Progress Under the Hood: NEAR Tasks Zero Test Concludes
Since announcing NEAR Tasks at Consensus in March, the team has been heads down on bringing our video demo into a functioning product and we recently wrapped up our first wave of testing!
Concluding our Zero Test represents a major milestone for us as it was the first iteration of testing with people outside the core team. The test was designed to validate core functionality of the task distribution and completion process as well as generate early feedback on the user experience. To create a structured testing environment, we leaned on a network of 10 individuals within the NEAR Ecosystem and had them follow a testing guide to ensure each component was properly tested.
The results of this test validated many of our product decisions and demonstrated the opportunity we have with NEAR Tasks — join our waitlist to participate in our future waves of testing!
Top 3 takeaways from our Zero Test
1. NEAR Tasks is a way to get work done.
Each of our testers are either building a product or managing a community within the NEAR ecosystem and recognized the opportunity for NEAR Tasks to aid them in attracting a wider audience / encouraging people to take very specific actions, facilitated through tasks.
Our testers made it very clear to us that they see our task distribution process as a plausible solution for many of their business goals.
Aside from these testers’ inherent product discovery/customer engagement perspectives, they also recognized the significant opportunity we have to facilitate ‘labeling related’ tasks at scale that support training AI models.
With the incentive structure clear for working tasks correctly and at a level of quality, the ability to have certain task types intended to be worked in volume (tasks to train AI models) was incredibly clear and to some, “…it opened [their] mind up to what is possible.”
2. The NEAR Tasks UI is a winner.
Testers went from logging in to working their first task in 30 seconds — while this experience was tailored to the NEAR Wallet in our testing environment, it will leverage the FastAuth product under development for NEAR’s Blockchain Operating System (BOS) onboarding — this will allow you to create an account using FaceID on your phone!
Choosing from a feed of task types also demonstrated the platform’s versatility and adaptability for all types of businesses, and testers appreciated the variety. A piece of consistent feedback we received from 1:1 interviews was how clear it was to use NEAR Tasks. The process to claim a task, follow the instructions, and submit for review was seamless.
An important goal of ours is to deliver an interface where the end user does not even recognize blockchain transactions are happening in the background and the response we received from the tasking process was an excellent point of validation for us.
3. Tasks were submitted and $NEAR was earned.
The ultimate premise of our Zero Test was to ensure our mechanisms were in place to facilitate payouts for correctly worked tasks — seeing this work across a user base was another validation point for us.
The group of testers completed over 150 tasks and earned $NEAR for each that was marked correct. This showcased the true potential of NEAR Tasks as they successfully completed a wide range of task types — Labeling Images, sharing an article to Twitter, and providing feedback on NEAR Tasks (yes, this was essentially a ‘meta-task’).
The testing cohort was impactful. From making recommendations on improvements to the task flow and optimizing the user experience, to sharing ideas for new types of tasks they would like to see, the insights driven from this first group of testers will shape the future of NEAR Tasks.
In short, thank you to everyone who participated — you know who you are and we are very grateful for everything you shared with us. Having a successful first test where we validated several product decisions and technical aspects will push us forward to our next wave of testing!
Collectively, the group is responsible for surfacing more than 20 bugs and feature requests that have already been incorporated or are actively being planned for our next waves of testing.
Join the Waitlist. Be part of the journey to help us build NEAR Tasks
We invite you to join our waitlist and be part of the testing experience and the path to rolling NEAR Tasks out more broadly.
For our next wave of testing — Alpha kicking off towards the end of July — we will be pulling from people at the top of this list. By simply joining and sharing with others, you may have an opportunity to participate in testing and experiencing NEAR Tasks before we release to a broader audience. You will have a direct line to the team to share feedback on the product and contribute to the prioritization process for the next set of features. Additionally, you will also be earning $NEAR as you work through tasks while testing!
The team has come a long way since kicking off the testing process and we cannot wait to continue on this journey.
Exciting times are ahead!
-The Satori Team
