UX & Design

A Playbook for Product Development in DeFi

I’ll cover frameworks and useful tools to help emerging DeFi product development teams: 1. understand how to set product strategy and establish protocol + user-level goals 2. build an MVP 3. conduct 'what if' analyses – using simulation-based modeling to optimize incentives 4. use a data-driven approach to understand product market fit – tracking the right on/off-chain metrics to identify growth levers 5. understand common web3 nuances that can impact UX

Adoption Day

Open-source design unconference and working groups helping to drive improved User Experience and usability standards forward for the decentralized eco-system. Enable cross pollination of fresh perspectives and emerging UX methodologies. Bringing together developers and designers in the ecosystem working at the various layers of the Web3 Tech Stack to share their unique solutions and encourage interoperability amongst various systems.

Asset Rights Abstractions - a Case for Smart Contract Wallets

Smart contract wallets (SCW) have a potential to streaml UX and increase compatibility of asset and dapp contracts. Well positioned SCW can overcome needs for devs to integrate increasing number of standards. Instead SCWs can improve composability between dapps and decrease the amount of TXs needed, enabling dev to focus on core features rather than handling custom or niche cases of asset contracts. PWN Safe is an example of such wallet enabling selfcustody of lending collateral.

Dark Forest: Lessons from 3 Years of On-Chain Gaming

We'll present an overview of learnings from 3 years of building and running Dark Forest, the first fully decentralized MMORTS, including: why ZK is important for games, what a crypto-native game is and why we should care, designing for emergent player behavior, pushing the limits of Ethereum devex, and social consensus and legitimacy - why is Dark Forest more like chess than League of Legends? We'll also hint at 0xPARC's next crypto-gaming experiments.

Data + Empathy: How to Approach UX Decisions in Web3

Data has been useful in Web2 UX/UI design for quantifying user actions to understand what’s working and not working, but it doesn’t tell you why they’re doing that. When you pair participatory design with data design, you can get an effective picture of how and why people use the product. But, the problem is user research is becoming increasingly data heavy. Web3 enables more participatory design because people are aware of their data and are conscious of this type of exploitation.

DEVA Awards

DEVA awards are simply a fun way to come together to celebrate and allow the community to signal their appreciation for the amazing work that has been done in the ecosystem since last Devcon to drastically improve the utility and usability of Web 3 technologies for the masses. Come celebrate community achievements! These awards are not meant to be taken seriously in any regard, Project nominations were gathered through community input of over 2000 unique nominations.

Education as a Public Good: Past, Present & Future of ethereum.org

Content as a public good attracts less attention vs. protocol infrastructure yet is a critical resource for our community. See an overview of the mission, progress & evolution of ethereum.org as an educational public good. As the "front door" to Ethereum for many web users across the globe, ethereum.org currently receives ~20 million visits per year across ~50 languages. It continues to expand & grow thanks to thousands of open source contributors. Let's dive into what's next for ethereum.org!

Going on Safari: Researching Users in the Metaverse

A research study was conducted to understand the experiences of users in the metaverse. The deep conversations with participants in that study inspired the researchers to explore how web3 interactive platforms could act as a tool for qualitative ethnographic research in their own right, using 'netnography' to uncover behaviors and cultural learnings. In this talk, Georgia will share what can be gained by 'going on safari' and observing users in this new social ecosystem.

How to Talk to g̵i̵r̵l̵s̵ Users at p̵a̵r̵t̵i̵e̵s̵ Your App: How to Do User Research in a Remote Environment

We often rely too much on our instincts about how our product work or prior knowledge on how it should be read. More often than not, we are wrong. Newcomers will always use your app in the "wrong" manner and talking to them will reveal many ways in which you can improve your product. I've worked many years in many web3 projects, from the Ethereum Foundation Wallet, to ENS and specially a full year at the Defi protocol Balancer as a User Researcher. I would love to share what I've learned.

Participant Experience Design

User experience design is traditionally focused on driving user engagement and behaviors that serve business goals. How do goals and processes change when designing for commons or public goods? How does conventional design wisdom help us, and when can it lead us astray? What new patterns, strategies or challenges emerge when we consider the user as a participant rather than a customer?

Positive Framing and Communication for Web3

The Ethereum ecosystem was, in some ways, born out of rejection of legacy systems. This is often reflected in the way we name and describe our projects and tech, names that are at best edgy and irreverent, but more often are obtuse and unhelpful. In this session we'll look at a number of examples, from the simplest of technical concepts to the most far-fetched DAO and token naming schemes, and see how by casting them in the positive rather than the negative, we go from hindering to enabling.

Social Composability Design: How DAOs Can Leverage It for the Future of Work

Effective communication is a strategic advantage that DAOs are failing to leverage due to a fragmented and inefficiently designed tool landscape. Let's explore how social web3 primitives may unlock collaborative network effects. Imagine knowing if you can trust someone at a glance, without knowing anything else about them. We'll tie social theory of Bourdieu together with User Experience Design into a neat little package and see how it can herald a new era in working together.

The Future of Web3UX - a Paradigm Shift for a Better Collaboration between Design and Development

70% of UX design on Ethereum is defined within the Smart Contracts. So why are so few UX experts involved in Smart Contract design? It’s time for a shift towards better crypto UX. The future of a better web3 UX will rely heavily on a paradigm shift. The necessity of change in the way we work and the way we look at how products are designed and planned is more and more needed. So are you ready to embrace the change?

The Original Sin

No one expected MetaMask's userbase to grow from 300k to over 30 million during this last bull run. It was an incredibly optimistic time filled with boundless creativity but it was also a chaotic time that led to many having a negative experience with web3. With the market cooling and the merge complete, let's look at how the early choices at the protocol layer shaped the user experience today and identify what's worth changing for the user experience tomorrow.

Tokenizing Brands: 3 Key Learnings

Tokens are a unique way to generate Brand – Users connections. There is a world in terms of what users can do with tokens, and leading Brands such as La Praire, Hugo Boss are already exploring this world with us. Connections are the key. We have realized that the value of the token comes from connections, together with goods and services. It’s clear for us now that tokens are the integration point for web3 and token technology should be built around this concept.

Understanding Latinamericans to Design a Local Flavour DeFi Platform

From El Salvador to Argentina, passing through Colombia, we applied local UX research iteratively with our own methodology TUD "Tropykal User Dive" to define specific financial needs across different countries in Latam. This process has helped us to define a DeFi product designed for the needs of Latinamericans and with a highlighted local flavour. We would like to share our method openly to be replicated in other emerging economies around the world.

Why Account Abstraction is a Game-Changer for Dapps

Native account abstraction on L2 is a breakthrough for the usability and security of crypto. It’s also the only way to scale self-custody. This talk explains what account abstraction is and why it matters for Dapps and their users. We’ll provide specific examples of features that it uniquely enables, such as session keys, fraud monitoring, multicall, social recovery and more. The end result is the unlocking of new experiences and use cases that can move the needle for crypto’s adoption.