As the UX Designer for Tangleverse, my journey began with extensive research aimed at understanding the unique needs of the IOTA and Shimmer ecosystems. This involved diving into the goals, guiding principles, and user personas defined by the project. The primary focus was on keeping the platform simple, creating an exceptional user experience, and solving real user problems.
Overview
User Personas
To guide the design process, I delved into the diverse user personas identified for Tangleverse. These included the:
Curious Investor
Prospective Builder
Naive Investor
Degen
Uninitiated
Skeptic, and
Ecosystem Fan-Boy.
Each persona presented distinct challenges, motivations, and experience levels that needed to be considered in the design of the platform. For instance, the Naive Investor persona was thought to be a beginner in the crypto space and so needed as much information and visual cues as possible so as to prevent them from making a mistake or losing a fortune, on the other hand the Degen and Ecosystem Fan Boy personas were thought to be experienced to an extent int the crypto space and even though they may not need their hand held still required sufficient information and visual cues in order to invest in projects they deem profitable.
The key here was tying everything together to make sure the designs catered for the different personas and user archetypes we identified.
Guiding Principles
The principles of simplicity, user experience excellence, and real problem-solving became the cornerstone of the design process. The challenge was to ensure that even users unfamiliar with crypto and Web3 could effortlessly navigate the platform. This involved regular self-assessment, ensuring clarity of information, and maintaining a three-click rule for finding answers.
Core Components and Features
Understanding the primary goal of Tangleverse - to be a reliable community hub for IOTA and Shimmer ecosystems - led to the identification of core components. These included:
A hub-style home page
News and major updates feed
An ecosystem projects calendar
Freelancer and job board
Governance proposals
Tools/labs page
Education/learn section
Profile Management Section (Where users could save events and follow interesting projects)
Project Management Section (For project owners)among others...
Design Process
Optimizing for User Personas:
The key to achieving the primary goal was optimizing the platform for the identified user personas. This involved creating user journeys based on self-defined familiarity levels with IOTA and crypto, allowing users to self-segment to their most important information. Specific sections of the platform were tailored to appeal to different personas, ensuring relevance and engagement.
Designing for Adoption and Monetization:
The Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) outlined for 2023 emphasized themes of adoption, reputation, education, and monetization. These became the guiding framework for designing features that aimed to increase website traffic and usage, and establish Tangleverse as the community IOTA hub, informing users about the ecosystems, and making the platform self-sustainable.
Conclusion
The Tangleverse case study reflects a comprehensive journey of user-centered design, where research, user personas, guiding principles, and OKRs played pivotal roles. By constantly aligning design decisions with the identified goals and user needs with continuous rapid iterations, Tangleverse emerged as a dynamic and purposeful community hub for the IOTA and Shimmer ecosystems.
Within a month of launching we had:
Over 67,000 user interactions on the platform
An average site visit time of 5 minutes & 51 seconds
A huge interest in Events & News pages
Over 4,000 weekly active users
The iterative design process, guided by principles and OKRs, facilitated the creation of a platform that not only met its objectives but also exceeded user expectations in terms of simplicity, engagement, and real-world problem-solving.
