How we approach User Experience at The Acorn Collective
The Acorn Collective is a truly global crowdfunding platform. We will be using blockchain technology to help founders and startups find access to funding.
As head of User Experience (UX) at The Acorn Collective I wanted to share how we will be approaching the design of the Acorn crowdfunding platform.
It is our aim to ensure the platform is usable, accessible and pleasurable for everyone who comes in contact with it. This presents some interesting challenges that are unique to Acorn.
Let’s look at some of these challenges:
This is a completely new concept
You might think ‘there are plenty of crowdfunding platforms out there already’. To a certain level I disagree.
‘Traditional’ successful crowdfunding projects tend to have some common features:
- Most platforms demand you have a working prototype, which you had to have funds to design and build.
- You need a decent wad of cash to promote your campaign (at least $10k according to our research)
- 50% of funds should come from your own network
- You are incentivised to lie about the amount you need to ‘get funded’
- And most ‘prime the pot’ with their own money to get the ball rolling
Even with all this 78% of projects fail to achieve their target raise!
In short, you need a lot of money before you start.
This is not what I would call crowdfunding.
Acorn solves these issues with several disruptive innovations. For example:
- A milestone fund release, which means that founders don’t need to be richer than the Elon Musk before they even begin.
- The transparency ledger, which pushes founders to be honest and reassures backers so they don’t need to see a project being ‘fully funded’ before they feel comfortable backing with their own cash.
- The marketplace gives everyone access to free or low cost tools and skills to give them the best chance of success.
Our principle is to dare to try something new.
To revolutionise crowdfunding we need to have big ideas and forge our own route. We believe in grabbing those big ideas, seeing if they work and — if they don’t — learning what we can from them.
We’re truly global
It’s hard enough to design a product for one country but trying to make a single product that works as well for someone in Nairobi as New York is another level challenge.
Our principle is to design for extremes.
When we create solutions that work for the people with the most extreme needs, we make life better for everyone. We look at far ends of the spectrum, whether that relates to ability, environment, sentiment or anything else.
By doing this we help everyone else in the middle.
When we solve issues for people with the slowest and most limited access to internet data, we help people with fast 4G who just happen to be in a train with poor connection.
We design something beautiful for sighted people, but ensure it works well for people with low vision or are blind. When that sighted person happens to be in a dark room they will still find Acorn perfectly usable.
Barriers to blockchain
Blockchain is a fundamental part of The Acorn Collective. It is the core concept around which we are building a truly global platform. This offers us some great opportunities and it’s tempting to try and crowbar everything we can because… well… blockchain!
Instead we have the principle of problem first, solution second.
We start by understanding the problem and the people who it affects. Only then can we begin to discover how we can solve it.
In fact, blockchain actually creates some hurdles that we need to leap.
For example: tokens, wallets, exchanges. These are all well understood concepts to many of us, but for the majority these make little to no sense. Do your parents understand blockchain? They may do, but more likely the only knowledge they have are some scary articles they’ve seen in the press.
We need them, and people like them, to be able to back projects as easy as super knowledgeable crypto-fanatics — easier in fact — because they will likely have less patience and willingness to learn something new.
The early adopter chasm
This leads nicely from the the issues that blockchain presents. As an organisation going through ICO (initial coin offering) we have a massive and engaged audience (nearly 60k on Telegram alone!). This is awesome: people we can talk to, discuss ideas with and leverage to help us to build an amazing product. However this could also lead to a problem…
We risk building a crowdfunding platform for ICO backers.
What we want is a crowdfunding platform for everyone!
If we don’t bridge the chasm from early adopter to majority we’ll ultimately flop.
We solve that with the principle of validating everything with real people.
We never release anything that hasn’t been properly tested, validated and proven to be valuable. From the initial idea to the final delivery we are evidence led.
Importantly, we test our work with the right people.
A great website ≠ a great experience
As a technology led organisation it is easy to think about Acorn as the superb digital product that we will be releasing. However that only scratches the surface.
A lot of the experience isn’t made up of ones and zeros — it’s created by everyone in the organisation and everyone that uses the product.
Our principle is that everyone is responsible for the experience.
How great will you consider your experience if you have a problem with the product? How much worse would that experience be if the Acorn representative you reach out to about the problem is unable to help… or rude, or dismissive?
And it’s not even just our colleagues. For instance, the heart of our platform will be our activity feed (learn more on the Product Vision Showcase). How will you consider the Acorn experience if it’s just full of trolls or inappropriate content?
This is a point many potentially great products forget which stops them reaching their potential.
When everyone takes responsibility for the experience you end up with something truly wonderful.
