UX for Cryptocurrencies — The Revolution Won’t Happen Without It (Part 2 of 3)

MACRO-LEVEL UX ISSUES

Even when you ignore the terrible state of the UI design, there are even bigger UX issues remaining in the ecosystem.

• Inhumane Design: A technology is humanely designed when it treats people well, adheres to customer requirements, keeps users safe, and solves customer problems. The cryptocurrency ecosystem does not treat users well. Humans are treated as second-class citizens to the blockchain. “What, you lost your money in a transfer? Well did you manually enter that 32 character public key correctly? Can’t type well? Bad memory? Well, the blockchain is infallible so you must be the problem.” Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are one “user-error” after another, just waiting to happen. Your grandmother can use a bank to manage her money, but she certainly can’t buy, store, or use a bitcoin — and she will need to.

• Lack of Support: One of the reasons Amazon is a user-centered company is because it automates common support tasks, defaults to trusting the customer, and has very responsive human support teams. If something bad happens to a customer, support will determine what happened and make it right. From ICOs to exchanges, there is uniformly a lack of qualified support or non-existent support. Customers with legitimate concerns who don’t get responses will file lawsuits, and increased calls for government regulation and accountability will be the result over time. One ICO I participated in ignored three different channels of communication for 3 weeks until I finally tracked down the CEO on LinkedIn. He claimed his LinkedIn account had been hacked, apparently making him inaccessible, and then ignored my request for a refund for another 2 weeks. I doubt this is uncommon as there are no contracts legally compelling ICO providers to adhere to certain standards. The blockchain itself is automated, and thus won’t have human support staff. However, it could automate support services or build support APIs, such as making it simple to check the current status or costs associated with a transfer. It could also have a more automated method to do charge-backs (returns).
• Lack of Accountability and Safety: Whenever blockchain pundits talk about the wonders of the technology they always cite “security and accountability” as a major advantage of the inherent structure of the blockchain. However, when you look at the practical experience of simply storing your coins on an exchange, or contacting an exchange about a transfer problem, or (heaven forbid) investing in an ICO, you will find anything but accountability and safety. Admittedly, exchanges are separate centralized services built around the blockchain — but the blockchain doesn’t have these necessary services itself, so the overall ecosystem has a flaw. Here’s another way of looking at it; If the only methods of accessing the blockchain are insecure then it doesn’t matter how secure the blockchain is. An additional factor is that blockchains have been engineered to be non-reversable at the architecture level. This is great when you don’t trust your bank or government, but mistakes do happen and there needs to be a mechanism for return-transfers. Overall, the collective UX is one of confusing transfer status, non-existent or useless interactions with authority figures in the network, and occasional outright fraud. The end-user is not a first-class citizen in this new crypto world, and that — unfortunately — is by design.

If you participate in an ICO, don’t submit funds directly from an exchange (the most logical place to send it from) or you will lose all of your funds — and no one will be responsible, because it is “user error”. Really, this is a serious design flaw both on the part of the blockchain, and also the exchanges.

• Thinking About Distributed Ledger Technologies and Currencies Instead of Ecosystems and Use Cases: In 2018 some IOTA users who had put their coins in paper wallets (supposedly the most secure option) found that the creator of the wallets had been recording their private keys and then waiting until they were full to do a mass theft. IOTA claimed it was not their fault. From a technology-centered perspective they were right — the tangle (distributed ledger) was fine. From a UX -ecosystem perspective they are dead wrong. They could have built their own wallet-generator. They could have linked to trusted wallet developers from the site. They could have created a secure system that didn’t require paper wallets. Designing this way requires ecosystem thinking. IOTA’s brand has suffered as a consequence of the tone of their response and their lack of desire to support necessary user tasks. The entire ecosystem needs to be designed to work together for a good UX. Imagine a smartphone with a 1 hour battery, or Amazon without 2-hour shipping, or a Model S without its network of super chargers across the country. A currency blockchain without a secure wallet is useless — part of the overall product/service is missing.

• Thinking About Distributed Ledgers As Non-User-Facing Technology: Developers tend to think about database architectures, software architectures, and technology choices as though users will never be affected by them. This is called being “non-user-facing”. This is a farce. Every part of a product from the UI down to the circuits and binary is user-facing. If necessary features can’t be added in the UI, then it can cause a change in the underlying architecture and technology choices. This is why user-advocates and UX folks should be part of architecture decision making. It’s also why architectures should be built around supporting primary use cases (user task flows) with the goal of making those tasks as efficient, safe, humane, understandable, predictable, and simple as possible. If critical use cases that humans need can’t be supported, then it is by definition a flawed architecture. This has implications for blockchains and other forms of distributed ledgers.

• Thinking In Terms of Physical Objects: When you look at currencies from a historical perspective, it was the physical properties of the objects that caused most of the difficulties. For example, the stone coins of Palau were so heavy that they often could not be moved and just the owners changed. Similarly, gold is very heavy and difficult to convert. Pigs in Guatamala require a lot of space and have to be maintained. Metal coins in larger quantities get heavy as well and they require multiple denominations to conduct a transaction successfully. Paper money can burn, and it’s easy to irretrievably steal and counterfeit. Most forms of stored value have similar problems of decaying or being susceptible to damage. Most of these objects also take long time periods to convert to other types of value. The evolution of monetary technologies is moving towards a format that is more mobile, secure, flexible, and digital. If that is the case, then why are we trying to make an inherently high-tech digital currency physical again? Think of proof of work, paper and hardware wallets, mining farms, and bitcoin ATMs. The future of currency is primarily digital, not physical.
• Business Models: It is quite ironic that blockchain pundits commonly use the example of Western Union charging exorbitant rates in the remittences market as predatory businesses practices, while Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies often end up charging about the same amount for a sequence of exchanges and withdrawals. Neither one is empowering the poor. Currently exchanges often have a near-monopoly on certain currencies and can charge whatever fees the desperate market will tolerate, but over time companies that abuse their customers won’t survive. Companies with services built around crypto-currencies and blockchain should realize that this “plumbing” will soon be near-free and that they will need to charge only for utility built on top of that platform. Transferring money shouldn’t cost anything, just like transferring the information comprising an email doesn’t. If there is a significant cost to running the infrastructure, then a “contribute to the system if you use the system” model may work best to keep costs down(this is how DNS and routers work currently). It tends to be the centralized choke-points in the network that allow influencing of the overall system and result in higher costs for users (e.g. cable Internet providers, cellular providers, banks). The current solution of paying “miners” just centralizes control of the network in the hands of a few big mining farms and keeps costs high for non-mining users.

ANALYSIS

A usable interface design which clearly shows the process and system state.

Most new technologies begin with developers and engineers who are able to take an idea that most consider to be science-fiction and pull it kicking and screaming into the real world. These technical entrepreneurs usually need to partner with others who have strengths in the areas of human behavior, business goals, and UX to create actual products. Sometimes the underlying technology architecture is so unusable for normal people that it needs to be re-written from scratch to support usable products that can be built on top of it. Software architectures need to be designed with users in mind as well, something that is often overlooked. Satoshi’s vision for the bitcoin platform involved private keys which could be easily lost, irreversible transfers using keys that could be easily mis-typed, proof of work requiring huge amounts of wasted electricity, and time delays of minutes. Then crypto engineers copied day-trading stock interfaces and bolted them on to altcoins and asked the general public to use them. The result is exactly what one would expect — a system that is technology-centered, frustrating, and frequently causes harm to users.

View the remaining part of this article: 3) A Better Future. (Previous article: 1) A Typical Crypto Experience )

Note: This article is part of content produced for the blog TravelUX.