User Experience

Consumer Experience in Web3

Overview

User Experience (UX) in Web3 significantly influences the way users interact with decentralized applications (dApps) and blockchain technology. Effective UX design is a crucial part of ensuring that non-technical users can easily navigate their way around dApps. This is vital for growing adoption and usability. As it stands today, there are still significant challenges, particularly around the abstraction of technical complexities for users. This includes the management of digital wallets, understanding transactions and transaction fees and navigating interfaces that tend to be complex and confusing.

In recent times there has been progress in the optimization of user adoption processes and increasing ease-of-use but we still need to see significant improvement before we can achieve true mass adoption. Developers are focusing on making designs more intuitive without compromising on decentralization. This includes the development of user-friendly crypto wallet interfaces, creating transaction processes that are more clear and the development of more comprehensive educational tools. Although there’s been progress in the realm of User Experience, there is a pressing need to further simplify the User Experience (UX) in order to disguise the underlying complex technical details from the end-user which will make their interactions and experience in Web3 as seamless as possible.

Evolution of Web3 UX

Evolution of Web3.0 User Experience

CLI Era

• Overview: In the CLI Era, interacting with blockchain networks was highly technical. Users needed to create and manage wallets through terminal commands, memorize seed phrases, and handle transaction building manually.

• Challenges: The need for technical know-how and the risk of errors in command execution made this era accessible only to those with significant technical expertise.

GUI Era

• Overview: The introduction of graphical user interfaces (GUI) with wallets like Nami and MetaMask began abstracting some of the complexities of CLI. These wallets provided user-friendly interfaces, making it easier for users to manage their assets and interact with dApps.

• Advancements: GUIs improved accessibility by allowing users to perform transactions through more intuitive interfaces. This era saw broader adoption as it lowered the barrier to entry for less technically inclined users.

• Challenges: Despite improvements, users still had to deal with complicated wallet setups, technical understanding to execute transactions, and fragmented experiences across different dApps.

Current Era: Natural Language and AI Integration

• The current era is marked by the integration of natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) to further simplify user interactions with Web3 applications. However, platforms like Cardano are still catching up in leveraging these advancements. AI-powered interfaces can make Web3 interactions as seamless as conversing with a digital assistant. This evolution promises to make blockchain technology accessible to a wider audience by abstracting technical complexities even further.

Current Challenges in Web3 UX

Despite advancements in Web3 user experience, several challenges persist:

• Complexity: Many Web3 applications require users to manage complicated wallet setups, gas management, and various technical tasks, which can be intimidating for new users.

• Transactions: Having to do transactions for every single interaction represent barriers that add friction to user interactions. High transaction costs can also discourage users from engaging with Web3 applications.

• Fragmented Experiences: Each dApp often requires multiple steps and signatures, leading to a disjointed user journey. This fragmentation hinders the seamless adoption of Web3 technology.

We have tried to quantify these challenges, the complexity of interactions in Web3 can be measured using the Transaction Complexity Score (TCS). This score evaluates the complexity of completing a specific task within a dApp:

$$TCS= i=1 ∑ n ​ (C i ​ ×T i ​ )$$

Where:

• n is the number of steps required to complete the task.

• C_i is the complexity score of step (i) (rated on a predefined scale).

• T_i is the time taken for step (i) to complete.

Complexity Score Scale

A commonly used scale for C_i ranges from 1 to 5, where:

• 1: Low complexity (easy tasks, minimal user input)

• 2: Medium complexity (moderate effort, some user input required)

• 3: High complexity (detailed user input, multiple steps)

• 4: Very high complexity (extensive input, multi-step, time-consuming)

• 5: Extremely high complexity (most complicated tasks, requiring significant input and effort)

A higher TCS indicates that users need to navigate more complicated tasks to interact with the dApp, which contributes to the overall user experience challenges in Web3. The complexity of the user journey is evident from the number of steps and time it takes to accomplish a task, emphasizing the need for solutions that streamline and simplify interactions.

Let's do an exercise to understand this: For Example: Swapping 100 ADA to MIN on Cardano DEXs

This example is a thought experiment designed to illustrate the complexities of Web3 user experience. The values and steps provided are hypothetical and should not be taken literally.

Step Description	Complexity (C_i)	Time (T_i)	Score (C_i * T_i)
Connect Wallet	2 (medium)	2 sec	(2 x 2 = 4)
Compare Exchange Rates	3 (high)	60 sec	(3 x 60 = 180)
Select DEX with Best Rate	2 (medium)	15 sec	(2 x 15 = 30)
Swap ADA to MIN	3 (high)	45 sec	(3 x 45 = 135)
Confirm Transaction	1 (low)	25 sec	(1 x 25 = 25)

Total TCS: 374

This table breaks down the steps and calculations to find the total Transaction Complexity Score (TCS) for swapping 100 ADA to MIN, showing how the user experience can be quantified.

Addressing these challenges will require holistic approaches that reduce transaction complexity, minimize costs, and streamline fragmented user experiences to enable a broader adoption of Web3 technology.

The Need for a Unified System in Web3 UX

There is a pressing need for a unified system that offers a holistic architecture for full-stack decentralized applications. This system would feature intent-centricity, decentralized counterparty discovery, and computational outsourcing of NP search problems to solvers, which compute valid state transitions. Such an architecture would allow contemporary applications to be built without compromising on permissionlessness, fault-tolerance, censorship resistance, or privacy.

Key Features of the Unified System:

• Intent-Centric Design: The system prioritizes user intents, enabling the design of applications around user needs rather than technical limitations.

• Decentralized Counterparty Discovery: The system can match users with the right counterparts seamlessly, without intermediaries, enabling trustless interactions.

• Computational Outsourcing: NP search problems are delegated to solvers that compute the necessary state transitions, reducing the complexity for end users.

Motivation

The transition from CLI to GUI and now to AI-driven interfaces highlights the continuous effort to improve user experience in Web3. However, significant challenges remain that need to be addressed to achieve broader adoption. Our motivation is to develop solutions that simplify user interactions, reduce transaction costs, and create seamless, integrated experiences across different dApps.