Overview
This week, we talked to more users. We’re learning SO MUCH with every conversation. One of the most significant validations came when a user said dub feels safer than Metamask. To them, “Metamask feels flimsy,” and dub feels “anchored.”
Process
We’ve been tapping into our personal networks of people deep in the blockchain community. For instance, we talked to mrtn.eth, who helps the NounsDAO community with their Explorer Grant. On the dev side, we also spoke to rolandshen.eth, a smart contract developer for Metacard.
For the interview itself, we give the users a dmg or screen share via Zoom for remote interviews. First, we let the user play with the browser for a minute and talk out loud about what they see. From there, give more context on what the person is talking about. We give them a simple task, like turning ETH into WETH through whatever app they are most comfortable with. From there, we gradually zoom out and talk about their activity on blockchains in general.
Takeaways
More prominent notifications
The current connection, personal sign, and transaction requests feel hidden from our users. When describing why they anticipated a more prominent notification, a user said they treat requests as essential actions to continue, and the ability to continue surfing without acting on the prompt was jarring. On the other hand, another user said they occasionally delay and queue transactions, such as DAO voting or multi-sig, so dismissing requests without taking an action on the request itself is still helpful.
Wallets
Users easily understood which wallet a tab was using. One user said switching the wallet for a website by clicking the wallet and then clicking connect felt like an extra step. If the user wanted to see the wallet passively, they said they would prefer hovering. We also keep hearing that people’s wallets are associated with networks, so setting wallet-network defaults might be helpful.
Unified Transaction View
The movement of assets needs to be visualized better. Our dev users frequently tested the smart contracts (ex: sending eth from wallet 1 to smart contract, waiting for the smart contract to send that eth to wallet 2). Having all the wallets in 1 browser can give them a more comprehensive visual.
Spaces/Contexts
Users wanted to use a new window, especially if they had multiple monitors, than using “spaces” in the same window.
Keyboard shortcuts
Besides searching, the 2nd thing people try is to use keyboard shortcuts, especially Command-T, to open a tab. Additionally, when talking to our dev users and asking them to open the console, they tried Command-Shift-C, then tried to find a console button before right-clicking to inspect the element.
Exploration of Notifications
Since the biggest challenge is to create more prominent requests. We prototyped a popup interaction like the one below. More iterations to come.
Next Steps: The Gap
Over the next week, I’ll continue conversations with potential users and create a standard structure that anyone on the team can use to talk to users. We asked ourselves how to convert users from feeling like “This is neat, and I’d try it” to “Yes, I will use this right now, every day, always.” Some users really need a fast and delightful transaction experience. Some others want better multi-wallet management. The answer is really to solve these big hair-on-fire problem for our users, and these interviews are getting us closer to uncovering those hair-on-fire problems that we can solve for in the browser.