This is a brief summary of the case study

Check out the full version here: https://kristi.digital/shots/is-humanizing-crypto-even-possible-a-designers-perspective-on-web3-nfts-crypto

Not-so-unique Web3 challenges

At Flooz, like with any crypto wallet app, we faced a range of typical user experience challenges. In this case study, I’ll focus on a select few that stood out for the lessons they offered:

• User Acquisition: How might we design a feature to encourage users to invite their network?

• Wallet Recovery: How might we make the recovery process both secure and really simple?

• Transparency: How might we make exploring wallets and tokens easier and more open for our users?

• Building Trust: How might we present essential, reliable information to help users make informed investment decisions?

• Education: How might we effectively educate our users about crypto basics, emerging trends, and security?

Solving The Crypto Puzzle

Affiliate Program

Before the Flooz team completely realized these obstacles, we had already successfully planned, designed, and launched an affiliate program to acquire new users in Africa.

The concept was really straightforward: affiliate and referral programs work for any app, right? That’s how big names like Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, and Revolut gained their users.

In our referral program: 

1. Influencers apply to become affiliates.

2. They invite their followers to the Flooz app.

3. They earn $1 USDT (a crypto stablecoin equivalent to $1 USD) for every user who becomes an “activated user”. An activated user is one who has bought any crypto and performed one swap — exchanging one token for another. 

Also, they earn a small fee from the trading activities of these users.

The Problem with Seed Phrases

A recovery phrase (also known as a seed phrase) is basically a unique series of words used to authenticate and encrypt your wallet access. The problem is that it comprises 12 random words which you need to enter in the correct order to restore your wallet. If you forget or lose your seed phrase, everything is gone. All your bitcoins, NFTs, or any other assets are lost forever.

Many crypto wallets have been searching for ways to solve this challenge in an easy yet secure manner. And they kind of found it — Cloud Backup. Following the trend, we quickly added the option of cloud backups (iCloud for iOS, Google Drive for Android) to our wallet.

The catch is that for a secure cloud backup, it still needs to be password-protected. And since we’re dealing with a financial product, this password needs to be strong.

People don’t always understand what a strong password entails, so we included suggested steps to help our users create stronger passwords. 

We also introduced a minimum requirement of 8 characters to finish your cloud backup. Then, it’s up to the users to continue with a weak password or to tick all the boxes and create a strong one.

Discover

Let’s assume we’ve done our best to bring users to the app and secure their wallets. But then there’s silence… No transactions are happening, and no fees are being earned. They just HODL, or don’t have any crypto at all. That’s bad for crypto wallets.

We conducted competitor research, engaged with our community, and noticed a common blocker. Users were unsure about which tokens to trade, where to find information on these tokens or Web3 trends, which influencers and experts to trust, or how to avoid scams.

So, we decided to tackle three challenges at once (Transparency, Trust, and Education) with a single feature: Discover.

With this new magical tab, users can learn about trading tokens, search for any token or wallet, view content from proven industry experts, explore the latest social posts, and learn important crypto basics.

Thus, we dove into the design, incorporating various content types (blog posts, TikTok & YouTube videos, Twitter posts, lists of wallets or DeFi apps to follow) and several token lists (like trending, biggest winners, and biggest losers). 

Eventually, we realized how long it would take to develop this vast content machine. We bit off more than we could chew.

We did implement a simplified version though, featuring a few blog posts and token lists. As you might guess, this didn’t much affect the transaction situation.

_______________________________________

The visuals throughout this case study are my own UI experiments based on Flooz Wallet. The light theme doesn’t feel futuristic enough. So I enjoyed exploring dark-theme UIs and neon interfaces for this case study.

Also, the NFTs images (coffee cups with rabbits) are generated by DALLE (ChatGPT).

If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to reach out.

Yours,

Kristina Volchek ‍

Follow me on Dribbble, Instagram or LinkedIn for more posts about product design.

Reminder: This is a brief summary of the case study

Check out the full version here: https://kristi.digital/shots/is-humanizing-crypto-even-possible-a-designers-perspective-on-web3-nfts-crypto