My Simple Augur UI Improvements
I wrote about why people aren’t using Augur a couple weeks ago and got a fair amount of attention for that blog. I decided to follow up with taking another look at the Augur platform and seeing what small improvements could be made.
After investing some time by reading instructions and watching youtube tutorials I finally was able to make my first bet/trade on Augur.
Augur is a predictions platform that combines the concepts of Betting and Trading. Because Augur is the first of its kind the platform can be quite confusing. To make it simpler I think the concept of Augur can be summarised as:
Augur is a platform that allows for any kind of Market to be created. The Market has to ask a question that is answered by either a Yes or No. However the Yes and No has probability assigned to them for the chance of that outcome to occur.
On Augur a Yes = Buy and No = Sell
As an example I bet on the Market:
Will the price of Ether (ETH) be greater than $300 at the close of Q3 (9/30/2018)
I believe the answer to that will be a No with 80% chance of occurring. Therefore I have to put a trade of
Sell with Limit Price = 0.8
The odd thing is that similarly the same trade can be represented as Yes with 20% chance of occurring. Meaning the trade can look like:
Yes with Limit Price = 0.2
To make matters even more confusing my bet/trade hasn’t even been executed. I just placed it in the Order Book. Someone else has to come along and take up my offer for it to be executed. After that the outcome will be decided on 9/30/2018. Until then my Ether is escrowed.
I am not ashamed to say it took me over 1 hour to get to this user experience level and I still don’t feel confident with the platform. I will however still persevere.
Comparisons to Similar Platforms
I took a look at some platforms I use for betting and trading. As I wanted to just complete a simple exercise I only looked at the main page of each platform.
Betting Platforms
When first logging into a betting platform all of them tend to show a few common items:
- Special Promotions
- Upcoming Bets
- Popular Markets
The aim is to make it appealing and easy for someone to make bets quickly on popular markets.
Trading Platforms
Cryptocurrency Exchanges also have common items on their main page:
- Platform trading volumes over time
- Recently completed transactions
Just like Betting platforms you can quickly get a sense of which are the popular markets by the data that is presented. People tend to stick to what is popular so make it easy for people to see the most liquid markets.
Possible Changes to Augur
I believe there are some simple changes that can be made to the Augur main page that may encourage more betting to occur on the platform. By integrating features from traditional Betting and Trading Exchange platforms.
Current Augur Design
The Augur main page has a simple clean design but perhaps it is too simplistic.
It is too hard to see the various available markets. The site is also not responsive.
My Markups for Augur
I did a mockup wireframe with some changes in the main page that I believe many people would already be familiar with.
Detailed Options — The menu on the Left Hand Side is fine because I know that I can have expanded options by selecting the various items here.
One issue is you need to always as a first step go to Account and connect to a wallet though. I think this step could be part of the login process somehow.
High Level Overview — The real estate for the rest of the main page should be dedicated to presenting various market data to encourage users to make trades on markets.
Help — A link to point users to various online tutorials on how to use the platform. The platform is not very intuitive so placing a link here is probably expected by most users. One of the first things I looked for was a Help section.
Augur Market Stats- The platform is run on Ethereum via smart contracts so all the usage statistics are already public. The dappradar site already does a great job of showing a breakdown of all dapps. The same data can be shown in Augur.
Users- Give users assurance that other people are also using the platform. Can be broken to how many users transacted on Augur in the last 24 hours.
Total Payouts- Is it working? How many others have actually made money from betting on Augur? Show it by putting the total payout figures.
Popular Markets- What are the most liquid markets and which have the highest payouts? I’m more likely to bet on these rather than try and navigate the numerous markets out there.
Upcoming Markets- I may not want to wait so long for an outcome. Which markets are ending soon so I can be rewarded the quickest without long delays.
Recent Activity- What are other people betting on that may not be what I am intending to bet on. I may be influenced by others choices and make more bets.
Third party sites such as https://predictions.global have all these useful figures but they can be easily integrated to the main augur UI. There is a certain level of trust that is there when using the official Augur interface over others.
Final Thoughts
It’s still very early days for Dapp development and Augur has one of the more complicated Dapps out there. It’s hard to be a first mover in this space and credit should be given to Augur team in getting to this stage.
I am sure the future of prediction markets platforms will look very different to their current forms. Only by users using and giving feedback will we see the further evolution of Dapps.
If you are invested in Ether then you are one of the many owners of Ethereum. The success and greater adoption of Dapps directly affects your investment. You can help by using platforms such as Augur.
