Designing Blockchain Products Putting The User First
tl;dr: Hardly anyone in the blockchain industry is talking to users. Rather than addressing users’ needs, rapid iterations of product and conversations. We’re trying to stuff blockchain technology as the radical future down users’ throats. If we’re ever going to see mass-adaptation. Designers, developers and product creators need a radical new approach. Starting with asking what users want.
Is Blockchain Technology Over-Hyped?
Blockchain zealots argue that the technology is going to disrupt entire industries. Critics look at the fundamental issues such as scalability. Quoting that Visa can handle 24,000 transaction a second, compared to Ethereum’s 15.
When disruption hits an industry, the market leader almost never recognises it. This concept is perfectly explained in this 2-minute video:
This is because the market leader confuses what industry they’re in. As an example, if Henry Ford had asked users what they wanted they would have said ‘faster horses’. When the automobile came along, it was dismissed as not being able to compete because it was noisier and unreliable. However, new technologies improve at a much faster rate. The technology then meets the consumer demand better than the incumbents’.
In the context of blockchain technology. We’re at the horse and cart vs introduction of the automobile moment. Critics dismiss it because of the lack of scalability. Believing that all consumers care about is the number of transactions a second.
Blockchain products through their new advantages, such as; decentralisation or removing third parties from transactions. Hence making products less costly and more efficient. We’ll see the technological advancements that will better meet consumers demands.
We’re a long way off. Take cryptokitties, one of the most breakthrough Dapps, which has roughly 400 daily users.
This can be a depressing reality for someone who believes in the disruptive future of the technology. I suspect we’re somewhere along a hype curve. Whereby, we over-estimate a new technology’s potential, but under-estimate in the long term.
If the industry is going to move along the hype curve. Then we need to build better user products.
The current set up to create a blockchain product is something like this:
Developers want to create something to do with blockchains > Create Product > Does anyone want it?
A lot of big ideas and inflated ICO raises are going to collapse as a result. They haven’t even released on main-net let alone spoken to a user. History has shown us that most innovation has happened at dis-economies of scale. Small teams, releasing and testing products. Rather than at economies of scale.
What we need is creators who are going to follow:
User Problem > Blockchain solves this > Product
What this means for designers and products
This tweet sums up how far away from mass adaptation we are:
Just looking at the 20 steps and divergences for a new user to purchase a Cryptokitty reminds me of this:
The uncomfortable designs make me feel physically unwell. 😆
The space is starting to consider design. I’m a particular fan of work by Sarah Mills (Design Director at ConsenSys)…
& Beltran’s Web3 Design Principles…
The key principle is:
The objective is that, once applied correctly, a user that lands on a Dapp can immediately tell she is interacting with one and, more importantly, has access to the powerful properties of the Blockchain and therefore knows she can trust every interaction with the application. (Beltran)
Trust is a key element of blockchain products. At its core, ideas of decentralisation and trust-less mechanisms are what make the technology advantageous.
But, whenever I start to explain these concepts to people outside the industry. Their concentration trails off. They don’t care. If you want a real life example, look at Facebook’s stock price before and after the Cambridge Analytics scandal:
When I start to talk about ideas such as getting a mortgage cheaper because it’s from a community, or better or more fair access to credit or easier trading of stocks and assets as tokens, people start to get excited again.
I’m not arguing that we should ignore decentralisation and similar concepts. These fundamentals are what we should always strive for as product creators in a Web 3.0 world. I am asserting that we don’t need to stuff this down users throats to get mass adaptation.
What we need, is products that are simply better.
As designers, we need to take the ideas and advantages blockchain brings, to build products that are better than the non-blockchain alternatives. We need to address the users’ needs and wants before what we want to tell them about blockchains.
Visionaries
When Pixar co-founders Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull were dreaming up their ideas for animated products. The computer power required to realise their dreams wasn’t anywhere close to reality. They were working without the tools, staking their future that the technology and Moore’s law would catch up and they’d have the tools to make dreams reality.
But true visionaries such as Smith see the future two steps ahead instead of one. They think about what the tools of the future might look like and then imagine what they can build using these non-existent technologies. This intermediate step in their thought process allows them to dream on a scale exponentially greater than the typical entrepreneur. (Francisco Dao)
Read more about how visionaries see the future here: https://pando.com/2013/03/28/how-visionaries-see-the-future/
The visionaries are the ones who are not using today’s tools but imagining what they could do with the tools of the future. I want to know what blockchain based products will look like with the tools of the future.
Take Aways
True visionaries will create products that solve user problems. They’ll talk to them and find out what they want. Eventually, the technology will catch up.
Many current blockchain products are building with the tools available and not talking to users. Blockchain developers are focusing on what they want to sell to the user, rather than asking the user what they want.
I think most projects will collapse. But, rising from the ashes will be teams that spoke to users and developed visionary solutions. Like Amazon, Paypal and Google after the dot.com bubble.
If you know any product visionaries — I’d love to hear in the comments or on Twitter @charliellington .
We’re also starting user testing at Nexus Mutual. If you’d like to participate, please reach out at on Twitter: @charliellington .
I’m relatively new to the blockchain space and still have a long way to dive down the rabbit hole. If you disagree on my “user problems before blockchain principles approach”, please let me know why in the comments…
