How does blockchain technology look like in real life?
-by Ryan Moon (UX Perspective)
Many people around the world are excited about the new technology called blockchain. To be honest, the speculation due to the fluctuation of value of cryptocurrencies lies as the outer cover. It seems that the value of cryptocurrency that was once blowing caused the public to misunderstand that the speculation was everything in the blockchain, but then the prices collapsed repeatedly, making the public more aware of the technology of blockchain. And even if one or two speculative breezes are coming from it, as it was in the dot-com bubble, there is now a challenge on how the blockchain technology blends in with our lives, and only a few projects that overcome the challenges will survive. Now is truly the time to demonstrate what blockchain technology brings, regardless of the economic value or logic of cryptocurrency.
People are paying attention to the economic paradigm of cryptocurrency and the technology that the blockchain technology will bring to the table, but questioning how they will actually be used or how they will show their true value. In fact, it is more important to know what you need in your life. Currently, the blockchain technology should focus on designing the services we need when we do something, rather than creating goods. At the end of the day, if a good is purchased by the consumer, it will be the process of receiving the goods in a better way, and if you want any service, it will be the advantages over the existing service that we want to see when blockchain is integrated into the systems.
However, have you ever experienced this with the Blockchain?
Some of the actual interactive experiences we may have had with blockchain technology were perhaps an overseas transfer using cryptocurrency, trading on the exchange, or a simple game like Crypto Kitty. This was probably a different experience from the “New Technology Blockchain” we hear as tremendously great.
From a user perspective, let’s take a quick look at the three examples above.
- If an individual transfers money to another via cryptocurrency, they can transfer the funds much faster and cheaper. However, the inconvenient UI (User Interface) of the digital wallet, or things like TXID or GAS have made people using it puzzled. Conversely, companies that works as brokers for overseas money transfers with coins would have felt the pressure of user resources having to use external coin exchanges.
2. The Cryptocurrency Exchange was not a solution based on the blockchain thus vulnerable to security. We may often hear, “Why do exchanges get hacked when they say blockchain’s key advantage is the security” by others around us. There are many Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) in service, but the difficulty and extremely high barrier to entry of usability are the realities we are facing. The question to ask is whether the cryptocurrency exchanges are using a UX/UI that is similar to the stock exchange to gain the trust of users is giving a proper user experience.
3. Cryptokitty is a blockchain based game that was loved by many people. It is a game that breeds cats which was very popular last year when it cost $100,000 for one cat. However, in the middle of 2018, there were times when the daily cohesion rate was less than 100. In the Cryptokitty game, all the actions are Ethereum transactions which caused transaction overloading which led to the crash of the game. This caused the problem of transaction processing speed and capacity of the second generation blockchain to rise above the surface. However, the speed which users are playing games in is taken for granted, making it difficult to set it as an initial compromization. The hassle of purchasing a character by linking a digital wallet to breed or buy a cat would still exist in the future regardless of the speed issue being resolved causing many users to leave.
How do the technologies we use come in useful for us?
Was the technology that you felt comfortable friendly from the beginning?
If the technology feels convenient, does it mean that the technology is used correctly for all of us?
What kind of cognitive interaction does the blockchain technology give to people?
We can easily use the blockchain, or we can drive it in the right direction.
Tonnes of ICOs are going live without worrying about the need of blockchain technology for that particular service or not knowing the necessity of studying the structure of a blockchain that real users want. In this blockchain ecosystem, the UX research can be very helpful.
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