Guerrilla user research for dApps: Step 1 to mainstream adoption
Duration: 00:25:44
Speaker: Kevin Kim
Type: Talk
Expertise: Beginner
Event: Devcon
Date: Jul 2026
Today, the most prominent dApps struggle with daily user counts in the low hundreds. We have some work to do in terms of widespread adoption. And because of bureaucratic financial systems and increasing smartphone adoption, a lot of that growth will come from the 6 billion-plus people outside of North America and Europe. You’ll learn how a variety of factors, including but not limited to sociocultural and language differences, carrier ecosystems and internet speeds affect consumer behavior in different countries with regard to talking to friends and family, purchasing things, making payments and paying their bills. You’ll learn how five thousand-person WhatsApp groups in Brazil, 100%+ carrier surcharges in Kenya and the popularity of voice messages in China all relate to how you iterate and grow YOUR dApp. This is from an ex-Facebooker who’s driven research for and shipped to hundreds of millions of users in 100+ countries. And yes: a lot of this will be in the form of hard, quantitative data! By the end of this session, you’ll know how to analyze a new market, conduct UX and usability research unique to the area and have the nuanced perspective necessary to disrupt global legacy institutions.
