EthCC 2: Thomas Chataigner

okay so hello everyone it's a pleasure to be here today to talk to you about UX and overall a case about a project that I made with the ANF R which is the French agency for regulation about radio frequencies my name is Thomas attorney and the title of my presentation is the UX strikes back because I want to showcase how the UX has improved on a large scale for a one-year duration in the etherium ecosystem so I'm an information system engineer a kind of a new one actually I created a year ago I came into the etherium ecosystem for cryptocurrency at first and the economic relation behind it where I stayed for the philosophy and how actually the centralization could help us society and how we work today I've developed few projects many on a theory of hydrology fabric and hydrogen service and yeah I'm a developer in a startup called blockchain partner which is based in Paris we do four main works which are training technical development plug and play products and also consulting we try to bring forth a cryptocurrency in all society by going through work and how people would use Bachchan in their work in their daily life so who is the NFR this agency so they watch over your frequencies as I said on the French territory but you have to be really to know that those frequencies it's actually free of rights so anybody could book them or anybody we would want to use them so they can't really administrate it they can only help on the planning and on-site synchronizing every actors and every users on your platform they will be here on events on site to help people book their frequency and use them and they also represent friends in an international debates and legislation to make sure that our interests are there and that friends can speak on those matters so what are the different problem that it's posed to be a central actors and not being able to administrate anything well it's sort of time and manpower to to waste because you can't really tell people how they will book their frequency how they have to do that I mean right now they go through a lot of Excel sheets and it's very messy also the lack of visibility for the user when they want to book a frequency well they don't know how the NFL will assign that and how they will actually give it so maybe they're like prefer French media over Spanish media or something and those two factors combined well it makes it that it's hard to unboard and it's hard to get into that matter because you don't know what to send you don't know who to contact so nothing works and what they did they wanted to build adapt to is and the management and the monitoring for free radio frequencies so main criteria for this def it's actually for it to be autonomous the people using it the user using it you need to be responsible for what they do and they need to be autonomous they need to feel great when using the platform so it needs to be user friendly and they they need to be in the good mindset and they need to want to stop using Excel to whatsoever also the third criteria which is really important is the costs because it's a public agency they have no phones they can't really L to pay too much to make it run and so it needs to be free of cost as much as possible to get to those criteria which we divided the whole development into two phases the first one being an MVP which was built between April and July 2018 and the second part which was built between November 2018 in March 2019 you have to know that when I started developing that I was new in the ether Macca's system and tap development overall and what I want to do is right now give a feedback on the problem I and the team project and encountered and how we dealt with them and that will showcase how much the custom has evolved in a year so first problem we had ether management as I said the NFIB public agency they don't want to pay for user transaction then the user they don't know how to bathe her they don't want to buy a 32 because it's what they work so why would people pay to do their work so it's kind of it was kind of a problem for the agency and so as a new developer I had no solution I couldn't see what to do and after thinking it over well if nobody wants to pay the intern is to be free right so the only solution we had was okay let's deploy a private chain at the time and so we went for POA click consensus and we just made it easy to deploy some node with docker images automation and that's all transactions fee problem and it also helped a bit with scalability so validation time being way less than it is on the main net user don't really have to wait for the transaction to pass through so that worked we went back on development we went back on our contracts we developed them then Iraq the time for integration right so integration we did it we did a first presentation to all clients all the NFR and they did not understood what was the wallet and why they had to sign a transaction how'd that happen so it was a problem and the other problem was that we needed multiple device because if you create an event for example with the Tour de France so whatsoever and you booked some frequencies at home and you want on that event to show that that frequency is yours and you had you are the right owner of that frequency well you need to have either your private key the same on two different wallet or another system behind it and also signing transactions well it had it clicks between your user and your functionality so it's something that in current Eirik standard is quite bad and that's not what you want on the web right now so how did we deal with that we thought it over and what we thought of was generate a key pair on the client side and then encrypt it with the client secret stir it into storage and private storage somewhere and when the user want to log in or just want to retrieve his keeper well we give him back what was encrypted and he can decrypt it with his secrets so the solution right they were the first solution I came up with and what I had the time to do too but I was kinda like that and so what is that what what did I just developed because it's a private chain you don't really own your wallet you don't really own your key I mean you own the keys but it's not on your device so it's nothing like blockchain Pro try to put first and try to put forward so I was kind of depressed and the team project to about that and we wanted to do something greater something better so we thought it over we talked about it internally and we decided to go back to the AFR in September and try to tell them that see so we did something that worked but it's not the best and we want to make it better and so we just talked with them and after looking over the internet what development was made between last March and September of last year well we saw that the UX had to rise in the etherium development community and it was more active and they tried to do something better and so after showing that to the NFL well then said yes and they said okay guys you did a great job on the first iteration it's working now so now just try to do something better and improve the solution you've built for us so we thought it back and we went back on the first problem we had which was the private chain and the ether management well that was too bad because it was still too early for them to use ether and they didn't want it to pay every time the dimension so now that you have that criteria how do you make it better well you could think about your private chain and try to I don't know just more decentralized so we try to involve more actors so for example new agencies we went to European agencies so UK Italy Germany and we talked to them about our philosophy and what we wanted to achieve and so by facilitating no deployment very literal deployment well that we said yes and we're right now in current talk with them about how they could integrate the whole private chain in an idea I would say to deploy on on the main net - well we increased validation time that's that's that sounds kind of off because if you talk about UX and you can put like one second validation time every time well you want to do that but actually because once you deploy on the main net on a shirt or average time from now it would be better before scalability solutions comes out to make them use to having to wait for the transactions so right now I think validation time is around six seconds so it's half of what etherion minute can do at best capacities but it's still great and we we think it's the better choice also about deploying on main net we try to build reusable libraries so that means that your contracts when when you want to deploy them you need to make it so that you don't have to deploy them every time build the logic the workflow of what you have adapt your building into libraries make it so that you don't have to redeploy every time and so the gas code for deploying it is well reduce I guess and also we remodel the whole data set into interval trees which makes it so that when you do an operation on some booking so I want to cancel my booking I want to make a new one or just search for one the time that you have to wait is just all log and the number of nodes you're going through and so gas consumption is rarely reduce thanks to that and and yeah so thanks to that I think that the the tap itself the contracts it can be deployed on the main net and the cost you would need to run it is actually is actually as less as possible and now that we've done it will be dealt with that sorry so with the architecture and the overall conception well you need to deal with the main problem which is your client side you use outside so the people that will go on your DAP and use it and right now the main problem I guess you could say is wallet management so the other problem we identified previously and we decided to improve it by focusing on three axes the first one is play platform UX and UI and then the second one is education and finally the last one is the multi device part because as I said previously when you create an event and you want to show that even that you have your bookings that you own your your bookings and you want to cancel one or to do a new one you need to be able to do it as if you were at home so for the platform UI in UX well how do you make it so that even before talking with Mara mask or talking with any wall at all signing transaction how do you make it so that you people the user that are on your path home likes it well you just create a neat interface so you do it so that you have a good graphic shots you have a good workflow people they don't have to think when they go on your website and they know where to go instantly so when they do that they will go through the logic really easily and should be really smooth and when they arrive at the end of the logic and then you have to trigger Mirrormask well or any user or any signing your protocol you have well you need to make it trigger no more than once or twice but the less as less as possible because the user they will use a platform they will be happy with what you've done with UI UX and the workflow but then like pop-up shows up and they have to sign it so it's really disturbing and an entry strange for them so you need to make it so that it's really seamless and when that arriving they have to sign the transaction well maybe just perhaps a nice nice loading screen with a loading bar and some animation colors or something because people they don't want to get bored and something that I learned with with this project development is that the user is like but I like little stuff little details that sometimes seems useless but for them it's perfect little animation as I said something that go through the screen something that turns it just keep them happy and keep them amused by what they see so second axis of focus education education so what does that mean you have to take half a day a day maybe more to talk to your key users the key stakeholders of the platform so in our case it was the main French media let's consider a vision for example of the a and fr and you just go with with them through the do through the platform through how blockchain works so how do you sign a white would you sign a transaction why it is important to own your own private key to own asset phrase how does that work how do you keep it safe how do you install different wallet and if you do that well those key users they will just talk with your new normal user they will just talk with any user and the word will spread and people they will get it and they will get it by talking with another of their peer and not just to you or any support that they could find but there will still be some user that comes onto your platform your tap and they don't have anyone to talk to and they still don't want to search on the internet but but then how do you make them use your platform well you just write some guides PDF for example and you even try to do some interactive ones so maybe a little website one pager that you can click on if you lost and you know and it's certainly what to do you do some videos you try to make something so that people when they arrive they know where to go what don't loaded and how to install it and why they do that so I think that education is something that that needs to be done and at all level and it needs to be worked on finally on the neck on the last axis that we focused on for the platform the multi-device identity at the time in april 2018 we didn't have much solution and we were a bit lost and so we just decided to make a centralized wallet if i could say but then in we had some luck because in october november last year thanks to origin protocol and what they have achieved the standard ERC 725 was completed and this smart contract for identity over the blockchain well it's really actually helped us because thanks to that we could have multiple wallet so multiple devices use their address to access an ID identity contract and make it so that we know that which cell phone is linked to which account and so it which is linked to which bookings so and that helped us with flexibility too because imagine I'm on an event I lose my cell phone or I get my cell phone and my computer stolen whatsoever well you can actually make it so that right now the NFR they can reset your identity and just set a new address to accept access to that identity so it's like a normal website function mint and it's really great for the user experience overall and there they do not fear to lose their access to their account and that actually helped us because now we can go forward with the project and we can think of Arabs on next step so in two weeks we will have a closed beta with the infr and some of the major French media and we will be able to go live on on the first event we discussed with them with a partner I can't read this closet but with one of our partners and try to put this application to use for media to go on an event and just book frequencies for the camera the microphone and make it work and if that even goes well and people understand how that works and they know how to use that and it's actually it's actually successful where we will have a public release it right after and if the pubic release goes well well anybody that wants to create an event and have some media coverage could use on the French territory at least they could they would be able to use a platform to book frequencies and make it so that everybody can transmit it from anywhere after those steps and after all people first public release well we thought of some upgrades because you you always have a possibility for upgrading your platform and make it better so the first one it would be the point that I said earlier but the NFR being able to reset your identity right because there is that makes a central actor and so the type can not be really used but by by a single person but then what if you just distribute that right and you make it so that some of your friends some of your colleagues they are the one that can reset your identity so maybe with with the Nutri signature wallet or something like that you can make it so that your friends they actually 20 of them they can say hey that's my friend and here is his new address and he wants to relate his icon because he lost his computer and so thanks to that you can reset your account without having to wait for the NFR to take action or having to talked with them alone at all second recent upgrade we identified so there's a lot of layer two development that's being done right now in etherium and one of them is X dye which came out it's really nice I think in terms of how you can sell it to any client or user because you can say hey so you can have like main net like production ready chain that is ready for for your project but but then it's a bit faster and whenever you pay for a transaction you won't have to know how much it is in ether or whatever if there is or gas is but you will have to you can pay it with US dollar and so for any user normal user I would say people that have no idea of how blockchain work well that's an improvement and they could actually buy it so right now we are identifying if it's possible for us to to go on that and if that is well we will do it instantly and then last but not least we're in talk with friends connect which is an identity tool in France to connect to your social care accounts to connect to your taxis account and we try we are trying to see if it would be possible for us to integrate a wallet in their solution so they came twist first asking if we could put the wallet inside that solution we said maybe we don't know we need to see if that's possible if there's a solution and right now we're trying to see if that's possible and once again that could be a real nice upgrade and that could be to me something that would really be nice to achieve because it would show that administration's well it's not like they don't care about what we're doing here in the interim ecosystem it's more about they're beginning to understand it and they want to build some stuff on that now I will just talk about the takeaway that I had personally from that project mostly and how it felt as being a new developer last year coming into a type creation how it felt to work on on that environment well first for your project yourself your client and the user of your dab they need to be ready to adapt to a lot of stuff as I said multiple time already everything going fast layer to innovation identity innovation different wallets different solutions well if you're not ready to adapt you're going to get lost and everybody needs to know that again spend a lot of time a lot of time on education I know it seems bothersome and I know that sometimes people that just can't get a tease well you just hate those people but you have to spend time on educating them and having to repeat like ten times if you need that because if they don't get why they need a wallet why they need to sign their transaction well they just don't want to do that and they would just would not use your app at all and finally well to me waiting can be a solution as we've seen I mean the the first part of the project we did I wasn't proud of it at all and I was like okay that's like if I could have built a web app with any data base behind it like MongoDB or whatsoever it would have done the same but now because we are waiting and we are talking with people waiting for their answers and trying to convince them that it's better and we took times to build it to build something greater well right it's a better application and if we take for example I cannot do a live demo here because we have to we have we have to get permission and everything but if I show you the first version of what we'd done right it was really so we needed to work on that because the UI in UX well it's naturally you can't know where to go and you don't know what's happening well if you work on a better UI on something nearer and something better well I guess that if you use meta masks over that and you added some bit of effects and some animations well it would be there for you to understand what's going on and why you need to use this okay so I just want to thank the HCC and the asset for inviting me here to talk about that project that's something I'm quite proud of I have to say because that the first application I've built over a Tyrian and that was pretty hard but also the ecosystem they're really nice and you can always find someone to talk to to improve I would also like to thank the team project I worked with because they were really comprehensive and they helped us they helped me at actually a lot and then I want to thank the NFR for being real nice client and just being comprehensive about blockchain the philosophy and group overall the user that wants to use the DAP and what we need to do for them so thank you much guys [Applause] if anybody has a question about anything whatever so the main difference we had - I mean I did other projects with private companies right - compared to the government it was actually quite surprising because the NFL they were more open to innovation the public sector because they have some some of their budget is actually opened for that type of development and compared to a private company which is reclose - its money and they sometimes they tend to go by strict rules and make it so that the the the money is not wasted well there they if you had the good arguments and you could show them that investing more times it was better well they had the time and because they had budget for special innovation they were ready to wait and they were ready to allow for multiple plans and trying to do something greater [Applause]