This document discusses best practices for user onboarding and engagement for decentralized applications (dApps). It recommends defining user personas based on qualitative user interviews to understand user needs and problems. The messaging and microcopy within dApps should focus on framing the product in a way that solves the personas' problems and reinforces the value proposition. Common UX issues like key management, gas costs, and load times should be addressed through clear guidelines and setting proper expectations via microcopy. Organizations should structure responsibilities and goals around user research, conversion optimization, and post-signup engagement.

1. Blockchain:
User onboarding
in practice.

2. Do you users give a shit?
(Yeah, about their problems)

3. What’s for lunch?
What did the dog just do?
I have to work late… again
What did the president tweet?
Game of Thrones, season 4Are they mad at me?
I could use some coffee
The price of ETH
That deadline for work
When will Daft Punk play in the US?

4. How do you get them to
care about your product?
(frame your product in a way that solves their problem)

5. Frames Matter…

6. Let’s talk about milkshakes.

7. Miller’s Law
“In order to understand what another
person is saying, you must assume that
it is true, and try to imagine what it could
be true of.”
(you need empathy to build great products)

8. How do you put this into practice?

9. Define your personas
● Who are they?
● What do they do?
● What do they have?
● What do they face?
● How do they dress?
● What do they care about?
Think of specific people, not just masses
Get to know your (potential) users

10. Talk to humans!
● Recruit 10 users to speak to for 30 minutes
● You’re looking for narratives, not yes/no questions
○ Don’t ask leading questions
○ Ask questions that begin with "Walk me through . . ." or
"Tell me about the last time you . . . "
● Distill what they tell you into personas
(the best copy typically comes right from user interviews)

11. Can you say that another way?
Dig deeper into conversations

12. “The essence of metaphor is
understanding and experiencing
one kind of thing in terms of
another.”
— George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By

13. for

14. What are the metaphors you heard
during your UX Interviews?

15. Personas

17. A I D A

18. Attention, interest, desire, action
One of the most popular copywriting
formulas ever…
How do you:
● grab someone’s attention
● get them interested
● create desire
● compel them to act

19. Let’s dive into an example

20. It all started with a tweet...

21. I had just met Simona at a conference… she had my attention

22. A decentralized video map of the world?
That sparked my interest

23. I had a desire to check out learn more
& experience a live #dApp

24. There was a specific call to action

25. So I clicked the link to learn more...

27. .¿what is this page for?.

28. Overall questions: What’s the bounce rate from this screen? Are you
catering to new or returning users?
If I’m a new user: Do I know what MetaMask is or why I should use it
(should you hyperlink to metamask? -What’s my incentive to do so?

30. Excite me to log in — I clicked on it to learn more about this bounty!
Help new users learn about MetaMask and dApps
Reinforce
Bounties’
value
proposition

31. Focus on Microcopy

32. Microcopy
● Microcopy is any piece of text that helps guide the user through the
experience of using your product or service.
● It’s the label on a form field, a tiny piece of instructional text, or the words
on a button.
● It’s the little text that can make or break your user experience.

33. Focus on the change you help users to
make
● Understand your different user groups and what their problems are
○ Can you vary your messaging for each audience?
● Reinforce your value proposition (frame) throughout your dApp
○ What are small ways you can delight users?

34. Common UX problems in dApps

35. Key management
● Most people have ~90 passwords
● ⅓ online purchases are abandoned at checkout because of
passwords
And we expect people to securely manage long, complex private keys

36. Elevate the importance
with microcopy

37. ● Over half of all internet access occurs on the mobile devices
And dApps are almost exclusively accessed on desktop
Mobile responsiveness

38. Message mobile users

39. Gas
● The concept of gas is new to most users
○ they’re not used to paying for transactions
● Suggest gas prices ranges
○ Give time approximations for the upper and lower bounds
○ Show gas prices converted to fiat

40. Give guidelines

41. Long load times (hanging transactions)
● The first time I ever completed a transaction on Ethereum I was biting
my nails for about 20 minutes, waiting to see if I did it correctly.
● People hate to wait, it causes them stress.
Perception Tolerance

42. Set expectations

43. Structuring this in your org

44. How can you put this into practice?
● Who is responsible for this in your org?
○ If it’s everyone, it’s likely that no one is…
● What are the OKRs that align with this?
○ Buyer/User Personas, Customer Journey Mapping, UX Interviews
○ Conversion optimization
○ Activations / Engagement (post sign up)
Please stop using Lorem Ipsum in designs...

45. Further reading

46. Want to dive in further?
● Mastering Microcopy by Jack Zerby
● Sarah Doody’s UX Newsletter
● Jobs to Be Done - Clay Christensen
● UserOnboard.com
● Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff

47. Thank you so much for listening!
@aseoconnor any time you want to talk about this!
Want to be the first to know about new bounties and
events like this? Join the community in Slack + Twitter
@ethbounties
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