Bit coin or Bust? How does one onboard users into the confusing ways of DAO and Cryptocurrency?

My Role: UX Designer and UX Researcher
Year: May 2022 - March 2023
Client: Cambio Labs

Overview

Cambio Labs is a nonprofit that creates educational technology and curricular programs that transform community members into social entrepreneurs, designers for impact, and community activists.

Cambio Labs is rolling out the pilot of the Journey Program - a social entrepreneurial course and youth startup incubator for high schools - complete with curriculum, teacher on-boarding, corporate mentorship programs, and a virtual learning platform.

The Challenge

Cambio Labs is developing an onboarding platform to empower high school entrepreneurs to engage in creating businesses that help their communities grow. They created "The Journey Platform" an educational program that guides these aspiring entrepreneurs through the entrepreneurial process.
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Based on interviews with existing users, we created the user persona of Sam Johnson, representing the typical Journey platform user. Recognizing the importance of blockchain technology and DAO governance, Cambio Labs sought our expertise to create onboarding guides that introduce users to Web3 and blockchain concepts. This knowledge will enable students to effectively contribute to the overall startup culture of Cambio Labs. To incentivize their contributions, students are rewarded with cryptocurrency.

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Sam desperately wants put his social entrepreneurship skills to good use...

  • But he realized he didn't have the level of investors he needed to fully make a difference in his work
  • He wanted a place he could communicate with other entrepreneurs
  • He wanted a place that could offer him additional learning and networking opportunities

The Approach

There was a multi-faceted approach to gathering essential information to understand how to create the perfect onboarding experience for users like Sam. We did stakeholder interviews to define project scope, align with company goals, and understand the unique competitive advantages of Cambio Lab's concept.

Concurrently we conducted in-depth industry research to familiarize ourselves with relevant technologies, including blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs, and DAOs. Using this information we created a comprehensive market analysis to examine existing DAOs, educational platforms, and cryptocurrency companies to identify successful content presentation methods and potential design opportunities.

The overall objective of these efforts was to gain a deep understanding of the client's specific needs, analyze the competitive landscape, and identify industry best practices to effectively guide the product development process.

Sam's Journey Map

  • The Cambio Labs Journey platform left some users like Sam with questions about how the tools the platform offered helped them
  • Users like Sam felt overwhelmed at how to retain and understand all this material

Design

Moodboard

When creating cambio labs my team drew inspiration from a diverse group of sources to to establish our visual direction and style guide. I've listed some of the inspiration below:

  • Electric vehicle websites
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Roleplaying games
  • Board games

The First Iteration

  • Initial tests with the Cambio Labs wireframes left users like Sam confused
  • Users told us the UI made the instructions for the games hard to read

User Feedback

The Solution

5
Interviews

5
Usability Tests

8
Interations

After updating the initial designs, my team and I tested with Sam again. We found that while the overall; design and information were good. Sam and his friends still found some of the transitions lacking ease of use.

  • Sam and users like him sometimes found the transitions less than intuitive
  • To better serve his needs, we made the transitions a little more obvious
  • We also made the buttons more easily seen
  • Students like Sam have limited time
  • So in response, we gave students like him a way to skip the onboarding and go straight to the apps Cambio Labs asked them to download

Final Design

  • After going through many iterations and gaining valuable feedback from Sam my team and I simplified the way users like him learned the material
  • My team and I created an onboarding path that was gamified and easy to understand
  • Sam and users like him would have benefited more from cleaner and easier navigation from the get-go
  • This project is currently being retested with high school students in preparation for a 2.0 version
  • Here is the link to the link to the full Figma Prototype.