Goals and Strategy

We believe that current users who try and use blockchain applications are early adopters as well as blockchain creators (developers, designers, and everyone else involved in the making of this technology). @lyricalpolymath created a drawing (shared below), that expands on this notion by including other audiences. We have further dissected this drawing to distinguish between the present and the aspirational future, which we are co-creating. The first version below illustrates the present, as we see it (current users are included in the magenta outline).

The second version illustrates the aspirational future (the users we would like to capture as an audience are again included in the magenta outline).

Once we have a solid footing with the audiences mentioned above, we plan to spread blockchain applications beyond them, and bring our æpps to users without a special interest in blockchain and/or decentralization.

Improving Usability by Reducing Friction

By focusing on the expansion, from creators of the blockchain ecosystem to supporters of decentralization and other groups, we are making sure that the latter two audiences can complete all the core tasks of our Bæse æpp with ease. In our last testing session, we validated the following crucial user pathways/behaviors:

The initial onboarding experience

Navigating between the wallet/accounts functionality and æpps browsing experience in the Bæse æpp

Sending and receiving AE tokens

Switching between accounts

Below we are sharing some of the observations we made, as well as the improvements we incorporated to address the identified user-experience issues.

User Experience Improvements

We carried out the testing with users with varying levels of experience, representing different user personas, such as “someone involved in the building of the crypto ecosystem,” a “believer in decentralization,” and an “early adopter”. For anyone who is part of the decentralized ecosystem and has ventured into the usability of the applications within it, it is quite easy to notice that here, even more so than in traditional applications, whether or not the user is familiar with the overarching concepts plays a huge role in their ability to interact with the application/product.

Conditional Tips

We noticed that for users more familiar with blockchain applications, certain user interface elements can be quite straightforward. However, for users who believe in decentralization, but have far less experience with blockchain technology, the purpose of these user interface elements can be unclear. To solve this