Introduction
In Bit coinsWe are dedicated to improving the bitcoin user experience so that more people can benefit from it. In our ongoing commitment to transparency and community engagement, we recently made our product roadmap public. Now, we are excited to share another work product that was done as part of a bitcoin Summer Project: bitcoin People.
Personality mistakes
Coinbits is a family-owned exchange that only accepts Bitcoins. We are a small startup with a big vision: to create the first hybrid banking platform that seamlessly combines financial services in Bitcoins and fiat currencies.
Our team is primarily made up of engineers, but several of us also have product and design experience. We recently decided to revamp our user profiles to strengthen our foundation so that the product remains fit for the market.
People They are fictional descriptions of target users and are used to get development teams to focus on the human needs of the people they are building products for. While they have been a mainstay of UX and innovation teams for decades, in recent years, personas have developed a reputation for being a high-investment project with questionable ROI. This is largely because they tend to be underutilized by the audience they are built for: internal engineers, designers, and executives.
Too often, a UX team creates beautifully designed personas, presents them in a meeting, and… quickly forgotten And even if they aren't, do they really provide information about the product or are they too much? fictional, fluffy and definitive?
When people fail, one or more of these reasons are likely to blame:
- They try to be too broad and inclusive instead of specific and exclusive.
- They don't tell a character-driven story; they don't seem like real people.
- They focus too much on superfluous details.
- There are so many that it is difficult to take them all into account during the product development process.
A better approach
We believe the best way to approach personas is to think of them as summaries of user research that the entire development team participated in. In other words, engineers, executives, and designers should have been present for a substantial portion of user interviews. If a UX team goes off to do research and comes back with a result, the rest of the team will have missed the opportunity to build direct, empathetic connections with the real people who use the company’s products.
Instead, think of the work product as the interview itself, and think of personas as more of a documentation of that work product.
Ideally, when leading a personas project, the UX lead plays the role of servant leader for a qualitative research project. He or she guides conversations between engineers and users, and then immortalizes the work in a richly detailed final product that is easy to bring to light later. In this way, personas serve to keep research insights alive for as long as possible.
Methodology
Currently, our product is only available to customers in the US, so our research results should be interpreted as US-specific. We conducted user interviews to collect qualitative data during video chat sessions. The video allowed us to see participants’ faces, body language, clothing, and physical surroundings.
We facilitated the conversation by asking open-ended questions that prompted participants to tell stories about their personal lives. While we steered the conversation back toward bitcoin when it strayed too far, we also allowed conversation about sound money, economics, work, spirituality, values, and more to flow freely.
We interviewed 22 users for one hour. We had 2-4 people present and they were free to participate in the conversation.
Below is a sample of the questions we use to move the conversation forward:
- How did you hear about us? When did you join us?
- Why do you buy bitcoin? How do you use it? What have you used it for?
- What are your financial goals for 5, 10 or 20 years from now?
- What do you think will happen with bitcoin? How will it evolve and affect the world?
- How do you get bitcoins? What apps are used to buy and manage bitcoins?
- Are there other Bitcoiners in your social circle? What kind of people? What are the key topics you use to present bitcoin? What resources do you use? Why?
- If you had a magic tool that would make bitcoin better/more useful/easier, what would it do?
- What can we do for you?
People
Four personas were created to represent cross-sections of our users.
Each character includes these elements:
- An ai generated medium shot.
- Demographics and personality descriptors
- Narrative: Introduction, Motivations, Goals and Work to be done
- Favorite brands: Short-form content, long-form content, automotive, finance, apparel and lifestyle.
Below are some guidelines we follow:
- Combine details from multiple user interviews rather than drawing generalizations from those interviews.
- Keep the content authentic and grounded in real encounters with users. We didn't impose artificial diversity requirements or strive to find specific types of users we wished we had or thought we should have.
- Tell stories that make users memorable and likeable. We should want to spend time with these (fictional) people, we should think they are at least moderately likeable. If your characters aren't likeable, how much effort are you really going to put into creating products for them?
- Keep the number of people low, so we can easily remember them.
- Stick to an MVP. As UX professionals, we love design and storytelling, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of designing overly elaborate deliverables. Instead, deliver a good-enough profile document and then build software.
You can download the finished product at bitcoin.design/”>bitcoin Design Foundation
Whats Next
People who care about bitcoin are on the cusp of creating truly user-friendly experiences. Apple's new Pay feature Tap to collect It is an example of improving the user experience in digital payments. It is an indicator that we may be entering a period where the user experience in payments will take a leap forward. bitcoin certainly has a role to play in this regard – as bitcoin-focused user experience professionals, we are well positioned to make an impact. We would love for sharing this work to inspire someone to contribute to the important project of making bitcoin easier to use.
Want to get involved? Check out the Coinbits app. We are proud to invest a huge amount of time and effort into product design and We'd love to hear what you think about this. If this field interests you, consider participating in the community at bitcoin.design”>bitcoin Design Foundation.
By offering these research results under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license, our goal is to make a small contribution to making bitcoin easier to use.
This project includes contributions from Tiffany Lee, Rachouan Rejeb and David Waugh.
This is a guest post by Dave Birnbaum. The views expressed are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of btc Inc or bitcoin Magazine.
