Jim Kosem - DeepWork Studio - Ethereum London keynote - #ethldn

[Music] yeah so I'm gonna talk about these things designer is one of which I am there's another one in the room he's back there there he is so there's now two of us it's probably the record here at editing in London and toasters because most of you probably like toast I know I do and blockchain which is the reason all of us are here this is almost an entirely non-technical talk you won't see any of this sort of stuff I don't know what that is but none of that but I'm gonna talk about how to think about how we talk about design and the blockchain and web 3.0 space yeah so as I said before I'm a designer that means I mean there's lots of definitions really but I like to think of it is it's like solving problems in a creative way and I do that generally 97% of the time let's say for there's a number told you there gonna be a lot of numbers for software I mean you can call that UX and UI or strategic or innovation or interaction design I have a master's in that whatever that means but oh it's all the same sort of thing really you know it's all design and more often than not a designer has to do all of those sorts of things all at the same time generally and it's all investigating and creating solutions to problems to make things better and this is a deal for this entire space bus you so yeah in one shape or form I've done work for these sorts large large things very centralized not very do central those sorts of things and most recently I've done a lot of stuff like this so this is um play ok yeah so yeah basically it's looking at narrative and designing for understanding and this is a work that it did for signal noise division of the Economist group and we did this big thing for Siemens looking at investigating through visualization which you can't really see there but of about the four industrial revolutions kind of taking people through these kind of Epic's in human history and then presenting this through you know this this the tale of these six cities and their preparation for digitalization so kind of what this is is well using design as a tool to explain things but how I got into this blockchain stuff kind of came out of this narrative thing so a lot of my work was around kind of getting people to understand things and probably more than a couple of people are familiar with this author Neal Stephenson in this room and I one day it will not run one day over like a year and a half read this 5,000 pages or so of this thing called the Baroque cycle and it's essentially about how our sense of money and exchange was invented in basically the late sixteen hundreds and this led me down which you could call this pop economics rabbit hole like kind of learning about how we decide what has value and how it gets moved around and how it gets exchanged between people and this happened also about at the same time that the publishing industry began its death spiral so I started thinking about this thing well I said well Jim you're a designer right you're supposed to come up with ways out of stuff you know out of this civilizational mess you know that is the death of publishing you could say and it was right around the time of the Bitcoin hype a couple years ago so I said you know well I understand things by designing things for them so I was like oh I know I'll design a thing and that will lead me to understand this blockchain stuff better you know because there was the Bitcoin hype but then there was all these sorts of things creeping out from under it you know this was just the kind of the top layer you know as they say that bitcoin is blockchains baby you know so this kind of these but and we're gonna talk about metaphor so that's good in warning this is just a thought experiment it's not a real thing there's loads of technical issues mishaps not well thought out but it's just kind of looking at kind of how do you think about words in exchange and value and so I was thinking well okay let's say you write 2,000 words and then let's say those 2,000 words are put on a blockchain and it's given a set value for instance 20 of this SDC and let's say the author now owns this he can prove it you know there's that immutable ledger right and he that's he can sell it he can rent it he can license it he could do all the number of things with those two thousand words but more importantly let's say there was a magical way to measure that let's say there was a way that you can put into a browser into and granted this stuff is starting to happen right now with like brave and things like that and let's say you could measure and you would be essentially there would be you'd be charged on that kind of curve for how much you're experiencing so tracking pixels or words etc etc meaning that you're only charged for let's say that third of those 2000 words thus 3s DC and so the idea was I was thinking because I'm a designer I was like okay maybe there's some sort of mechanics we can kind of putting into her right so the idea would be that if that it's lost reversal right so it's how is it good for the reader for the user the guy spending money how do you design things that are good for people that are scared of spending money on the Internet right so it's like well you you lose less upfront but you spend more rewards to get towards the end which would also incentivize the author to write better right it's to get you to the end and kind of let's say he racks up a hundred thousand of these SDC because there's so many people reading it and bear in mind there's no need for a publisher or an advertiser right yay and then of course you know let's say the New York Times says ok yeah I'll give you three hundred thousand to license that whatever all buy it straight out anyways just thinking about all these sort of the implications of working in this field really and that's kind of recently what I've begun doing recently which is working with the deep work and these are two words user-centered and blockchain you don't see those a and - not even two lines typically next to each other right but or not even in the same sentence but that's kind of what we're set out to do and what we've done recently for this thing called humming BOTS from coin alpha and that's basically a market making algo bot builder and what we did is we were taking it from a command line so they I think when public with a command line about a month or two ago and designs of the whole graphical user experience around it you know and kind of how you trade strategies how you build treads strategies and there's different opinions whether you want to publish that or keep them secret and all that and then kind of how you set this up between the trades and then of course the entire process to to running your BOTS and building them and all that sort of stuff and also yeah ramp ramp we did some things for and basically yeah that's it they allow you to inside your DAP to kind of get crypto basically so just looking at kind of well the user experience but ultimately it's the big problem I believe in this space and feel free to tell me I'm wrong afterwards or in the pub you know it's easier there I guess is is you know where are all these users where are they you know where these underbanked speaking masses with their pitchforks you know like no we want this crypto you know maybe and maybe they're in other parts of the world and maybe it's gonna happen and maybe you know in the past week you know there's a lot of activity in this sort of space so maybe it is happening but I think there's a number of things that we need to think about and think through in this sort of to kind of get around stuff and and there's a lot of things we're up against and this is the big one it's this is all very difficult in all very new and even for technical people you know I'm a designer but I'm a fairly average Joe let's say but you know I it's it takes me a long time to get my head around this stuff and when we're talking about currency it should be pretty easy to understand and and this is I think the massive public perception problem is well to you know but this is also the kind of the case with the internet when it first came out so there's a lot of parallels between like the web 1.0 and the web 3.0 spaces as well and then ultimately it's it's kind of about this you know that there's so many great things coming out like like public event amilia with that they're essentially yeah picking on and so I guess in a way that they're they're selling books and it's all done in the wallet and you can kind of sell them and you own it which is great because it's that's what paper used to do you used to own the paper but you know how many of their titles have the words blockchain or crypto in it you know that's already eliminating 99% of your readership and things like civil which is another fantastic effort you know and that they're trying to save journalism you know that's great and they're gonna do it using crypto currencies and token sales and all these sorts of things but some journalists try to help save journalism and it they decided after 48 steps that they just had enough and this is kind of the problem that were that we're up against you know that this web 2.0 stuff the essential is centralize things are they're just easier and I think we need to kind of start the conversation around that so we hold the toaster I promise this earlier toasters it's a no-nonsense it's spare it's efficient you know you it doesn't do much it heats things to a variable level you know you can kind of do that and and it heats mainly sliced bread you know it maybe you have some other things you can shove in it out and on but it has to be roughly that size let's say but you look at it and you kind of understand what it does and that it will work you know it's telling you without kind of any prompt or ambiguity what it does you know kind of this is good design if you ask me bad design which famously Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman who are kind of the godfathers of user experience they invented the word user are you words sorry user experience or the phrase rather and and they wrote the design of everyday things this is a notorious example of bad design you know yes it heats stuff there's a handle maybe you chuck stuff in I dare you to try to heat bread in less than three button presses with this thing I dare you you know it requires prior knowledge or requires training it requires all of this stuff it requires somebody showing you how to use the microwave and this is wrong it you know there's just loads of about with these things you know and that's kind of where we're at with this you know we're not there but we should be we should be you know getting away from there and in there kind of in the kind of the technical space or the web world I think type form is a good toaster you know it's the uniforms are how we get humans to populate databases that's that's what they are they're generally painful at bests annoying but this is kind of taking that kind of populating a database and kind of make it cumin it's making a conversation it's showing you where you're at and showing you you'll be done soon and just put up with us you know it's conversational and that's great and Amazon most people don't think about this in terms of good user experience but this has been honed over decade they've spent gazillions getting to this thing and it like every tiny tiny friction is taken out and it's their entire business most importantly is based on their user experience and that's something to really think about really they introduced one-click payment you know they're like how can we make it the easiest human way for people to spend money and to exchange and the blockchain space I'm a big fan of what argent is doing you know this doesn't look crypto this looks actually quite human it's fun even you know really it sort of feels like a nice Bank thing you know and most importantly it's not oh you're on your own because responsibility you know no it's just like no we're here to help you not to be a comment on you know any sort of political belief so more importantly it's trying to make you feel safe you know you've got backups we're your friends trust us you know and it's everybody's hugging each other you know and all of this but it's really quite nice because these sort of things might seem kind of potentially infantile to some people in this space but this is what regular people like and this is what gets people to trust things and I also admire this company sorry for the low resolution but they're there new unlock and basically essentially what it does is you can kind of create subscriptions or paywalls on stuff which is great it kind of makes sense right you you read a bunch of stuff and yet on the cost 2.

0 one-eighth right and it's not necessarily user experience about but it's holistically like you understand kind of I have to pay a thing to look at a website that that's a complete experience really and they've made it pretty easy to do it you know you just make a lock you can kind of set some things on it and off you go you copy/paste that thing in there you know and that's this is this was kind of like this sort of thing is leaning towards the PayPal or the WordPress of web 3.0 I believe that getting to making it easy as incredibly easy as humanly possible about making a painfully easily for some and this is great and I think it's it's more about focusing on the users and getting out of the RIA the technical reality and fo getting in the reality of the actual users and this isn't an easy thing to do for developers I get and it's not an easy thing a lot of times for designers as well but you know it's about showing them the problems the benefits about getting into their shoes I guess CEO so to speak and it's about this also kind of requires making custom uncomfortable absorptions about this space too you know that you have to assume nobody understands what you're talking about you have to understand that that most people don't understand the terminology and that your users have no funds you know it's because onboarding is probably 99% of the game and Amazon understands that in sort of a lot of other companies that have kind of taken over basically and a lot of it is about kind of reframing I believe as well that we kind of think about you know or a lot of the narrative behind cryptocurrencies and blockchain and wimp 3 una pono is about oh yeah we're gonna eliminate transaction fees and make it anonymous and all multitude of all these other things that we all know and love in this room but it's maybe not the best way to think about it maybe it's about kind of more of an empowerment thing about supporting independent businesses that they don't have to pay stripe and maybe somehow they could pass those savings on to you maybe there was like another way to help those sort of local economies maybe there's another way to reframe how we talk about these things because the corner shop will make this ultimately acceptable not you know other big things and people won't use it until it's better you know and kind of understanding this is the classic illustration of how to get to an MVP right that you don't just put a massive wheel on the ground and then throw a bunch of metal on and then you get to a car but it's not about it's it's about understanding that things are progressive and this is of course talking about how to build software let's say but it's also interesting because it talks about not taking massive logical leaps you know not going from 0 to 100 all of a sudden you know but taking those nice slow deliberate steps so people are comfortable that they can understand this jump they can understand that jump but to get from there to there is more difficult to understand and we're talking essentially about adoption here man it's talking about just enough you know and easing up on these big concepts you know that a ledger is hard to get your head around the fact that it's immutable is hard a block is hard to get your head around but does everybody need to know that not necessarily [Music] and I think this is the big thing is this that you know we're talking about web 3.0 which implies an upgrade to web 2.0 all right it's a bigger number right it's supposed to be better and it's harder and it shouldn't be you know and when when what 2.0 happened in Ajax and all that stuff there was no turning back to tables and iframes there was no going back to any of that and there shouldn't be any going back to to banks and to all this other stuff either right now you know because it came down to the user you know people flock to the browsers that support of that stuff and people flock to the things I did all that and we need to get there I believe and I guess and we should think about is well I'm speaking I suppose to the more technical set in the crowd about kind of looking at what you really need some people like oh yeah I need design I was like well what does that mean you know think about like what you're missing you know it might not just be like put in a lick of paint on yours on your thing but it's looking at making your thing logical you know that designers are good at trying to break things down and make things logical and that will make your thing pretty actually if it's usable and it's about you know thinking about what you really need in terms of those creative solutions you know you might not you might need design but not a designer let's say and and just you know these sorts of things about it's about talking to users I do this all the time I've done field work all over the world and it's about talking to people and finding out those little bits which is never done and this isn't just in the blockchain space this is just in software in general that's done all too little and think of it I like I'm gonna star Jim I think was done nothing you know it's about kind of like you could make something for your friends you know and I guess the big thing to start talking to designers I will be at the pub or feel you know you can yell at me over the Internet you can do all of that we're nice I promise and you know ask the designers and try to explain them in you know plain English what what you're doing and try to get some feedback you know and this is how we get the blockchain community to work better I think and then you know and like I said start thinking of some really good metaphors because this is the really hard one so like I was trying to explain I think to what I gave up on my mom because that's just never gonna happen but my wife I was like yeah it's it's sort of like there's a big Google Doc and nobody is in charge but everybody owns it and that sort of made sense but you know it's about struggling through these metaphors to try to explain things because that's what people get really and just about how you can do design yourself you know a design sprint this is a fantastic tool this guy Jake Knapp from Google Ventures wrote a book to show you how to do it but that's what it boils down to it's like a really rigorous five days that you can go from an idea a notion a problem to essentially a tested prototype in five days so look it up you know you can do it yourself like I said or hire people like me to do it but the point is is opening these things up you know that to start the conversation to get out there with users and to get building stuff that people will be using and that's it really so yeah feel free to contact me I'll be at the pub later there you go thanks for everything Cheers oh wait I should leave that on there sorry yeah is that wrong is that old should it be signal I guess no or something there's probably something even cooler I don't know if I just put a couple letters before then everybody asked Oh what's that's the other thing isn't it so any questions hatred likewise disagreement no unequivocably no because it's because I've tried to use this in the past and it's it makes sense when you read about what it is and then you try to start doing it and then you just give up yeah all right yeah I'm happy to be proven wrong probably massively wrong okay yeah and I want to I want to say does Oracle behind that or somebody like that or it's like that it's a big big old java thing isn't [Music] no it's an interesting thing because I mean a lot of what I do is making these flows but it's I think it's the translation from you know the scribbles are the documents and these sort of things to getting to working software is never a nice transition and I don't in my experience I've never seen that happen with UML but again that's just my experience yeah yes okay you know yeah I think it's two things is that one is you obviously because it's the right thing to do explain what they're getting themselves into and but I think it's just how how much you do that and how much is acceptable how much is necessary so again like the example was civil you know for their token sale that yeah you had to answer a twenty question quiz in order to buy that and I mean I get it because I don't know they're trying to be fair and journalistic you know about that something but I did it ice popped into it but and it's about kind of just making it easy and telling him just enough you know to to buy it let's say a toaster on Amazon I don't need to know how the toaster is constructed or I don't need to know how it's gonna end up from the distribution center to my house I don't need to know any of these things necessarily I just need to be feel comfortable without happening and I mean the toaster may blow up and burn down my home sure that may happen but I have to be I have to be comfortable knowing certain things and that information if necessary is accessible so it's telling just enough and making it not painful I guess yeah there's there's a number of ways to approach this there's obviously the big key no quality versus quantity of studies you know so for instance just as part of a design sprint we did in fact with this humming bot we you know we just did I think five or six interviews with people from I don't know they're generally between Californians and which is most of the planet I guess between California and Singapore but and I guess that was six interviews that was enough to give an indication you know whereas some people like you can use surveys like like they group to compare have like data from millions of places you know if they could do surveys or integrate that sort of thing or compare obviously the best thing is to to mix qualitative and quantitative you know to kind of get at things but I personally I think towards qualitative information you know to kind of get more kind of human things right yeah yeah I mean that's part of yeah I guess it's it's about nish you know most people like because obviously all of us in this room want mass adoption for these sorts of things but the problem is you got to start like what does eBay started with Pez dispensers or something like that you know and that was validated they expanded they validated that expand it validated that expanded you know and it's it's I guess little by little you know and it's not about going you know like the car you're going from skateboard the car you're not going from just wheels on the ground to just chucking a ton of metal on top of it what in the design cycle yeah yeah this yeah that's that city exactly that's kind of what I mentioned before is things will become pretty if they're usable or if they're logical and I think a lot of the work in the space needs to be done on on making things make sense for people you know and then granted may might do already and then you can just kind of make it prettier and you know but people will put up with ugly things if they're fun or they're beneficial if they have value yeah yeah exactly like it's yeah it's like make make the bread cheaper at the corner shop that would that would be that would start using one of these wallets instantly every day if it was that you know but that'll be good for all of us in this room yeah yeah because they're going to do a ton of work that we can kind of ride the coattails yeah you should probably have the money bit figured out at any point to be honest at any point is better than none like I've I've stepped into like projects like two weeks before release which is you know could be disastrous generally is or you know it's just might be some conversation so yeah I'm making this thing what do you think and in just let really to be honest that's probably more of the most valuable thing is to be there at the beginning and to do things like designs friends or any of sort of kind of upfront work or any sort of preparation to kind of build the I guess the holistic experience and and kind of let it off that they can kind of go on by themselves and then come back in again I think in technical teams they miss managers designers a lot of times because they just don't know how to deal with that weirdo in the corner yeah it is it's kind of a misunderstanding of what we do because we talk about toasters in microwaves not about you know UML but yeah I guess the sooner the better I guess is is would it would bald you onto and it can be very informal in its a lot of times better if it's potentially informal you know just those chats and those informal feedbacks and kind of pointing in the right direction and being part of community you know rhythm so yes yeah I saw yeah yeah sure yeah you don't need to know you don't need to know that yeah you just need toastiness toastiness there you go that'll be black that'll be like light brown that's it that's all you care about yeah yeah yeah oh sorry that's you can arm-wrestle [Music] yeah I think there's an I think we're like it's or Donna we're sliding down a slippery slope of granny realization with these sorts of things you know so yeah that you're gonna have to you're kind of forced into an itch generally you know and it's the front ends a really good example you know because it's like framework of the week or whatever you know and someone will come out next week and then there goes all the view developers or react guys you know because it works because it doesn't it doesn't look expensive it looks like you know the cheap thing you go you know that you do with your friend it's like the same reason Ryanair looks cheap yeah it's just like non-stop tiny tweaks but if you look at what Facebook looked like five years ago or even eight years ago it looked even worse you know that there it's a reason it looks like that you know and it's probably quite deliberate in to look simple and plain and you know nothing fancy I guess yeah start making money agree yeah like you lose already like you require like it's over you lost I think yeah yeah yeah right yeah that's awful like so far as how many people right and how many people in a higher income bracket right so that's already like a massive Philly I don't know I I mean the easy the thing that people already did was to just go mobile right because then you know you have the wallet baked into the app you know no I meant like if in terms of actual apps like App Store apps you know not like progressive web apps or any things like yeah yeah no it's not but yeah what I'm saying is like look like status for instance has like you can do taps within it you know for instance like that sort of thing so you get around that quite well but then again that means you're just you're just doing that right and you're locked into their their silo there you could they control everything which is kind of antithetical I believe whereas it should be in a browser it should be open like that but I think you know madam asked is cool for what it does but to require you know - good luck explaining that to somebody what that thing is and then oh wait I have to get the camera to put money into the little moving fox head like I mean if it looks cool and it moves around and that but I you know that's - explain that to somebody okay yeah cheers Thanks [Applause]