Why Design Will Take Blockchain to the Next Level
Over the last few years, we’ve seen significant changes in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. The market cap for cryptocurrencies was $3,817,842,473 in April 2015. Today, it’s over $430 billion, an increase of more than 100 times in three years. The ICO pipeline is robust, and this signals a plethora of innovations under development.
People and businesses around the world are beginning to see the potential in these technologies, and they want a piece of the action.
And with good reason. Blockchain brings transparency, fairness, and decentralization to digital information on a massive scale. We can apply blockchain technology to money, data, digital assets and much more.
What’s more, it gives people greater control. We can hold companies to account more easily, own our data, and access proof of what businesses and organizations are doing.
It’s a monumental change. Like the advent of the printing press and the dawn of the internet, blockchain technology could fundamentally change the way we live our lives by bringing a new level of freedom.
Three Stages
If you’ve been following the media storm surrounding cryptocurrency and blockchain, you might have noticed the same themes repeating over and over again. These include narratives of fear and warning, mixed with campaigns aimed at mocking the technology and portraying it as a short-lived fad.
In fact, every time a ground-breaking technology arrives, the same cycles of mockery, warning, and smearing take place.
The process can be broken down into three clear stages. To illustrate the point, let’s take a look at how these stages worked with the birth of the internet.
1. Ridiculous!
When a new technology begins to emerge, it’s highly tempting to view it as far-fetched, overhyped, and nothing more than a crazy pipe dream. Here’s an article from 1995 about the internet.
But don’t be too hard on the author — this was a pretty mainstream viewpoint in the ’90s. Plenty of people thought the internet was nothing more than a fad, destined to burn out long before it lived up to the hype.
But as time went on, it became clear that the internet was here to stay. So, we moved on to the next stage: fear.
2. Dangerous!
As the internet began to establish itself, people started to get scared. Around the turn of the millennium, we saw widespread panic about how technology could destroy the fabric of society.
The infamous Y2K bug prediction was a particularly dramatic example. Some people fled to the country and began preparing to live off the land, convinced that problems in the world’s computers would cause civilization to collapse in the year 2000.
Fortunately, most of the worries turned out to be unfounded.
3. Obvious…
Today, we’re at a point where most people don’t think the internet is a grave threat to our existence, and it’s certainly not considered a ridiculous novelty anymore.
This stage is the final stage — where people widely accept the internet as a positive technology that’s here to stay. As for stats like these show, the internet is now ingrained in our lives.
So where do cryptocurrency and blockchain fit into all this?
Right now, blockchain is somewhere between the ‘ridiculous’ and ‘dangerous’ phases. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a gradual shift from scoffing and ridicule in the media, to fearmongering.
Now, we’re seeing people labeling Bitcoin enthusiasts as ‘cyber-terrorists,’ and high-profile figures like Warren Buffett issuing vague and sinister warnings that cryptocurrency will ‘come to a bad ending.’
But a 100-fold increase in an industry’s market cap over three years is tough to argue with, and increasing regulation indicates that the technology is here to stay. One could even argue that we are starting to see hints of this being perceived as obvious, as NYSE looks to set up a bitcoin exchange, while Goldman Sachs announced its intention to launch a Bitcoin trading desk.
So, what’s the next step for blockchain? With the internet, the shift from ‘dangerous’ to ‘obvious’ happened when companies started taking UX seriously — moving the focus to make things tangible and accessible to the everyday user.
From this point on, technology companies developed with the user in mind. Tech giants like Google and Apple achieved their mind-blowing success this way, by putting their users first and building the software around their experience.
This is what has to happen with blockchain.
A new era for blockchain
Right now, blockchain and crypto are at a crossroads. We can either continue down the current path or start designing blockchain solutions in a more usable and accessible way.
By emphasizing design-based thinking and UX design, and ensuring this gets a seat at the table when building any blockchain product or protocol, we can take things to the next level. It’s crucial if we want to design blockchain products and solutions that people actually want to use.
It’s no secret that handling cryptocurrencies is difficult. Trading and holding crypto require knowing the fundamentals, like how to download a wallet from a Github repository and use an exchange system with all the relevant charts and trading tools.
A better approach would be to let top design thinkers and UX designers influence initial conversations about the product or protocol. This way, the team will put users’ needs first and make blockchain products easier to work with from the outset.
Where I stand
At Symetria, I helped design thinking and UX methodologies guide their first conversations about what the technology and product needed to do.
The team did this via a unique process I developed through years of experience working in tech for some of the world’s biggest companies. It combines the best of Design Sprint and the Value Proposition Design — allowing us to put users first.
This way we can tackle the problem from every angle: technology, design, and business.
The idea of Personal Blockchains was unnamed at the time, but Symetria had the concept in mind, and they were working on the early stages of the technology. Personal Blockchains are blockchain-based contracts between buyers and service providers, based on a pre-agreed set of rules.
Through the process, I guided Symetria to apply this concept to a first use case where we found it is desperately needed: a cryptocurrency exchange. To design an exchange with increased integrity that people really wanted to use, we needed refinement and clarity.
First, I helped Symetria identified the pain points customers face when exchanging cryptocurrencies. My user research approach combined methodologies from Nielsen Norman Group with lean UX methodologies, and we identified three key areas for improvement in the crypto space:
● An uncertainty when trading and general lack of trust in exchanges
● Frustration with the speed it takes to conduct basic activities
● Intimidation from the lack of usability
Our goal was to build a product that addressed these issues and helped make things more natural to use.
The future
I believe that to create the best products, it is vital to adapt them to the users’ needs by taking design and UX seriously.
This is just the beginning for blockchain, and the future is incredibly bright.
About Symetria
Symetria is a blockchain technology company based in Vancouver, Canada. The company is developing the first cryptocurrency wallet and exchange service built using Personal Blockchains. Its proprietary technology combines the speed and privacy of centralized services with the fairness of a decentralized exchange. Symetria’s mission is to bring accountability to the industry, making the blockchain economy more accessible to everyone.
