An Introduction to Designing Web3

What we mean when we talk about Design in Web3

Mike Taylor
Verum Capital Insights
4 min readMar 13, 2023

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The designing Web3 Series is a set of articles that will be published throughout Q1/Q2 2023 to explain what design means to Verum Capital and why we believe our updated approach to digital design is so important for solving problems from within the Web3 space. In this introductory article we outline the case for prioritizing design in our offering, what it means to us, and why we do it differently.

Design & Technology: A match made centuries ago

The toolkit of the designer has evolved over the 20th century to address the challenges brought about by the technological leaps and bounds made during the second and third industrial revolutions. Design as a discipline — often called design science — has maintained a rational response to technological advances since it emerged. Since the Renaissance, design has been called upon to act as an integrator of the explanatory sciences and address societal problems through the use of new and emerging technologies. It is during technological shifts that design too must evolve to continue to serve the leaders who use its tools for problem solving.

Harnessing Design by leaving “design thinking” behind

Design acumen, and an awareness of design’s current capabilities, is an important skill for business leaders within any sector. Because of its ability to evolve, design (as a discipline) offers us the best set of tools that we can arm ourselves with to address the complex and structural changes that we see on the horizon. However, the most recent and familiar evolution of design science, “design thinking” (popularized within the corporate world during the 1990’s), is actually holding us back. At the tail end of the third (digital) industrial revolution, “design thinking” did not directly address challenges brought about by new technology. Rather, it capitalized on business requirements at the time to harness the power of existing digital technology for commercial gain. It ceased to be a discipline focused on problem solving and became a marketing function.

Designing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

In practical terms, “design thinking” is a dead-end and it propagates a focus on bottom-line innovation: simpler, cleaner, and more streamlined user experiences to access conventional services. It is irrelevant as we confront the changes framed under the fourth industrial revolution. This revolution is unique because it is combining existing innovations, creating new foundational technologies, and changing the way we create, collaborate, and cooperate. I am thinking of Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Ledger Technology primarily. But, of course, the fourth industrial revolution includes big data, 3d printing, robotics, etc. New technologies need a new design approach, not a recycled attempt to usher users toward updated applications.

A Web3 Venture Studio approach to design

At Verum Capital, design is listed as the first of our three core activities (design, build, and invest). As a Web3 venture studio, it goes without saying that product design (including UI, UX, and interaction design) is essential to shipping innovative products. But more than that, design is a fundamental precursor to value creation in a new space like Web3. Especially when that space endeavors to disrupt the consolidation of power and capital, empower community-driven value creation, and enable direct transaction.

So, when we say that we are designing, what we mean is: problem solving for a new breed of challenges and opportunities with a new set of tools. The opportunities we focus on are DLT as a new foundational technology, blockchain as a new form of public infrastructure, Web3 protocols as a new framework to assemble and collaborate, and digital assets as a new financial and economic mechanism. Our tools blend best-practices in strategy development with user-centric design methodologies, but also integrate systems design approaches. Our interest in moving toward system-thinking and beyond “design thinking” stems from our prioritization of empowerment over empathy. Designing decentralized systems necessarily means eliminating intermediaries, rethinking hierarchy and conventional structures (including power and control) and asking users to adopt and embrace new behaviours. Leveraging concepts from systems design allows us to not just make users feel good, but also elevate their role within the system.

By updating our tools, we can work with decentralized networks conceptually and mitigate secondary effects (not to be confused with a straightforward externality). We can identify the appropriate places to intervene within an ecosystem to create the greatest impact. Finally, it allows us to consider inclusion at the level of the individual and the community.

Our approach to design eschews the limited range of design exploration that was captured under “design thinking” for the convenience of marketing departments in the late 90s. We are pioneers in the Web3 space and on this journey we are modifying tools to pave the way. In this “Designing Web3” series, we will share our foundational perspectives on design and connect our approaches with some of the more practical content we have already shared on things like token and ecosystem design. Stay tuned as we unpack design in Web3.

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