3 UX Solutions to Make Using Crypto Less Stressful
How common design approaches can improve the usability of an unfamiliar technology
A core feature of a blockchain like bitcoin or ethereum is the irreversibility of transactions. The work required to change a past state is immense enough that it becomes infeasible for anyone to alter past transactions or balances. But, it means there’s no undo button, no phone number to call, and no branch to visit if you mess up. If you send an incorrect amount, or to the wrong account, it’s permanent. The thought of sending ten times more value than intended would rightly cause anyone to break a sweat.
People are often cautious when trying new and unfamiliar technology. Without any experience, it’s easy to doubt your ability to make the correct choice and understand its implications. Improved learnability can increase the velocity of adoption.
While the centralized financial infrastructure we’re familiar with offers the ability to fix mistakes in some cases, decentralized and immutable networks like ethereum were not designed to do the same.
The question then becomes — how can we design interactions to lower stress levels, prevent mistakes, and diminish barriers to adoption?
Fat finger errors
A fat finger error, as defined by FT, is “a typographical error caused by hitting the wrong key, or by making mistakes when inputting a quantity into a computer”.
Fat finger errors can impact anything from our bank accounts to the entire financial system, like the time Samsung accidentally distributed shares equivalent to 30x its market cap to just 2000 employees. They were later able to fix the issue for the most part, despite causing a bit of chaos for the stock price that day.
Value visualization
A lack of confidence pushes people away from technology no matter how beneficial it may be. If people aren’t comfortable using the technology, its benefits are less likely to be experienced or valued — increasing the emphasis on improving understandability. In many cases this translates to people being drawn toward centralized custodians to help them reduce the risks that come with interacting with the technology directly.
Visualization of values can improve speed of use and reduce errors by providing assistive cues that can be interpreted intuitively. Even more so than with fiat, we think of crypto as being intangible. By applying physical attributes like shape, structure, colour or dimension, we can leverage visual and spatial processing areas of the mind to help us interpret numerical financial information through wider channels.
In this example, a whole ETH is depicted as a solid block. Values under 1 are depicted as a division of the solid block, with subsections shown as smaller blocks over a larger, semi-transparent one.
In terms of stacking, small fractions are shown first on front facing corner of the semi-transparent cube. Above one, solid blocks lay flat on a single plane and gravitate toward square shapes as they grow.
Simple visual systems can help convey numerical information including the order of magnitude of a specific value. This concept is simply an aspiration or theme that can be developed much further.
“Visual and dimensional cues aid in the interpretation of numerical symbols by widening the conceptual surface of the interface.”
These visuals will have to scale so that the blocks won’t get infinitely smaller as unit price increases, opting to change in shape or color etc.
Expressing the magnitude of value
The decimal was invented in China, making its way to Europe around the 1500s, which helped to catalyze the gradual decimalization of European mathematics and currency.
This system has worked well because with fiat currency, everyday values tend to be left of the decimal ($28.00), but because the unit price of eth is well into the thousands, transacting in small amounts involves dealing with very small fractions of a unit. For example, at a price of $32,600 USD, a five dollar purchase would equate to roughly 0.00015 BTC. This introduces another challenge: determining the order of magnitude of low values at a glance.
Could using commas on the right side of the decimal place help determine the scale of minute values?
Improving the readability of minute numbers is more necessary now than ever, due to unit price becoming so high.
There have been several proposed solutions to solving for the issue of increasingly small fractions, from promoting the use of subdivision names like Satoshi or Gwei, to disruptive ones like performing a kind of a split to lower the unit price of a coin through issuance.
A simpler approach in the meantime could be placing commas every three digits, so that we can understand magnitudes better at a glance, by grouping rather than just counting.
Formatting Addresses
We already use formatting to break down long strings of numbers in many areas. From phone numbers to credit cards, universal formatting rules are often applied to create segments for easier reading and retention.
Bitcoin or ethereum addresses are represented by an alphanumeric string between roughly 25 and 45 characters (in some cases stretching out as long as 60). Formatting with a simple visual spacing every 5 characters can help us read and verify these quicker and with more accuracy.
Universal Standards
To facilitate smoother experiences with new technologies, it helps to develop design systems that are specific to the needs of crypto ecosystem. When the next wave of newcomers appears on the horizon, we’ll have improved the design.
This is a simple proposition for those designing for the cryptocurrency ecosystem: that implementing structural and visual tools to help increase comfort levels and remove barriers to entry and adoption.
