EthSign Signatures: Lean Usability Research
The EthSign Signatures product has grown by leaps and bounds since our humble debut at HackFS 2019. With each new version of EthSign, the team researched and brainstormed feverously to build improvements in functionality and user experience.
In anticipation of the launch of EthSign Signatures we enthusiastically opened up our product development process to the community through user surveys and interviews. EthSign Signatures, the final version of our flagship e-signing product, is built for the community; it gives our users a decentralized platform to securely sign contracts and enter legal agreements with no additional fees.
In order to build a more user-freindly and community-oriented version of EthSign, we sought feedback from our community to better understand user personas, improve on UX flows and design elements, and prioritize specific features. This article will give a quick snapshot of our user testing process and the key insights we got.
User Testing Process
We began the user testing process after developing a UX prototype for EthSign Signatures. Being able to effectively detect users’ pain points during testing lends iteself to well-designed product. The process was devided to two parts: survey and interviews
1. Distribution of survey via social media platforms
This survey allowed us to collect information on our user personas, typical contract signing scenarios, and the need for certain features.
Given that Wallets/DID are used to login to EthSign, we are largely unaware of the identity of our users and the scenarios in which they use EthSign. So we first asked about if/how often the user uses EthSign, and details about their contract signing needs, such as what kind of contracts they typically send, how many parties are typically involved, etc.
The next survey section asked users of EthSign about their satisfaction, ease of use relative to other e-signing platforms, and preference towards which new features should be implemented first. For respondents who have not used EthSign, we asked about which e-signing platforms they use, what they like/dislike about said platforms, and how often they must sign/send contracts.
2. Live user testing interviews
From the survey, users could opt-in to participate in 30-minute interviews. We conducted interviews for three different test groups:
A) For EthSign users: Test EthSign Signatures Signing Process vs. DocuSign Signing Process
B) For non-EthSign users: Test EthSign Signatures Signing Process vs. DocuSign Signing Process
C) For non-EthSign users: Test EthSign 3.0 Signing Process
Groups A & B were asked to first use DocuSign to sign and send a contract, followed by a section of tasks they need to perform on our EthSign Signatures prototype. The list of tasks included: log-in, decrypt the file, filter contracts by status, and various dropdown actions. This test was intended to see if EthSign truly is a product built on Web3 that provides UX that is as user-friendly as Web2 products.
Group C was asked to use EthSign 3.0 to complete their typical contract signing scenario. Given EthSign 3.0 has been live since June 2021, we were aware of most of the user pain points, and mainly used this test to validate our understanding of UX flaws, and see live how users made errors.
Results
To preface, when interpreting result data we took into account the positive bias that likely skewed some results that arose from conducting testing mainly on our community members. In the future, we will expand on our testing user base and involve more users who are unfamiliar with our community.
Survey Results Summary
- 266 submissions after 2 days!
- 3.9/5 overall product satisfaction among respondents
- 3.8/5 average ease of use
- 36.9% of the respondents say EthSign is somewhat easier to use than platforms like Docusign
- The majority of the respondents use EthSign to sign Business and Investment contracts
- 34 Net Promoter Score (NPS = % Promoters — % Detractors)
Image Caption: 3.9/5 overall satisfaction among respondents
Image Caption: 34 Net Promoter Score — How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
Feature Results Summary
We asked respondents to rank the following features in order of which items would make you interested in continuing their signing experience:
- When typically creating or signing your contracts, 79% of respondents say is it important for the different co-signers to sign in sequential order.
- Some of the most desirable new features include: signing with NFT, autofill input fields such as name and date, and send contracts notifications directly to email.
- Common UX friction points with EthSign 3.0 were re-confirmed, such as user confusion around switching networks to receive contracts and difficulty in interpreting contract history.
Thank you again to all who participated in helping build the best version of EthSign. Your feedback will help us improve our product, provide more invaluble insights on what our users are looking for, and shape the future of our compnay and community. We will continue to conduct user research routinely to gather more insightful feedback. We are firm believers that our community can play a critical role in strengthening our product.
