How can design play a role in web 3

I'm a digital product designer by day and was recently exploring a web3 side-project. I got to thinking how user experience can play a huge role in people adopting the new web and interacting with decentralised applications.

First thing is user adoption.

Owning a piece in the network is expensive and unreliable (at least for the initial stages of crypto). At the same time nearly two thirds of the people on this planet are on Facebook which is perceivably free to use.

These multi-trillion-dollar brands are going all in on selling trust & user privacy. They target the most niche of human emotions to keep users engaged- the endles feed of variable rewards satisfies your boredom.

As someone wisely said

"Change is inevitable yet the most difficult thing to embrace."

Next is interacting with web3 platforms.

In the decentralised world, there is no single identity controlling it. So there's no concept of trust. But that doesn't mean users will trust or feel safer while interacting with the system.

Questions like this are gonna be genuine:

"How do I know the data I send is really stored in the blockchain?"
“How am I supposed to do this?” (action dApp asks)
"If something goes wrong will money be at risk?"
“What does that <weird crypto word> mean?”

Designers will need to elevate context and provide signals about the interactions. So that people can feel safer to make decisions about what actions to take and which to avoid.

We have to be careful about simplifying complexity without diluting the essence of web3. Details that will need attention:

Data Exposure: Must be actionable, or serving a trust-building, educational purpose.
Constant Feedback: Users should know what’s happening, what just happened, and what will happen next.
Consistency: Essential to the perception of trust.

Designing for web3 is gonna have its challenges. It’s not just about funky gradients you know. In the end, great user experience will be the bridge between any new tech and the people using it.

Thanks for reading it till here.

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