Human-centred Wallets. But humans who?
Gm everyone! 🌻
Welcome to the drawing board of my EIF 3.0 project. Here we take a look at what the Web3 wallet user experience is, its efficiency, benefits, and drawbacks. Then we compare these to the ideal experience to find out what we can build to enhance it further.
The following article is a summary of what I have understood about the current and future state of users and their experiences. This is part of my research for building a ‘human-centered’ wallet.
Following are the points I realized and put together after talking to designers, users, and students (both crypto native and non-native).
Who are the users now?
The users of web3 and the crypto ecosystem currently include a mix of early adopters, tech enthusiasts, investors, traders, and developers. They are generally individuals who have a strong interest in the potential of decentralized technologies. This implies that we understand the basic know-how and the technical jargon that comes with it. We would love for this to be abstracted but it is fine if it isn’t.
Who would the users be?
…most end users would not care about decentralisation, for me it is just an add-on and a means to an end.
— 0xAnkita, Web3 UI/UX designer
In the next few years, the user base of the web3 and crypto ecosystem is likely to expand beyond the current early adopter audience. These users will need seamless flows and low prerequisites to onboard and start using web3.
For such folks, the issue of centralization v/s decentralization will not remain relevant as much as it is with us, early adopters.
Let’s take a look at their anticipations and expectations for using wallets:
Anticipations (of the current users)
_____________
1. A wallet that works without much hassle
2. A safe and secure plugin/app to hold assets
3. Control over gas parameters
4. Should be able to interact with most dapps
5. Support multiple similar networks and currencies
6. Good portfolio tracking toolsWhat would their goals for using web3 and crypto look like?
Extrapolating the current status of the ecosystem, we could be looking at a good balance between traditional and decentralized finance.
A world where the macro-economic conditions are mostly regulated by institutions (a necessary evil); But also a world where personal finance, investments, and payments have convenient P2P/decentralized alternatives.
The following goals can be outlined for an average web3 user in the future:
Goals
_____
1. Simpler payments. (Receiving & sending)
2. Secure self-custody of assets and accounts
3. Interacting with in-person P2P marketplaces
4. Interacting with different networks would feel similar to interacting with different centralized financial service providers.
5. Store purchasing power safelyAnticipations (of the to-be users)
_____________
1. A wallet that is intuitive and easy to navigate
2. Universal support
3. Abstracted network and gas information
4. Seamless human-readable transaction experience.
5. Secure and easy recovery
6. Seamless integrations with trad-fi and web2What will the to-be users need?
Convenience, safety (under the hood), and learning curves depending on their familiarity with the ecosystem.
The above points imply the necessity of a layer to abstract the current experiences to cater to more users who come later on the adoption curve. This asks for a simpler UI, a better language, and in-app support.
Abstraction comes at the cost of the user’s freedom to control the finer workings of the application. Abstracting too much from a financial provider app is also a caveat we should look out for.
What do they NOT need?
We would also need a more generic new set of words to describe this abstracted version of web3. “Self-custodial Account Abstraction wallet for simple recovery” will not cut it. I am also trying to build an alternative language framework for my EIF project as an effort to simplify the wallet-related jargon we face.
Future users also would not need fine control over gas fees and parameters as much as we need it now. This is assuming that networks eventually solve scaling issues and gas-related issues.
They would not need to handle recovery as we do now. For example methods like written seed phrases and hardware wallets.
Conclusion
These are some of the ongoing threads in my brain that I was referring to for design inspirations and decisions.
As for how to achieve a “human-centred” wallet, I’m finalising a small case study on existing wallets and will be linking it in the next EIF weekly report. I’d also provide a detailed account of what things could be abstracted and how.
