The current state and trends of Web3 Designers seen through Consensus 2022
In search of Web3 Designer Community or DAO
The Consensus, an event which has been held by CoinDesk since 2015 gathered eminent people working in blockchain industry around the world. In particular, the Consensus 2022 was full of people looking forward to the future that blockchain and cryptocurrency will create, despite the downward trend. I visited the Consensus because of a task of my team I went together with, but my purpose was to find out if there was a Web3 designer community and to join it.
The reason why I looked for the Web3 designer community
Compared to Web2, Web3 is a new industry, so there was not much data to be used to discover the correct solutions suitable for my hypothesis on UX. The Web3 UX has peculiarities such as Smart Contract Transaction and Wallet Connect, so as a designer, I had a hard time figuring out how to solve them in a user-friendly way. In Korea, not many designers work in the same industry and there are a lot of anonymous teams, so I could not find enough people who could think about these issues and find solutions together. Therefore, I wanted to utilize this visit to the consensus, as an opportunity to look for other Web3 designers with whom I can share my thoughts.
How to contact Web3 designers in Consensus
- Application
- Networking Lounge
- Party
The consensus has its application (though its UX and UI were clumsy), and there was a networking tab in the app. When participants registered their tickets and profiles, their profiles were created and anyone could view and chat with them. I sent a message to everyone appearing when I typed ‘Design’ in the search bar: ‘Let’s have a coffee chat with me’. Among the thousands of participants, the number of people appearing when I typed ‘Design’ was 60–70 and the number of people who responded to me was less than 10. One of them was the designer I usually wanted to meet. There were very few designers who I actually met through the application, and I could find other designers in the party.
After meeting with the designers
Outcome: Telegram Group Chat
I asked everyone I met if there is a DAO or a community only for Web3 designers, but the words I most often heard were “I don’t know” or “Vector DAO.” I said to myself, “Let’s make a group chat if no one has made it,” but one of the designers (I most wanted to meet) already put that idea into practice. She created a chat room called ‘Web3 UX Design’ on Telegram and invited all the designers she met, and I also invited the designers I met for two days, to create about 10 chat rooms.
All the designers I met said that designing the web3 product is terribly hard at times, but it is also a fun experience. There was also an opinion that a lot of room for improvement still remains and it is vague but fun, because it is in its early stages. Since it is in the early stages, we need to accumulate a lot of data to get to the stage where all of our UX hypotheses are proven. I believe it would be fun to do a case study on the solutions that each of us thinks are the best. It’s already interesting to see what talks this group chat is going to share. (First of all, we need to activate Group Chat now 😆)
The Present Situation of Designers in Web3 Industries
- Understaffed Web3 designers
- Some Web2 designers who want to move on to Web3
- Freelance ways of working
The Consensus seemed to focus more on networking than on lecture sessions. Therefore, I met not only web3 designers but also various people engaging in the Web3, most of who worked without designers or with freelance designers. In-house designers could be found only in large organizations, and many teams working in the Web3 had few members, so designers did not necessarily belong to the team. In the first place, the lack of Web3 designers was an issue for each team, and I saw quite a few teams struggling with recruiting designers. I also saw Web2 designers who were interested in the field of Web3, but they confessed that they didn’t know where to start. I felt that if they successfully land on Web3, the recruiting problem would be solved. Plus, I thought that this would be solved if designers who already entered Web3 held a lot of conference sessions with Web2 designers and help them enter it.
In addition, I realized that the way organizations work is substantially changing, like the DAO of Web3. I was able to meet designers who were not part of any team but simultaneously joined several teams. I think there will be more designers working in this way in the future.
What would be the next step for the Web3 designers to take for the seamless UX in the Crypto industry? No one knows the answer, but I looked for designers at the consensus because I thought I had to find the answer. Although I couldn’t meet many designers engaging in the Web3 due to the Crypto Winter, I expect that the foundation of seamless UX will be laid in the future.
