Testing the Waters

Designing a user study to evaluate the core values for Questbook’s brand platform

At this point, we were neck-deep in brand territories. We had narrowed in on four territories that encapsulated parts of who we were trying to be, but despite hearing from the Questbook team, incorporating feedback, and coming up with new directions, there was a missing piece.

The piece, of course, being you!

We’d talked in one of the earlier blog posts about the importance of designing with an open-source mindset when designing for web3. Baking research into every (relevant) stage of the process is integral. In essence, we had the ingredients for what could make for a great meal but with very little understanding of our guests’ dietary needs and preferences. So to say.

So, we reached out to 5 developers from our previous round of interviews. From our last conversation, we were able to discern that they were the closest in persona to actual Questbook users. Their needs and motivations aligned, the type of work was similar. So, we got to work.

The Study

The study we designed was two-pronged. And based on our latest discussions internally, we were able to narrow the 6 territories down to 4 — ‘Transform yourself’, ‘Unlock the unknown’, ‘Let’s build what’s next’ and ‘We, the builders’.

Part 1: Manifestos

We started by writing manifestos for each of these territories. The manifestos would encompass what the brand is, its core values, and a call to action that would and should resonate with the community. We wrote them out as Twitter threads as it’s a familiar mental model and format for web3 communities and brand announcements. Why bring participants to the experiment, when you can take the experiment to the people?

Furthermore, it was integral that the participants stayed focused on the values and overall atmosphere the brand was attempting to create through these threads, rather than specific visual or verbal details that people usually get caught up in when evaluating, say a webpage or slideshow.

The manifestos activity

The experiment was simple. We asked the participants to read the threads (as many times as they liked) and tell us which one(s) they resonated with or not, were most/least likely to join and why/why not.

Part 2: Community values

For the second section of the study, we outlined about 20 different qualities and attributes that broadly alluded to one or more of the four strategic territories. We asked the participants what they would like to see and consider important from a community they feel they belonged to. And subsequently, rank them from most to least important. And as a bonus, to write down any values they felt were important but hadn’t been accounted for in the initial list.

The community values activity

Insights

Through both activities, we were able to come to a consensus about a few of the brand territories. The first two (‘Transform yourself’ and ‘Unlock the unknown’) felt a bit too generic. They triggered curiosity and themes of self-improvement but didn’t speak enough to builders or apply that curiosity in a meaningful or impactful way. It could be relevant to communities of artists, writers, designers, etc with the same propensity. And that wasn’t where Questbook wants to position itself.

A few participants gravitated towards ‘Build the future’. It was more developer-focused than the previous two. As one of the participants described it,

“To be at the forefront of building and proving that this the future — is exciting. Imagine if you were in 2007, building for the iPhone, you’d be really proud of yourself in 2020. I think of this time similar to that.”

However, on more deep introspection, ‘Build the future’ felt more didactic and prescriptive, rather than exploratory and joyful. It spoke about building as work, rather than a craft or something that encouraged curiosity and learning from others.

‘We, the builders’ was almost unanimous. What stood out to participants were the following key themes:

• Build together;
• Building something for the new world, the future;
• Developer-focused and developer-native;
• Unexplored ideas and territories;
• The importance of being curious, while still feeling actionable with clear intention.

All these were attributes we were striving to capture through our brand platform, in the right ratios.

Read more about our brand platform ‘We, the builders’, the meaningful difference we strive to bring into the world, our values and more here.

🌈 A note of thanks to our 5 participants, and all the other developers who shared their time and stories to support this project.