From Protocols to Products: UX as the Bridge to Adoption | Andrii Bondar | ETHWarsaw [4]

Thank you for joining. Yes. So, hi everyone. Happy to see today. Yeah.

Um, today I will talk about how we can uh move our stack, how UX can help you to move stack from protocols to product people will be happy to use. Uh, my name is Andre Bonda. I'm from Mlabs and our team is building Zin, the elastic network of the blockchains. And in the boxing field I'm from 2017 and the last three years I'm working with amazing team metal labs. Uh so let's figure out what is different between the protocol and product.

By the way uh who is related and working in the teams who is related to the building application or protocols Rajan by the way. Yes. Who is building protocols or application on the blockchain? Perfect. Uh and another question who who knows Rajan who knows what is external owned account and sweet phrases etc etc.

Okay, perfect. Because I will explain about this. Uh, so what's different in general? The audience is different here because everything else can be in common like a decentralization or business value and developers are lovely users of the protocols. Uh, but they're designing what people touch and this that product.

Developers are lovely users of the protocol. uh but they are designing what people touch and you know developers are more flexible because users can just jump to the competitors and don't care about the application but if developers create amazing application they will make the protocol very successful and here uh you can see the real world examples of protocols that became successful because someone turned uh them into something people could actually use. For example, MetaMask as a product had significant impact on the popularity of Ethereum. Of course, we can ask our users, please download um Ethereum node, synchronize it, uh open CLI and create a wallet and manually sign route transaction in hacks. But you know what?

People never do this. But can you guess why? Because most protocols are designed like airports. powerful infrastructure with horrible experience. So developers love particles because they provide a lot of opportunities for users and build something.

But users even don't care about this. They want products easy to use. Okay, no problem. What we can do? Let's build amazing applications.

But for some reason, we still don't have thousands and thousands application with incredible UX in web 3. Why? Because most web 3 teams are lead by developers, we love building things, but we often focus on the tech first, not the users. Developers can uh care about things like speed, gas cost, and how the protocol works. And they ask, is this efficient or is this secure?

But users ask what is this wallet? Why it's asking for the money to pay fee? and um did my transaction complete? So they're not thinking about the protocol, they're asking can I track this? So there's the gap and it's not because developers don't care.

It's just because of different mindset. So uh to build a great product, we have to bring in user thinking from the start, not after the attack is done. Um I know how hard is keep users in focus because when uh working on the application or participating in a hackathons I can start thinking about users a lot but you know after some times uh because of deadlines I can skip the more in-depth user research or additional validation to minimize the development time and to avoid this we must constantly learn our user to understand and validate their needs. So in general question is what our users need? Definitely users don't need anything you can see on the left side they they don't care about this they just want dream flow you desire and have something right here right now without any interruption.

So to figure out what um we can do here, we can refer to job to be done framework. Instead of asking what features do we build, we can ask what job is user hiring our product to do. This mindset change everything. But as we know the situation on the right side is almost impossible. So we should interrupt user dream flow by some specific step.

something like this. But every time we add any additional stack or feature our user can use, we will add something that can be the obstacle to our user. So the fewer steps and obstacles we introduce to our users, the better will be correct. From York's perspective, it's yes and no. Because the last decade especially in the blockchain the application had very complicated flow.

So for this reason designers and product team were challenged to make application minimalistic as possible. But it's not always the solution. Let's check this example. Amazon checkout has multiple steps including opening the website, creating the account with verification, shopping, adding delivery address and even using external device mobile phone to copy the credit card details. Very complicated flow but millions of users will find it intuitive because it's familiar.

Uh on the other hand, a small store might offer a simple one to page account with fantastic stack. For example, um when you open when you enter a zip code and just choose the address from drop down. Amazing. Fantastic. But it can cause friction because it's too far from user expectations.

The same situation with EOA. Um EOA in general is very simple. You just copy paste it phrase and this is it. But the problem is users user just don't know what to do with this because their finances were never dependent on a single piece of paper. So make things familiar even complicated and it will be easy to understand and easy to use.

But how make things familiar to our users? We must understand them. This is where UX can help us and it can provide a knowledge about our users. With this knowledge, UX can turn the technology power into something usable, valuable and even lovable. It's the bridge between engineering and experience.

But how we can get this knowledge? We should conduct a user research. This helped us deeply understand our users, what they need, what they value, their abilities and their limitations. User research help us to know more about our users, their pain point and behaviors, helps validate decisions and improve product development and reduces risks and increases user satisfaction. So let's check the example of how we can use this information with gr.

For example, if you want to make a great onboarding experience with one of the most important part, you can use ZK sync SSO. It's a user and developer friendly model smart contract implementation on ZK sync. Our goal as a team is um to make on boarding feel as easy as possible like login check mail. No browser extensions, no seat phrase, no fees. For example, using user can authorize to their account using pass key.

Just one click and you are in. And this one click on boarding in general it's very just fantastic because instead of downloading the wallet saving seat phrase finding the account to pay fee user can just use pass key with face ID and this is it. You can even allow user to use your application with no fees, no confirmation because of pay master and sessions. And from Yak perspective, it's fantastic. But the question is, does it feed to everyone?

For example, we have Ammy who is an active user of five different development online banks. KYC is something she doesn't like at all, but on the other hand, it's something that build the trust. So imagine she decided to use self- custody wallet to make onchain transactions and of course she researched the market um and downloaded the best app that used use the pass key because as you know it's something promising and created for providing mass adoption. If she creates a self custody wallet with an amazing one-click converting process using fast key, you will have a user who has no trust and no clarity about what happened. Just one click, no KYC, no any option to share the contacts or any personal data she usually share uh when called to the bank if something happens.

This might be a great flow for web three natives uh who already had experience using Pasi in web three applications but not for AM. So everything depends on the user and this is why you should learn about them and their experience to know more about their pain points and expectations. You should know what is better for whom and depending to their experience build something they will be familiar with. no matter it's minimalist or a flow with a couple of steps. So instead of saying uh that we have some the best option everyone can use, we should remember about our target audience.

If you're building something for developers or web three native way might be a better option. However, if we're talking about the mass adoption and millions of people involved, most of them have mail and phone numbers. they get used to use daily. So the mass adoption is let's use just mail and phone number right you know it's very fun uh because a lot of people say let's build for mass adoption like it's one single user all the time you know because when we talk about blockchain user of course we have web three native we have web three enthusiast we have blockchain beginners blockchain developers etc etc etc but for mass adoption we need you know one specific thing and everyone will be on chain. But it's not true.

Even if we talk about mail and phone numbers uh and the way to adoption, there are a lot of things need to be researched because some users are happy to share their phone number especially in banking application or secure apps. But others see that and immediately bounce especially in the gaming or casual apps. Mail looks easier. But even here even that you have two very different options traditional login with passwords and social login via Google. This is the heart of mass adoption.

It's not choosing the one right login. It's understanding who you are building for and why. So even something simple like login need to deeper search notes. For example, phone number login works well in India, Nigeria. Southeast Asia because in those regions users users just don't have mail.

Everything runs through WhatsApp or SMS. Mail and password works well in North America, Europe, Latin America. It's familiar, amazing, very easy to use, but users may forget passwords or reject flows without autofill. Pass keys and biometic log login are rising in Asia, Euracy. uh speed and mobile for us.

But you know it's surprisingly how many users still don't know what a key is. So education matters. Google Apple social login is amazing for globally and popular for Jenz but especially in casual uh mobile first application because it's fast and low friction. But not everyone want to connect personal account to a crypto product. So mass adoption doesn't mean finding the one right login method.

It means understanding the context, country, culture, use case and user maturity. The deeper the research, the wider the doors are open. Today we covered only on boarding but you should uh follow your users everywhere in the app and help to avoid obstacles and use the power of the protocols to make everything familiar as possible to your specific target audience. If something differs explain why it matters and what benefits users will have because of this. Find this different.

Always look for their problems and pain points and convert them into something beneficial to be sure your product is clear for users and uh you can use uh for example those three question to verify yourselves. First, what is this page for and why do you need it as a user and what do you have to do? For example, what this is page for world name entering and enabling permission. Very clear. What user should do here?

Action. Enter what name or tap to enable. Very clear. But the answer to the question why is often the most critical. On the first screen you can see here what is good.

But instead of this we can say we need a wallet number to to name your smart contract wallet properly. It's similar what we have on the right side. We will notify you about the events. Um this meth message can convert this page into the obstacles. So instead make this tab beneficial uh like say that it's your identity and your friends.

You can it benefits yourself because first your identity, second your friends can use it to send your crypto. So more obstacle or pain point you find more smooth this experience can be because on the every step you can convert this into something beneficial and explain why it's important for you as a user. Fall in love with user problems and they will fall in love with your solutions. Thank you so much.