Bridging Worlds: Welcoming Web2 Users Without Losing Web3 Natives

uh hopefully we have a lot of ux nerds uh in the audience uh to join the three of us on stage but uh why don't we start with some quick intros uh and then we can jump into uh the topics of the day all right hi everyone I'm Austin uh working in design on a super strong design team of four people at uh Dune formerly known as dune analytics Nate Rodriguez I am the ux research lead at Phantom so working on the design team there uh pretty powerful team so happy to be here uh and I am ommer uh I am one of the co-founders of despark we are basically the user testing of web 3 so we've got a panel of of uh uh cross-section of web 3 users uh that get to do uh interviews and surveys for rewards um cool okay well guys before we dive into more of the spicy questions why don't we set a bit of a baseline uh and uh let's make sure we're all talking the same language uh by defining what user research is and maybe the best way to do that is we can start by explaining how it's done in web 2 and how it has been done in web 3 at least so far yeah so you know what ux research is is really sort of uh you know diving into what users are experiencing what are their needs what are their desires and are we solving the problems that they want to to be solved with our product so uh what it what entails is bringing users in uh in web to you know you're able to uh you have a whole list of emails you can get a whole bunch of people you can talk to them you can put prototypes in front of them uh get feedback in that way so it's it's a really good way to uh pass insights on to the design team to the product team uh to make changes that you know users are actually going to find valuable and useful so uh that's that's how it's done in web too um it's a little bit different web 3 I don't know if you want to speak to that Austin at all or or web 2 at all I mean to be honest a lot of the fundamentals are the same you have you know attitudinal research where you understand what people are thinking and feeling behavioral where you kind of track what people are actually doing attitudinal well behavioral usually tells you like what's happening so if you're checking like your amplitude dashboard uh and then attitudinal so getting feedback on telegram or formal interviews that's more like you know why people are doing what they're doing um I don't think there's a massive distinction between web 2 and web 3 in that sense I think the main difference is that users in web 3 are kind of accustomed to building with you um they've really been along for the journey um so we have like a super engaged uh group of power users at Dune who you know are not are not shy to give us like immediate feedback whenever we ship anything if we want to reach out so just having that like shared Builder mentality I think is honestly the main difference but a lot of fundamentals I think are the same so yeah and I'll just say one other challenge with web 3 is finding the users so in web 2 you know there's so many you get your emails you get uh you know so much information about people when they sign up for your product it's a little bit different with web 3 uh I know despark is uh a product that helps with that but yeah it's uh that's that's one of the bigger challenges getting the right people into these studies and getting the best insights from those people so that's that's my biggest challenge at at uh web 3 yeah and uh I'll I'll say there's a bit of a double-edged sword I find in web 3 which is that the the benefit is uh you know you have objective truth so when you find the right users you're not just getting them to sort of self-identify uh their demographics and their history on online you have their onchain record uh which they can provide via wallets obviously and that allows you to validate that the person is exactly in the audience group that you are trying to test for and speak to um but to the point that uh both the guys made uh you know there's just a different mentality of like of like privacy and it's a little bit harder to to find those people but uh you know when you do and hopefully we can uh create like a culture of more and more feedback to Austin's Point uh and uh be able to uh yeah Bridge th those two things uh sweet okay so I think everyone's on the same page about what user research is uh let's talk about uh you know where where things kind of go from here so um web 3 is notoriously daunting for normies to access uh do we think this is a a feature or a bug I would say it's it's a feature I think you know to some degree the complexity is part of the inefficiencies where people are making money and so I think to some degree it is a bit of a feature and I think if we really want to move you know beyond where we are right now and get really big Mass adoption I think that's something that we need to reconsider is that you know is that feature worth it is the value worth it or is it you know the growth so that's my thought yeah I would agree with that I mean I think there's analogies for what we're doing in the web 2 world uh a lot and we don't really acknowledge it we create like parallel even language that we use to describe things um and I think it it it is currently a feature um in that you know people want this information uh Delta so they can Arbitrage it um but if we want the industry to actually grow and to deliver on its promise and you know Rising tide lifes all boats I think we'd benefit from speaking the same language as people who are like not in our industry um so yeah that's uh yeah this don't get me started actually on this anyways I think we should double click a little bit more uh but yeah so I guess is it you bring up a good point right is it sort of the uh like the vernacular is it a marketing thing that we're just you know obfuscating uh the like relatively straightforward transactions with a lot of fancy words and phrases or is it you know like the the technical side like it actually is pretty clunky to to do most things the ux is is not you know as seamless as web to so is it a dual problem is it uh one of the two kind of outweighs the other um yeah I mean it's definitely both like we're all we're all in crypto right we have a a language that we speak there's you know a certain you know culture that exists within crypto so that's one layer of things and then there's you know if a lot of us have been in crypto for a long time and we do things that are it's not the best ux but we figured out our ways around it and it we're used to it by now but when you put it in front of new users I mean a lot of people are really confused and they're really uh you know it's not accessible for a lot of people and so yeah I think it's it's really important to look at both of these in in both of these lenses and see you know where are where are the ways that we can sort of bridge that Gap and and sort of bridge those users to web 3 yeah I think any time you have a community that you know whether it's an organization a nonprofit a company uh an industry they're going to develop their own jargon their own vernacular so I don't think that's unique to us um but I just think that because of the information Arbitrage and maybe this desire to feel like we're in some super secret society that no one could possibly understand um it it was a feature for a while because you needed people who uh were kind of willing to get on the boat and cross the ocean and not know where we're going to end up and you need to like optimize for that a certain type of personality but I think at this point the technolog is there and I think now we need to maybe uh yeah develop a more like streamlined way of communicating to everyone outside our industry so yeah um what it reminds me of a little bit is like you know uh the latest wave of onboarding came from basically people uh being told by their friends to like uh buy a bunch of and trade those and like that's like the lowest friction onboarding process the of the last of this cycle uh and so you know maybe that's not a bad thing that's like an easy kind of on-ramp and then we can work on uh getting folks to experiment with many other use cases um yeah cool so okay so uh maybe jumping a little bit into the uh the user experience a little bit more uh how do you guys think about balancing the level of composability to appeal to both web 3 natives uh without being too daunting and intimidating for uh newbies yeah I mean I think that's our biggest challenge at Phantom right now is like you know we are a pretty uh you know consumer facing we we're for everyone right um but we also want to you know still support the the Deens and the the people that are really uh you know transacting on chain and that are really using uh various parts of web 3 and are really engaging with that so we don't want to limit their ability but we also don't want to expose new users to so much complexity where they just they're not going to continue they're not going to make a first transaction they're going to get really confused and I've done a lot of research where you know I'll put uh you know the the use case is that people want to buy a token and just to get that token you have to understand that you need salana or ethereum and you need gas and it's not super clear for people and I think that can be a daunting experience but uh you know you also want to give the ability for people that are well-versed in web 3 to you know manipulate the uh the different transactions and do things that they want to do on chain so yeah it's it's really about uh Progressive Progressive disclosure to you know newer users and as they get more comfortable with it we can start exposing them to different parts of web 3 and they can sort of feel comfortable with that but yeah it's a big challenge yeah the way well I think it depends on the product but uh I'm like full on at doing at the moment thinking about solving problems for uh our data analysts who we call Wizards um and I think a strategy that could work is like a barbell strategy where you have a super accessible side of the product where people can get started but then you have the other side which you know caters to your power users where they can really dig into you know the the underlying SQL um you know they don't want to have some abstraction layer some guy some graphical user interface between them and the code um they just want to see exactly what's there have full transparency um but I think the worst case scenario is when you get stuck in the middle if you you know the kind of midwit situation where you are not catering to a you know a new crowd and making it super accessible for in dude's case to um you know write queries create charts and dashboards and share insights um but you're also not exposing the complexity and giving you know the power users that transparency that we actually can give them with onchain data so I I like to think of it as like a barbell strategy and resist the urge to get stuck in the middle and build like you know discret paths for like each each type of user and historically we've been better at catering to our power users so this is something I'm thinking about like how do we build a more accessible experience uh for new people H yeah that's awesome um and you know I think traditionally a lot of uh I love the barbell analogy I feel like that Journey though can be often a lonely one like people are generally trying to like navigated by themselves so you know platforms like ding that's pretty cool because you've got like your Wizards to sort of you know create a bit of a path forward I don't know Nate if you have any thoughts of like from your experience talking to users like how do how do folks go through that that like Journey that funnel from like newbie to DJ right yeah it's a it's like a really common story I'm sure a lot of us uh relate to this where you'll have someone who is really knowledgeable in crypto that sort of brings you in uh we found a lot of users are brought in through through a friend or someone more experienced and it's sort of like a a slow drip so you start you know you get uh exposed to a major coin and then you start getting into the mem coin so it is like an evolution of you know once you start understanding things and you you're able to understand like hey what's what's the underlying technology with this what's exciting about it and you start realizing that there's there's a lot to there's a lot more to do on web 3 than what you're initially exposed to um and you know I think it it is it's important to you know expose these things slowly CU I think it can be very o overwhelming and uh and like you said it's it can be lonely because you're sort of trading by yourself and I think the value of crypto is it is a really social experience and so if you are able to connect with people through Telegram and discords and Twitter and all these different places it can feel a lot more engaging and a lot less isolating so yeah I would say um from from my experience like our platform helps connect uh various different companies to to uh users to speak with and uh I find like something that you mentioned earlier is very true where users in web3 can be brought into the the product development Journey from like a very early stage you know uh because you can identify like your would be power user so early on you can then get their advice and like bring them along in all iterations and like that's a really powerful thing that I don't think is really possible without uh blockchain rails so yeah maybe like an Ode to sort of bringing people through the barbell what do you what's the middle part I don't know like the value of death in the bar barbell curve um sweet okay so oh yes here's a good one okay so what are the some of the assumptions about user Behavior Uh that you guys had to unlearn when moving from web 2 to web 3 uh and uh yeah like what the the new patterns that you've discovered um yeah do you think they're unique do you think they're sort of like adaptations yeah I mean I would say in the beginning like I said in the beginning there are some many broken things in the ux of crypto that people are finding workarounds and it it's just really interesting to watch them and I'm like hey you know how did that feel and they're like oh it's totally fine but then when I observe them I'm like oh man that took you you did this crazy thing where you know you you have to verify contract addresses and do all these things that's like that's not a good ux that's not a good experience um so I've definitely seen that you know because of the complexity of crypto and that it's not super hidden behind the way web 2 is where it's like behind a wall code uh and you can sort of access and and look at what's happening in the background that um you know it can be it's just a lot different in how you use the product compared to web 2 where web 2 has very clear rails on what you're supposed to do where web 3 is is kind of unlimited like you can do a lot of different things uh and and you can change a lot of things in in crypto then you can't really do that in web 2 as much so I think that was a big CH uh you know Big Challenge to sort of like unlearn and then relearn with uh with the crypto web 3 people oh does that mean do you do sort of like um like learning Journeys for your users in a different way now is that kind of part of the yeah I mean it's it's so different because in web 2 you know you use the U the ux to sort of guide people through and you use uh marketing all these different things where you know something like Phantom we we're not in charge of the chains that people are accessing or the meme coins that they're getting involved in and so we don't really have a lot of control over those parts of it and so it's a little bit more wild and it's a little bit uh and so we have to think about different user Journeys and how people are getting to our product and what their goals are uh I would say one you know really valuable framework is uh you know jobs to be done framework where you're really sort of understanding what is the job that this customer is hiring your product to do and if you focus really good on that you're able to sort of understand them in a in a different way um but you have to really you know focus on what they really trying to do uh because the product is so complex and kind of weird uh it's it's not simple and so yeah it there's definitely all these different Journeys that we have to be cognizant of uh Austin any uh any habits or behaviors that you had to unlearn relearn retrain yourself on as moving from Web Two to web 3 well just in web 2 there's so many established benchmarks uh for quality and experience so even like my parents when they encounter uh poorly designed you know app or website they they they have benchmarks for this and they'll be like frustrated and they're like this is like you know this is terrible design like they you know they don't know anything about it but they know what's they know what looks good they couldn't tell you why uh but they know what's good they know what's bad and they won't use stuff that's bad anymore um you know maybe unlike even a decade ago online people would kind of suffer through uh poorly designed you know web apps or apps um in crypto you know we have a lot of kind of built- in bad experience even like gas and like you know the time it takes to transact which we're improving slowly um but I think that uh up until now you know if you think about any ecosystem having you know explorers Achievers uh social people um I think we've over indexed which is a good thing early on in an industry to over index on explorers people that are willing to go along this journey with you provide feedback um but I think we probably are at an an inflection point where um we need to be building like the other side of the barbell to make it more accessible for people we need to start probably benchmarking the design and experience of our products to uh to like web 2 products um you know um I mean it's cool to have a a expressive loading animation but ideally like things go through in a reasonable time frame for example um this is all why I always love talking with Austin he has like great Frameworks for everything the the barbell the explorers and yeah it's awesome um and yeah that you know there's an interesting um like discussion to be had around sort of intent-based design like that's like very easy I would say to to sort of uh solve forign web to where you ask you know the user uh like what are they trying to accomplish um but in web 3 the same you know single transaction could be yielding many different types of outcomes for different types of users um so yeah does intent-based design intent based sort of research like is is that is that what you guys use day-to-day like how do you how do you drill into what someone is trying to get out of whatever they're doing yeah I mean it's a lot of talking to users uh you know understanding like I said you know applying Frameworks like jobs to be done it really helps sort of Center the conversation on an action and a and a you know the job that they're trying to that they care most about and I think that just really helps sort of like you know Center how we going to design the product and you know why you know we want to make sure we're doing something that is solving a problem so you know we want to make sure that uh these things are expressly uh you know fleshed out and you know I think having different Frameworks can really put those in a in a good position and buy buying for the rest of your team and the rest of your company uh because I think it's also important that the company is bought in with like user empathy so you're able to sort of let that you know permeate through the coders and the data people and design people so they have an understanding of what they're working on um and that they're working towards something that is going to be valuable for the users we're pretty lucky at doing we have um a a lot of traffic uh we also have like a really uh I guess dedicated group of you know Wizards um and yeah if we when we make stuff uh they'll tell us what they think of it um which is great and I think the the it's a it's a good problem have but one of the challenges is like getting the signal from the noise um and I've been at Doom for about a year now so I'm getting better and better at figuring out like uh where the signals come from like how to categorize them when to dig deeper when to lean on my intuition um uh but but at the end of the day I think you can get lost in writing complicated features specs or you know using internal jargon and usually what people want to accomplish is pretty straightforward um you know with Dune like what what do what do they come here for they want access to onchain data so they can uh basically get insights um you know for for other for like wallets for example probably people probably want to buy stuff and make money you know it's like it's I think sometimes we over complicate things but yeah yeah and and to the point about like going looking through the noise I think you know with user research a lot of people think it's about you know asking the the user what they want and then just like hearing what they want and then doing it there's a lot more to that you know it's about observing them it's about really sort of uh digging deeper to what they said and what beyond what they said and what they're doing and then sort of matching those two together so it's really important that you know you're observing as well as talking to them because it's you know that you're looking at two different things you know people don't want to look dumb especially if you're using something and you can't figure it out so a lot of times people will say hey oh yeah it was great I figured it out um but when you observed what they were doing it wasn't true and and it's really important to sort of look past that and to really sort of uh yeah to to look past the noise and and to really get that that signal that you're looking for yeah yeah that is an incredible Point thank you Nate uh and I guess like uh segueing from there um you guys have a ton of experience uh in in uh separating signal from noise uh I think there's a lot of Builders out there who want to you know be talking to users more understanding users needs more designing and building for users more but it's kind of hard to know like how to get that started get that practice started what the important pieces are uh what would your uh words of advice be uh to folks that want to start a practice or you know amplify it what are the things to really focus on yeah I would say talk to your users as often as possible uh you know and I always tell my designers as well that I work with let's put designs in front of them as early as possible if it's wireframes if it's whatever let's let's let's let's talk to them and let's get these this feedback as early as possible and I think you know uh another way to do that is just to be really engaged so you want to uh you know you were talking about telegram it's that's a great resource for crypto and Discord channels um but then you know I think there's there's value in doing a little bit more formal research it doesn't have to be this big you know this big uh process but really sort of you know writing out a script with a few questions that you can ask the same questions to a a handful of people uh so you're you know getting consistent feedback and you're you're putting out the right uh getting consistent data back uh and then also just making sure you're talking to the right people so I think it's really important to look at your product who is using your product and you know you should talk to those people that fit into that use case and then similarly if you're going to go into a new uh you know if you're trying to expand your product to new users look for that user and and talk to them and understand their problems uh it's not super complicated but I think it does take time and effort so you got to do it you got to you got to just constantly be engaged with your users um and you'll learn a lot yeah I would say there's um like a landscape of research methods right you have you know qualitative quanitative attitudinal Behavior you can map it on a 2 by two and different research methods are going to fall into each of these quadrants so you know interviews for example are going to be uh attitudinal um you know if you run a usability test that might might be more behavioral you're actually seeing what people are doing um and so I think what the the real art of you know conducting research when it comes to design is understanding this landscape and being uh thoughtful and nuanced about when you decide to use each method so for example if you're just starting off a project or you're about to kick off like a big feature you might want to run some like interviews and actually talk to people do more like generative research um but sometimes it's not worth the time like if you're just like shipping a like a small feature and it would take more time to go out there and set up this you know long study if you have a strong intuition just build it ship it and then see what people do with it and then if it doesn't work kill it so I mean when you're when you're running um you know when you're when you're in this game I mean time is time is money so I think understanding the different methods thinking strategically about like when to deploy them and then meeting people where they are so like in crypto is telegram right you know so everyone's on telegram you talk to people um and then also have people at your company who are close to the users outside of the design team um we have some people who are like going back and forth with our customers and with our Wizards and data analysts all day and bringing them into that conversation when we're deciding what to build and how to build it yeah I love it uh only thing I would add is that uh I think a lot of people you know to everyone's really super busy it's hard to like allocate time to One Thing versus another and often times talking to users even though it's really important everyone knows it's important you kind of you know falls down the priority ladder I would urge everybody to reframe the way you think about it because every hour you spend on talking to a user is probably 5 to 10 hours you could be saving on dev time right because if you build something that people are not going to use or they're not able to use for whatever reason then you've got to go all the way back and kind of start from uh from scratch so um yeah uh talking to users most important thing I think is uh the message this panel would uh would sort of leave you with um I think we're like pretty much at time uh I guess one one last plug the three of us want to create a uh design user Centric design Mafia for web 3 so if anyone's interested in uh putting our heads together and creating a more of a playbook for this space uh I think it would be really fun and uh everyone would benefit but uh other than that thank you to the awesome panelists uh these guys are really really the cream of the crop in web 3 so thanks for joining me and uh yeah see you guys next eth Denver awesome [Applause]