Cryptic UX — Improving security and user safety through design.
I recently joined the team at O3 as lead UX designer, and wanted to throw a quick post together of my initial thoughts, as we start to work towards redesigning our new an improved O3 platform for the future.
The technology behind cryptographic currencies and blockchain is absolutely incredible, and has real potential to disrupt just about any industry we can think of. We are starting to really building some great new economies and services based on it. But up and till recently, it’s mostly been driven by function and the technology itself. If we really want to bring these new services into the mainstream, they need to be easier and more accessible to average users.
It’s time to start really thinking about user experience and design.
I NEED AN ADULT!
One of the best parts about blockchain technology is that it allows us to transfer, trade, buy and sell, execute contracts and much more, without the need for a middle man to oversee the process. We can create new economies that don’t need to be overseen and control but anyone. We are in control.
But therein lies a major issue.
By using a mediating party to control the process (i.e. a bank), you put trust in them to get the job done correctly. This meaning, if anything were to go wrong, it would be their fault and you would probably be compensated, depending on the terms of service.
With crypto currencies, we are putting that onus back on the user. Making them effectively need to fend after themselves. No banks, no intermediaries, just them. While this isn’t always the case, centralized exchanges taking care of the users accounts for example, if we truly want to realize decentralized economies, we need people to look after their own data.
Everyday we hear a new story about how some user got scammed, phished, hacked, forgot to back up their private key or even just wrote it down wrong and now can’t access their wallet, ultimately losing their hard earned investments.
This is a major problem if we want this technology to progress into more mainstream adoption and wider acceptance.
It needs to be safer to use.
We believe good UX can solve a lot of these issues. Through design, we can improve understanding of the technology, educate on safety and security, and make the whole process much simpler, safer and enjoyable for users.
So where do we start?
Because we are only a small team, we really have to focus on what’s important and prioritize accordingly. So we are conducting a number of surveys and other research to try and pinpoint the biggest pain points for current users and start there.
Talk to the people!
We started off with simple online survey and interviews with people currently have crypto currency, crypto wallets or use exchanges.
We captured about 200 responses from across the globe, working in various industries, varying interests and different levels of commitment to the technology. We got a pretty good snapshot of different people.
Due to the survey only being sent out in English, this probably skewed the results to western countries a little more than I would have liked, but hopefully we will be able to improve the results over time when we have the chance to translate it into different languages.
Another great place to learn about our users is through support tickets, online groups and channels, and of course, social media, so we have been keeping a close eye on what is happening there as well.
Explore parallels and differences with traditional bank, emerging fintech and other industries.
Understanding how other players are dealing with similar issues, including traditional banking services, fintech startups disrupting the scene and obviously, other players in the crypto market is also key to understanding what we already know and where we are heading in the future.
One ticket to the moon please!
One thing that is pretty clear, lots of people are excited to get on the crypto bus, get a few shiny tokens in their pocket and hopefully one day, maybe a nice return on investment. But, most probably find it scary or confusing, and why wouldn’t they, it’s actually really scary and confusing.
Some wallets even have skulls and crossbones in their sign up messaging to get their points across :O. The sign in process for most exchanges is generally also very full on, with 2FA, small captcha type tasks and warnings about phishing scams.
Crypto is an investment for a lot of people, putting their hard earned money into it. This education is vital, but dropping scary warnings, huge amounts of information at once and making them agree a huge amount of warnings just increases cognitive load and anxiety throughout the experience.
Signing up to wallets and exchanges can literally be fear inducing to a new user. We are trying to use this fear as a means to make people understand and this is bad for user experience and adoption.
We need to find better solutions.
Education
We are working hard to improve the on-boarding process as a first step, providing the right amount of education without bombarding the users and making it impossible to remember everything at once.
Breaking it into more usable pieces. Progressively disclose information at different stages of the users journey to reduce cognitive load and ensure the user retains the knowledge better.
We are also currently prototyping new UI flows that adapt, based on the users experience, providing more education for newer users, whilst dialing it back from more seasoned pros.
YOU GET A GOLD STAR! Gamification of education.
Incentivizing learning and proper safety through gamification is another solution we are exploring. Rewarding users with tokens, trophies or badges for completing tasks or learning new things allows users to get immediate satisfaction for their efforts to understand the services better.
Keeping your Crypto safe.
One of the biggest issues we see the average user face is how to take care of their private keys. Many users don’t fully understand how important the private key is. Either they are new to crypto and perhaps have only ever used exchanges where private keys are never shared with the user, being substituted with an email/password login.
As O3 is a wallet app, we want to ensure the user has full control of their tokens and data, and this requires them to also look after their own security.
We have found simple warning popups are just not enough and we don’t believe adding more scary and annoying warnings will fix anything.
Instead, we are exploring new ways to help to user understand and backup their private keys safely. Providing multiple options for backing up, offering more education when needed and adding subtle reminders throughout the app at specific stages of the users journey to help ensure the users portfolio is safe and sound.
Simplified concepts
Another factor I believe is holding crypto currencies and other blockchain technology back from main stream adoption is the use of technical jargon. While this is important for early adopters and people building the products to understand, the average user just wants to access their portfolio in a easy and straight foward way. They don’t necessarily care how it works, as long as it just works.
Using more common terms and familiar concepts will greatly help reduce learning curve and ease anxiety for new users, whilst still providing more technical information for more advanced users when required.
In conclusion
Hopefully through user testing these various solutions, we can help reduce the amount of people finding themselves in trouble and improve their overall experience with crypto currency.
This is only just the start of a long journey to increase security, ease of use and ultimately, adoption through design.
We are also currently going through a re-design of the Android app to start with as well, here is a little sneak peek at the progress.
Stay tuned, it’s going to be awesome fun.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget to check out www.O3.network
