gameboy manual I probably threw it out I
didn't have to go and read the game
manual either I threw that out as well
the technology which was a gameboy if we
want to map the Gameboy itself to the
blockchain and the and the game itself
to say like crypto kitties for example
both of these were very self-guided
pieces of technology and the
relationship felt very natural and I
actually went down the rabbit hole
before this presentation of looking at
Gameboy commercials from the 90s and
there are some really really weird ones
that I encourage every to check out but
one thing that was a prominent theme was
uh was the messaging game boy didn't try
to sell me on what their cpu specs were
or what the LCD screen specs were their
messaging across the majority their ads
was simple was it you can have all the
power of Nintendo right in the palm of
your hands and that was enough that was
all I needed
as a user I didn't care about the hard
way I just wanted to play and with the
games it was the same as well you know
with with Zelda the messaging and one of
these super weird commercials was you
travel through many worlds with endless
characters and their eternal adventures
and it's it's lovely it's simple you
know you you put that game in and you
you get you start playing and you are
guided through by the game itself you
know you you're not banking on this
insane intense onboarding experiences
the blockchain is different right
blockchain is new blockchain is there's
no familiarity in this space at all but
it is our job to build that familiarity
and to take these underlying concepts
and to abstract them entirely you know
because the day-to-day user they don't
care about the things that we care about
as developers they don't care about
securing their private keys they don't
care about gas they don't care about
like different clients for different
wallets you know they they want this
feeling of familiarity they want this
feeling of comfort and we need to start
thinking like them and talking to them
like humans we need to speak their
language through our products and we're
not doing that right now you know
stuff to do that right now because there
is so much cognitive overhead so lesson
3 is really about make making friends
easy and what I mean by that is make
growing the connection that I use a
house with your product easy make
strengthening that relationship easier
what we've seen that cryptic ities is
that block chain and non functional
tokens and crypto assets and digital art
are a great way for users the self
express to create and to collaborate and
to grow this technology together and we
need to we need to provide that you know
if we want to appeal to the masses if we
want to grow the market together we need
to we need to start giving these
delightful experiences for users we need
to start making all of those
abstractions for people and we need to
start getting them together and letting
them engage with each other you know and
experience joy through the apps that we
build and that's that needs to be our
mission like the UX is everybody's
problem it is not just for the designer
it is not just for the product manager
or the UX expert it is all of our
problems when you start thinking like
that so but cryptokeys you know we have
this bold statements like let's bring
the next billion users to the blockchain
and it's wildly ambitious you know so my
call here for you today is the let's do
something a bit more realistic for now
let's take those metrics on 10x them you
know let's get our users from 10,000 to
100,000 by next year let's let's take
these steps together let's build the
tools that's Billy ecosystem that we
need let's let's think about our users
you know think about the people outside
of this conference that's what's going
to drive the technology forward and DAPA
labs which is the parent company of
crypto kiddies that is what we're doing
we are building the ecosystem for the
next wave of users so I encourage you to
check out
dapper what is that XYZ for some more
information about what we're doing and
the tools that we're building and
ecosystem that we're creating to create
these abstractions for people and so on
make onboarding to the blockchain much
better thank you very much everybody
I do have four minutes and 45 seconds
for questions if anybody has any a
little bit of shyness okay toys like
physical toys so so the the design
direction of cryptokey this is something
that we are very dead like we hold on to
very strongly we've explored some
physical toys some digital goods as well
you know but we need to get it rights
because our artists and our creative
team has they spent lots of time
perfecting and maintaining this our
standard for the art of the cats so
we're experimenting we're looking at to
see what's out there but but it needs to
be done right here
oh that that's like a totally different
products altogether though sorry yeah
thank you
or what sorry hi
you said you had a fall in daily active
users from December to now yes but you
didn't really talk about what you might
do to activate all the people who are
non active users can you speak about
that for a minute yeah definitely so so
this early success of cryptic IDs has
been largely about community engagements
you know we had this product in the
hands of the community as quickly as
possible and we've been iterating based
on their feedback and I think that's
important for any products that you're
building and for reactivation of users
it's been about like keeping engaged
with them as much as possible without
being annoying obviously but it's tough
right they're like I like I said on I
showed on one of my slides there are so
many so many hurdles that you have to
get users to overcome and really it's
about guiding them you have to pin
points where did they drop off on why
you know and see what can you do at that
point to react to reengage them from a
from a human to human perspective if if
you lost interest in something and I was
trying to regain your interest and I
told you about 10 other different things
you would you'd lose interest even more
right but if you can pinpoint like where
they lost interest and why usually it's
just because they had a bad experience
you know they they they got lost and
with a little bit of guidance through
that one particular step it could be
super helpful
so now ring down they're like the
information that you give to users to
reactivate them is something that's
super helpful and also understanding why
why it happened in the first place you
know I feel very strongly about the
human to human connection as you can see
I think it's it's super important that
especially now that there's like a ton
of different pieces of software and apps
out there
in the world you know they're in the
millions by now the ones that the ones
that really engage with people in a and
they make you feel like less human less
human beings behind this you know and I
think they have my back that's where
you're gonna start to see a success yeah
yeah thank you we can talk after yes you
only use the mic so everybody can hear
I'm sorry thanks very much and real
congrats on being the first proper
interactive user experience in this
space what do you think about all the me
twos that have come along since do you
find a day is it kind of they honoring
you or are you just happy to see what
other people are doing with this or what
are your thoughts in sorry all the me to
sort of crypto Kitty like products that
competition is very important and
healthy if there was only one of our
kinds in any space and it would just
mean that that space is unsuccessful
right so I would I encourage everybody
to go out there and push the boundaries
and see what's possible and um you know
add more competition and do different
things cryptokeys was an experiment for
us right it we're still in the we're
still in this zero of blockchain
development and of that development and
everybody should be going out there and
being experimental as well so I
encourage people to I encourage the
copycats I love to see it
and we've made friends with them as well
you know so it's a good thing hi you
have the ambition of oh yes or you
stated the ambition of a hundred
thousand deaf users in q3 scaling is
still an issue are you looking at plasma
or other layer 2 solutions for crypto
kitties so for crypto keys specifically
they way that we feel right now is that
because it was an experiment because
it's our Gen Z row
projects at data labs we will we will
leave it there as is future experiences
or games or applications that we build
we will consider like other you know as
you said like plasma or sidechains or
whatever yeah so that's for future but
for crypto kiddies it will stay on there
it'll stay on the main network for its
life that looks like it or anybody else
yeah okay thank you for this interesting
presentation I'm a UX designer I'm
really curious what would be your piece
of advice for you Xers for UX in general
yes and for the process that we follow
and how you all would like us to
collaborate with developers any any
advice I can bring back to my team yeah
so I'll give you some insights into the
way that we work I'll talk about two
different things one is how we work as a
team internally so we have this concept
called three in the box and three in the
boxes where if you're trying to solve a
specific problem you get different black
people from different disciplines in the
same room together um black people from
the different disciplines so if we're
trying to solve any problem is let's get
a designer
let's get an engineer let's get a
product person in a room together to
discuss because everybody's going to
have everybody's gonna say something
that's going to impact the other
person's way of thinking if I as an
engineer I'm like listen this is not
possible but this is it can trigger some
thought process in like a designer's of
mine to be like oh that's cool like
maybe I will design for that instead and
the same goes vice-versa if the designer
could encourage me to think a certain
way then it will help me to develop
better and I mean I have a very very
high respect for UI on UX people I there
are some of my favorite people to work
with just because of the way that they
think
and they inform a lot of decisions I
make during my engineering process but
that's that's internally there's only so
many decisions that you can make
internally but as soon as you put it out
there users are just going to do
something totally unexpected
so user testing as quickly as possible
is extremely important especially in
this industry where things are so new
there is no written standard you know
there's no article that there's no like
famous ten usability heuristics design
of design article you know for a
blockchain like it doesn't exist we have
to write those articles and the only way
we're gonna write those articles is by
doing the research ourself and we need
to just whatever it is were testing if
it's a feature or full-fledged product
get it into the hands of users as early
as possible and observe them observe
their actions take notes and ask them
tons of questions yeah that's it oh
sorry one more that's it all right time
is up but we'll meet outside cool thank
you everybody
you