Is Design the final frontier to mass adoption?

Transcript

[Music] all right hi everybody um let's welcome noo lero with this talk is designed the final frontier to mass adoption hey hello thank you for being here it's going to be talk about design uh uh so thank you uh to begin with I would just want to have um small tradition just why do I do this talk mostly because everyone is talking about design we need design we need design we need design ux is terrible Everyone is always talking about how terrible is the

experience on web3 that's why I'm doing this talk mostly to try to bring design into the space so this is what we get all over the place you get like this sucks waful experience how things work it's or hard to use was really bad you go on Twitter you have a bunch of folks just saying bad things about web 3 web 3 it's not ready the users are not ready so even here my talk about design is miscellaneous topic which is kind of okay there's no track on user design whatever so even in events like this and I I love the organizers like for sure this not about the organizers but just

to prove a point that why design it's not on the Forefront of the conversation it's all about technical stuff you need to bring more design to the table that's why I'm doing this today but to be fair I have a disclaimer recently I woke up and and I got this cast from Pedro from wall of connect and this gives me hope is I'm not talking about this the topic in question but it's the first time that I see on cord Dev some discussion that relates to user experience and design so there might be hope okay now to the talk this was my disclaimer so now to the talk is it design the final Fortier for Mass

adoption yes no it depends it depends on how you think like if you think to the user specifically it might think okay design is what's Laing but there's another way of saying this like Tech is not ready we are not ready to on board we are still far far away from having a a good experience because the technology is not ready so it really depends so let me do again so introductions now hello my name is Nuno I came from Lisbon Sun Lisbon and Portuguese so my English is not my first language if I do some mistake if I don't speak correctly sorry about that this is where I spend most of my days I'm a designer

at ethereum.org it's a community-driven learning platform for ethereum like everyone knows what this ethereum is this is where I spend Mone my I'm redesigning and for forcing the community to have a better onboarding on on crypto that's the main goal that I do and now to the Talk itself so first explain what is Frontier everyone knows Frontier but you can have like it it's the next challenge what's coming next that's why I had Frontier on the title of of the of the presentation and for design like everyone knows that this is probably what design is about like roughly it can be a lot of different things design has a lot of different aspects parallels with different things it's not one static way of seeing it if

you do more research more on UI more on like creativity you have a lot of different things what is designed but let's focus on it's a problem solving functionality a Statics like it's all this combined but I would add that for web 3 specifically we can help on those four things main topics we can like make the Lear learning curve a lot less harder if we think designed first we can balance security and visability security is really really important on the space and design can have a really important role on on on helping that like educating the users like educating what is web3 what are we doing what what we need this product or this service or the whole thing that we are building and be trust trust and honest and honest is one

of the the funny things when I was making the lights because when I I think about honesty I thought about this guy do you know the hams the the hams it's one of like the gods of design from the 70s he was the main designer at Brown he created a lot of stuff and one of the things that he in the 7s was trying to find was the what is what makes design a good design and he come up with 10 10 areas I'm not going to D like I can't talk about this happy to talk this hours about yet hams this is one of my Idols like from the 70s but he had one one good thing good design is honest and probably in the space where you have a lot of non honest or like red pools or whatever you

call it Pro Design should be the one honest thing we need to make honest interfaces need to Forefront to the users what's happening like be honest to them but just for um just for a little bit Apple reference like if you have an iPhone in your pocket I'm sure you have this so even today your calculator on your iPhone it's because the hams created this for brown so this is how important he was and he's how important he is right now still so open your iPhone and you see that your equal it's orange because of the atams from the70s andp J KN just inspired from that and you have a lot of bunch of Inspirations so like you can see how important someone in the past can be even today on

the digital world like you have it on your pockets so uh okay this is my design reference because I'm a designer I need to have an apple reference on on a design talk but to be honest I had another one do you remember the hello from the other slides so it's the original hello from the Mac I really love the first Mac so that's why I added so I have two design to the Apple references it's was just a funny thing so just a little bit on perspective um you can have different layers and just to put in perspective why it's a final frontier it's because design is is on the next level that we need to work on and if you have some uh level where we have a lot of the code SM like all the

tech infrastructure all the things that is happening probably we can put this on the scale that we have our ethos our core values what why doing this we have the technology and probably you need any end what the end user the application layer the social layer everything that we needed and that's where we think that we need to talk more about design we did do more talks like this another reference that's why the triangles if you know what I mean so I'm probably being a little bit too fast uh I have nine topics that I go through that my goal with this topic is to Kickstart the conversation like small topics nothing related with each other just to try to think differently about some of the aspects that sometimes we do uh use them

on our conversations and talk about them and they might be unrelated but it's what I got for you today to try to bridge the gap between design and technology or design and web 3 um first of all like web22 web3 I've old enough to work in web2 for quite a while and my reference did you saw the movie the the poor things where at some points the animals were like different heads like they have pig with the dog's head and you have a duck with a pig's head so this is a little bit how I feel when we are creating the products like it's not perfect it will never be like there's a phase for things to happen things will be will feel weird at some point it's

weird I know the experience is it's not there yet so we need to embrace it like the web two revolution in the beginning was was weird like remember the first iPhone how weird was the apps like the experience itself was not good so for web 3 we need to understand that at some point this would this feels like this it's like animals being different and we need to embrace it and take it that it's an evolution second one uh new patterns uh I always bring this one because um I do remember this thing back in the day was the TWD app for Twitter so the TWD app Twitter back back in the day when it was good before whatever it is today Twitter not x uh it was a web app only on the

browser and have a set of apis and all the mobile clients were made by Third parties and you have a bunch of them and each one was challenge each other how to make it better so it was a healthy way of creting so two guys that used to work on Apple creates the pool to refresh which is today can you imagine not having a pull to refresh on your browser on every app and on your phone and you back in the day it was a button on the top that says you need like a small arrow and you press it to refresh and now you have the pool to refresh which feels normal back then when they pulled out the it was against Apple human guidelines no one wanted the user testing was awful like the users like w this is super awkward I've been pulling

the refresh it was awkward and now how you see it It's Perfectly Natural and you even do it probably on your with your mouse on your browser like everyone do it so even web three the parallel Heats new patterns will emerge new ways of interacting with with the software new new ways of doing stuff will happen and you need to be ready for that probably user testing going to be different but we need to be ready for that and this is a great example when the mobile design was beginning and we are creating new interactions oh how about this how about that and probably we need more of that for web three the other one is kind of a pet PIV of mine which is um I hear this a lot uh you don't need to

know blockchain is I kind of disagree with this because if you don't tell the users what's happening why would they choose to use a blockchain to begin with what's the difference between like if it is completely transparent and the the metaphor that I use is kind of a car we all know what is a brake what is a steer wheel what is like how to break a car you know the brake work you don't know don't need to know how to the engine works like the details you don't need to know how to change the oil on your motor like you have you go to the to the shop to do that but you do understand how the car fairly work it's enough for you to understand the medium to use it and to be perfect like not to kill someone there's set of rules that we all agree

upon to be on the streets to cross the roads to like all that stuff probably crypto needs to have some sort of close to this you don't needs to expose everything to the user but there's some parts that needs to be exposed there's some learning curve that it needs to happen my view at least so take it with the grain of salt another one it's like another thing like let's start doing things seriously stop the meme thing like okay once and for all let's do serious thing uh the other one it's again the one from Pedro from the beginning I added that slide I had this slide already read it but it's the same thing for us for design it's really hard to get into this and we need more design thinking on all the pro core protocol

things it happened that uh cut obstruction discussion but probably need more and it's danting for me as a designer to just get into this understand what's what's going on how can I help how can I jump in probably we need to understand better the tools and probably a different set like more diverse set of skills on those discussions might help not just design probably others I don't care but I'm focused on on design at this point but probably others and I think this this can help probably Shipe a little bit the technology more towards um an end goal that it's more friendly to the user in the end the other one it's um another thing that bothers me when when whenever every time I have someone talking oh but

my mother will not use this damn this is not for your mother it's for your kid we are not designing this for The Elder generation for the the youngest generation so we need to understand who you are who are our target audience like uh probably the Elder generation my our mothers grandfathers will be the long taale of web they will use in the end like it happened on web too Facebook users like they they were the last ones they love it they are all over the place but to begin with was for college students that was created we need to think the same like this is foref front it's hard tech it's hard to explain and they will be more willing to use it so probably need to focus on different generation and the

JZ generation I just find out really L it this is from last month they are super wealthy apparently so they are more Workforce it's bigger than the Boomer like the the ones from from the from the' 60s and apparently they have the means to on board and change funds and to invest so why not Target to them might be Tech Tik Tok users might be different kinds of thinking on the you on the user face user interface but we don't need to make it as simple as for an elder might just be simple for someone that is digital native at at this point so probably we need to Target to them um another one that's and we at.org

do struggle with this a lot it's not easy but we didn't need to like use different wording the jargon is super complex even for us to explain one of these things to someone that is not crypto like it's hard probably create some sort of metaphors relations to the real world I don't know but we need to work together and probably design can can help this so um it it this one is it's it's it's it's hard and again web 2 we did the same like the email thing like it was an email why was a mailbox because everyone knew the email before that it everyone knew that when you got a mile you have something that you open have that's why

the envelope that's why the Box even the trash like I love this trash because it has a recycle thing like what you recycle there is it plastic is it glass it doesn't make sense but it was the way back then they think like how can the users understand you have a desktop you have folders so probably we needs to come up with something and um I always do this because the wallet it's it's kind of weird because a wallet can be a wallet can be can be to to store your funds can be your identity so it's not clear that a wallet is the best word but I do get it that it's the word that we use to be closer to what the user know what is a wallet what you put on your own wallet so somehow we need to understand that those words probably

they are hard we need to make some some sort of like parallel with with normal to normal users another one um we need to get out of our own bubble we go to a lot of different events we listen to the same media you listen to the same podcasts we need to go out to the real world understand the needs who are we designing to or creating the products to who are we targeting to go to other geographies we know that in other places South America Africa it's the the the way they use it's different from here Europe or us we need to understand them we need to go out I do go to some uh design events and it's really funny because like they know nfts because they

know something about it but they don't know how they work and like it's interesting to be there and listen understand like what is the needs what do they know so we need to get out of our own bubble has designers has devs has researchers whatever we need to get out and understand better how are we building this and for who are we building this so get out of a little bit of our com Zone it's one of my topics the last one it's um it's more for us as designers and it's autoc critic and if there's more designers in the room sorry to say this but we are weird species we do things differently sometimes and we need to embrace different things so there's a lot of changing on mindset for design for web 3 that needs to

happen when never design in the open open source design it's a tiny tiny fraction no one knows about open source design probably in this room what is it it is it is a movement it happens it's going on the way we do user testing it's something that I've never questioned too much but when you do you test the same way for web two product for web 3 product is there any differences how do you approach this even for us for design Community we need to adapt uh so it need to think differently and be different within the web to so this is kind of an autoc critic and even more like like I said we are really strange humans and I just come up with this idea recently so I Chang the slides because I used to go to web uh to creative conferences and

this was in Vienna far Ford festival and in Vienna before the the The Talk The the talker ask a bunch of friends to be naked on stage they were there naked for the whole talk just for the sake of beyon s naked and they got me thinking like this this is how design thinks it's egocentric it's self hyper creative it's all about me me me I'm the best I did this I did this I'm the best I'm a Diva my ideas are the best we need to like put that in the basket once and for all because in the other week in Lisbon I went to a conference about autonomous uh gaming on chain was autonomous uh Anonymous autonomous and this guy need to talk

with this like do those two worlds be a part like it's weird like I got this really it's weird to understand like how different it is like we have different kind of set of values that the most creative have another Vision so we need to meet somewhere in the middle uh and it was really fun to bring this because it got it got me thinking like how can we fit the way we think as designers the way we like push things forwards have ideas and okay I did to the same car vales of being open being Community Driven uh help like all the the core values that that that we do like we need to find a way way it goes

against us as designers and probably uh the other Tech researchers the whole needs to understand the users as well so we need to find ourselves in the middle so uh I'm almost the end design has the power to humanize and enhance the impact new technologies something that uh I wanted just to leave in the air before I end the talk and I do believe that design is the final frontier that's my answer but I'm biased that's my view and thank you all right thank you noo for that welld designed presentation um do we have any questions for noo

okay hi thanks um could you maybe go one slide back where you're you're asking this question is design um no one further which one uh well the question of your presentation was um is design theti yes the biggest obstacle to to mass adoption and I think we're missing one very important thing because if you look at um things that we're using today that are mass adopted whether it's Apple computers or Windows computers or Instagram or Facebook they didn't have predecessors right and so you you gave the example of a car basically what we're trying to do in you know and here

on the event and in the whole whole uh web tree space is you're trying to tell people hey look you already have a car but give me your car and I'll put in a different engine and then you can continue driving your car right but those people are going to say why I'm already used on my car and it's working great and you're not really giving me anything new now I'm not saying that that people shouldn't know about how the engine works like you're I think that's true that's very important and people want but it it's just not you're not on a playing field with the Facebooks and and the apples and and and the Instagrams if you're not delivering a new product if you're only changing the engine of the product and so I think if you really want to have web tree Mass

adoption you have to do it with an something new something else that we don't know yet what it is um but using some some of the same patterns like I can go I I don't agree with you when you say that there's no history there's always history mankind it's it's based upon itself right again and again and you're referring to a digital world like the computer was the first but before that you had like paper pen whatever you had to start it that's why the evolution was slowly in the beginning and even the on boarding like it's super slow the card is the same thing like you said Uber is the best example when Uber coming life go myself in the the strangest car what no one would do that now can you live without the Uber it's

the same thing so we kind of adopt the same ideas so I think need to be critical about what we have now like you said be critical always critical and critical thinking it's one of the things I'm I'm most bullish on it's be critical on I think why do we need this how to do this and then adopted somehow same patterns but be critical in the sense that how can we improve is it better is it is it working um because a lot of the things that we ship right now in web like and even the walls experience it's using browser extensions it's the best example we use browser extensive to begin with who uses browser extensive before we needed it for a wallet no one use it it was a forgotten thing that the

Brer did it and and and to be honest there's something that even within EU uh we've never thought about that but I had a friend that somehow had an idea for the cookies you know the the the U cookies so you could have that on on on on the browser extension and deny always for example no one did it because the extensions itself were like a hack like can I do this I need to hack something and was that the heck on the browser is it perfect no is it working could it be better yeah a lot better so it's the kind of the the same thing in that that embrace the difference it's a process question so my question is who do you

think is doing it right right now do you have any favorites um in terms of design I always get that question that I never answer I'm not into no you can't even tell us what you're into I can tell you afterward not on stage sorry it's not fair to the other ones to to say like this is better it will create I've been there and creates always a discussion that it's always like why is this better why do you choose that I'm not in a position I'm being completely agnostic I'm here to push the design as a whole for everyone I'm not picking who's the worst and who's the better I always get that question that I always get it and I never answer on stage I happy to talk about that after it I'll ask you there's uh I have a personal hat hatred against seed phrases I think

that's something that we need to uh just just remove just because when we when you onboard into a wallet that's the first thing that shows up and if you don't get onboarded in two seconds and people can't use the same password as they use in every other app then they probably drop off what's your view on the impact of the seat phrase and this on boarding process in the world ux experience for someone that's being on boarded do you think people feel it as because they don't understand they feel it um they feel it's a it's a turn around do you think it has a huge impact or do you think it's something else that

actually prevents them from being on boarded properly into a wallet or something I just to do intro to your before question I my other talk that I did it last year was about the mistakes that we did on web 2 and one of those mistakes was secured for design so the password user password uh byom was wrong to begin with we've never had should have that and we never taught teach the users on W 2 how to use it properly at this point is still a problem and that's we still think that the Su phase is a problem because you're thinking from the lens of the one that is is already using something that is wrong to begin with they don't know how to store passwords like why we need a password manager like like that no one uses normal users don't

use password managers because they're not they don't understand the risks of copying the same password they don't weak password they don't know the risks so how can you teach those that it's already their mind is already pre-oriented look I need to do a password that is for kids and it's my kids name and birthday so how can we just have that mindset and then on top now memorize 24 words and don't forget it and then we'll lose everything if you like how can you put those together we are working on on a core LEL like smart accounts and they will help a lot and I do believe that that's we make it worse than it it's it truly is to be honest because of that perspective we make it like why does the

user need to be one click away of everything I do question that uh but on like technology the technology is evolving and that will be solved soon and it will not be a problem I believe so right um because of our time we won't be able to take any more questions so if you have any questions you can meet up with no after I talk thank you very much thank you please hang around the next Talk starts in few minutes [Music]