Launch: Protea Alpha Series
This article forms part of the documentation around our early experiments. Our vision has since expanded, and we are now working towards creating a universal, adaptable, and interoperable protocol that provides a diverse set of utility tools centred around the idea of tokenised trust + commitment. With this we aim to build the foundation for an emergence of new co-operative networks, from grassroots communities to global marketplaces. To find out more, read our latest article here.
We are incredibly excited by how fast Protea is moving along. Our Minimum Viable Dapp (MVD) core components are now all wired up and we are getting closer to releasing our MVD to Ethereum meetup communities around the world.
But before we can do so, we’ll go through a series of alpha events, specifically designed to gather rapid real-world feedback on Protea. Just over a week ago we had our first testing event in that series. This article will provide context to our approach and reflect on lessons we learned from our first testing event.
Our Series of Alpha Events
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology — not the other way around” — Steve Jobs
The Protea MVD is designed as a tokenized skin-in-the-game RSVP solution with built-in proof of attendance for meetups (you can read more about our MVD here).
We just completed our MVD’s alpha version. The alpha version of a software product is a pre-release early version that is part of a dedicated testing process. For our alpha version at Protea, we focussed predominantly on wiring up core interactions between users and the blockchain. We’ll explore more on the current state of Protea in a future article.
We are going to host a series of events that specifically focus on getting Protea into the hands of actual users, who will provide valuable feedback along the way. With our alpha series we want to focus on creating as smooth a user experience as possible, by identifying and reducing specific UX blockchain pain-points where we can. At the same time, we want to ensure that any major bugs are picked up before Protea is used at meetups around the globe.
Here we follow the agile mantra of Build, Deploy, Test.
Lessons Learned
Our first alpha event was an intimate gathering of supporters, most of whom had not used Protea before. In total we had 12 attendees who RSVP’d. The attendance of 3 RSVPs from our team were purposefully not confirmed at the event. This meant that the other 9 received 133.33% of their staked tokens back.
At the event we discovered a few challenges around uPort and device compatibility. We will look into solutions for that, while at the same time investigating alternative transaction signing dapps such as Status.
The event also helped us in validating and identifying where UX improvements would have the greatest impact on Protea users. Our two key findings are:
Making users find events via a hash is suboptimal
Well.. we knew this already, but it was good to get some confirmation from actual users! With Protea, event information is stored on the Ethereum blockchain, and users can access those events via their unique address (hash). While using hashes as event accessors is an interesting way of illustrating the underlying mechanics of Protea, they make for a rather frictioned user experience. We’ll be working on accessing events by their title.
Users need more clarity around event statuses
Transactions on the blockchain take much longer than those in traditional networks. This means it is vital that users have an easy way of understanding system statuses that are relevant to them.
At an event, meetup organizers need to be able to confirm visually whose attendance they have confirmed. Meetup attendees, at all times, need to be able to easily find out what status an event has and what status their RSVP has. In the current version of Protea this is still too nebulous, so we’ll be working on a solution.
What’s next?
We’ll keep improving Protea based on feedback, while at the same time working on our internal feature backlog. In particular, we’ll focus on simplifying the proof of attendance experience at an event. Finally we are busy creating easy to understand how-to guides that will help all users in making the most of Protea.
We have more testing events lined up over the coming weeks. If you are keen to get involved, let us know!
If you are an Ethereum meetup organiser, and would like to learn more about how to use Protea at your meetup in the near future, get in touch — we’d love to chat!
A huge thank you to all of you who came to this very first testing event! Your contributions are deeply valued!
We’d love for you to join our journey!
