UX in the Crypto space

It’s a new world we’re entering as consumers of blockchain-based services such as Decentralized Finance, Gaming, Metaverse, and others, the industries to be disrupted are too many to name here. I’ve been using a lot of Defi services and I have been taking note of situations where good simple UX could save a lot of frustration for users and creators if done appropriately. Sometimes maybe save entire projects, but I digress…

The lack of Usability in the crypto space is sometimes appalling to me, as a long-time user and UX Designer, but the solutions are often quite simple. Haven’t we seen that before?… Comparing the Defi space with traditional retail banking services I can see the same trends that I saw 10 to 15 years ago when going digital was the big move for all traditional retail banks.

Critical info missing

In a very well-known Defi project in the market, Strongblock for those of you who know it, the User/Investor as to pay fees for each node created. The user can pay the fees up to 90 days ahead, but if somehow the fee is not payed, the node is lost forever. Let’s see how they display it:

No matter how many days are left the color is always the same, Green, and we all know that green means OK, right?… wrong! As I mentioned above if the user misses the deadline the initial investment is gone. So why not change the color of the alert to yellow, orange, or red the closer to the due date it is? This is basic UX folks. Tiny details can avoid having more angry users on Discord and spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) on other social platforms.