Live UXR at Devcon

Devcon Improvement Proposals (DIPs)
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Proposal on behalf of Web3UX panel: Let’s do some live UX research at Devcon.

Offer to Devcon attendees

Anyone can observe live UX research sessions by experienced researchers; selected projects can benefit from their product being evaluated. With this proposed setup, attendees are offered:

  • Direct impact on 4 open-source public good Ethereum focused projects who will have their product evaluated
  • Opportunity to ‘learn by example’ (i.e. how to validate their ideas and designs with end-users)
  • Opportunity to observe people interacting with common flows and draw conclusions on how to improve their own product or infrastructure
  • Gain perspective on the local context of using Ethereum-based applications. We’ll recruit people locally who’s perspective would otherwise not be represented at Devcon

How does it work

There are 3 phases to delivering Live UX research at Devcon.

Application

There will be a call for projects in the run-up to Devcon. Projects will need to meet some requirements such as being open-source, developing a public good, agreeing to public sharing of results. 4 projects will be selected.

Preparation

Experienced researchers will pair up to have an intake call, prepare a study plan and agree with the project on test materials (e.g. prototype). To meet practical requirements each study will be of a format that fits a moderated session of 45 min. This can be an interview, a usability test or a combination of the two.

Execution

Over the course of two days, 12 UX research sessions are conducted with 3 participants per project/study. Each study will have half a day dedicated to it, including the sessions with participants and a debrief with contributors to the project to interpret findings.

Needs

For optimal learning, and comfort and privacy of participants, we need a dedicated space; Interview room + observation room and ability to set up an A/V connection between the two. Nothing fancy. A dedicated space is the main requirement. We’ll also need a minimal compensation to cover recruitment costs and incentives for participants. (we’d ask participating projects to cover this, ca. $500 per study).

Besides this, experienced researchers will spend their time and effort before and during the event. We’d kindly ask the Devcon organizing committee for tickets for those who don’t already have one.

In conclusion

We’re excited to use the opportunity of the community coming together in Bogotá, to evaluate core products and protocols and improve their user experience. Outside the selected projects, we expect the sessions to inspire conversations on shared terminology and common flows, benefiting other projects.

You can find the full proposal here. Please like and reply, looking forward to your comments and support.

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UX research is fundamental for the web3 ecosystem.
Great initiative, totally support it!

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Hester! I think this could be interesting for crypto local projects, maybe we can find a research brief and doing a practical example. There are many crypto projects trying to understand Colombian users better. Totally support your idea!

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Love this concept and would be happy to contribute as a researcher!

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:muscle: Web3 is in dire need of user research and I believe this is a great initiative in making builders more comfortable with research.

:black_heart: I would love to contribute and participate as a researcher!

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This is NEEEDED! Scaling is an essential component to mass reach of decentralised technology, but user accessibility is crucial for ubiquitous adoption of general users. I support this massively.

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Great idea. Really excited for teams to get hands on User Research experience! :smiley:

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Great proposal!
@amy-jung: could that be part of the design community hub you proposed?

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@ligi I’ll chime in as I am involved in both proposals. There’s definitely a close connection to the community hub. Here’s how I see where they can and cannot integrate:

  • Place to gather before sessions - YES
  • Place for those who observed sessions to discuss findings, conclusions, next steps - YES
  • Running the actual test sessions - NO
  • Live observation of the actual test sessions - NO

From what I understand the community hubs are intentionally an open space where people can join to hang out. I suspect there’d be a lot of foottraffic, chatter, reunions, etc. This atmosphere is perfect before and after, but undesireable during testing. Large, dynamic groups are difficult to facilitate and this usually comes at the cost of a safe and respectful environment for participants.

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@hesterbruikman thanks - that makes sense!

So you need an extra room - unfortunately rooms are a very scarce resource at DEVCon (maybe @Natalia_Madrid can provide more insight here) - But I would really love to see that happening! So I wonder if it could be a possibility to make that part of continuous DEVCon cc @franzihei ) - basically the idea would be to do this in the rooms where usually talks are happening after the talks are over. Would that be an option?

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One overlap with the Design Community hub that I forgot to mention is shared use of space for UX audits. This is a programmed activity for the community hub. As I’ve understood from @amy-jung and experienced in Osaka is that these also benefit from a workshop like closed space as there are several 2-3 person discussions happening in parallel.

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Syncing responses :slight_smile: @ligi @hesterbruikman

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Hi! I love to collaborate like a UX Researcher! Do you need someone else? @hesterbruikman Please let me know :heartpulse::smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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@hesterbruikman Thanks for the proposal. Excited to say that we will be moving forward with the DIP and look forward to the having live UXR at Devcon this year. Not sure if you added the DIP to github but feel free to add it there so we can update the status of it.

Do not think there is much else needed from our end except the confirmation that you will have the dedicated space as requested for 2 days. The days being Thursday (Oct13) and Friday (Oct 14).
:microscope::scientist:t4:

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This is great news! I’ll prepare a DIP. On anything else we need, top of mind are two things:

  • We’ll need 1-2 tickets (I’ll prepare and share a list of contributors)
  • We’ll need a way to bring in and escort participants. Meaning we need to get approximately 12 people in and out of the building without a ticket on Oct 13 and 14. We can use guidance or a contact person with whom we can figure out the best approach for this. E.g. Do we need to register participants as part of safety regulations? Can we flash a badge and walk them in?

Super excited to move this forward!

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I need some help with the DIP :slight_smile: I followed instructions here and created a fork of the DIPs repo and created a PR there: https://github.com/hesterbruikman/DIPs/pull/1

Now how do I make sure it gets reviewed and merged?

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@hesterbruikman thanks!
In general it looks good - but you need to open the PR on our repository. You created the PR on your fork. This way we cannot merge it into our repository.

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This will be so nice !
Looking forward to do this for [@cryptomurals] as public good :unicorn:(Cryptomurals - Street art hunt)

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Thanks @ligi! Should be ready for your review now.

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Reviewed, some minor fixups & merged!

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