introduction
in CoinbitsWe are committed to improving the Bitcoin user experience so that more people can benefit from it. As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and community engagement, we recently released Roadmap for its products Public. Now, we are excited to share another working product that was created as part of Bitcoin Summer Project: Bitcoin Personas.
Personal errors
Coinbits is a family-owned Bitcoin-only exchange. We are a small startup with a big vision – to build the first #HybridBanking platform that seamlessly combines Bitcoin and fiat financial services.
Our team is mostly made up of engineers, but many of us also have product and design experience. We recently decided to revamp our user personas in order to strengthen our foundation for continued product-market fit.
Characters Personas are fictional descriptions of target users and are used to focus development teams on the human needs of the people they are building products for. While they have been a mainstay of UX and innovation teams for decades, in recent years they have gained a reputation as a high-investment project with questionable ROI. This is largely because they tend to go unused by the audience they were created for — internal engineers, designers, and executives.
Often, beautifully designed personas are created by the UX team, and presented in a meeting, It was instantly forgotten. And even if it doesn’t, does it really provide insights into the product, or does it offer too much? Fantasy, delicate, and ultimate?
When characters fail, one or more of the following are likely to be the cause:
- They try to be broad and inclusive rather than specific and exclusive.
- They don’t tell a character-driven story, and they don’t feel like real people.
- They focus on unnecessary details.
- There are so many of them, it can be difficult to remember them during the product development process.
Better approach
We believe that the best way to approach personas is to think of them as summaries of user research that the entire development team participated in. In other words, engineers, executives, and designers should have been present for a significant portion of the user interviews. If the UX team went off to do research and came back with deliverable results, the rest of the team would miss out on building direct, empathetic connections with the real people who use the company’s products.
Instead, consider the work product to be the interview itself, and envision the personas as more akin to documenting that work product.
Ideally, to run a persona project, the UX owner plays the role of servant leader of a qualitative research project. They guide conversations between engineers and users—and then immortalize the work into a rich, easily viewable product later. In this way, personas serve the purpose of keeping research insights alive for as long as possible.
methodology
Our product is currently only available to customers residing in the United States, so our research findings should be interpreted as specific to the United States. We conducted user interviews to collect qualitative data during video chat sessions. Video allowed us to see participants’ faces, body language, clothing, and physical environment.
We facilitated the conversation by asking open-ended questions that would prompt participants to tell stories about their personal lives. And while we steered the conversation back to Bitcoin when it veered too far, we also allowed for free-flowing conversation about sound money, economics, work, spirituality, values, and more.
We interviewed each of the 22 users for an hour. On our part, the number of people in attendance ranged from 2 to 4 people and they were free to participate in the conversation.
Here are a sample of questions we used to move the conversation forward:
- How did you hear about us? When did you join us?
- Why buy Bitcoin? How do you use it? What have you used it for?
- What are your financial goals for the next five, ten, or twenty years?
- What do you think will happen to Bitcoin? How will it evolve and impact the world?
- How do you get Bitcoin? What apps do you use to buy and manage your Bitcoin?
- Are there other Bitcoin users in your social circle? What types of people? What are the main topics you use to learn about Bitcoin? What resources do you use? Why?
- If you had a magic tool that made Bitcoin better/more useful/easier, what would you do?
- What is one thing we can do for you?
Characters
Four personas have been created to represent the cross-sections of our users.
Each character includes the following items:
- Created by AI Medium shot.
- Demographics and personality characteristics
- Narration: Introduction, Motivations, Goals, and Jobs to be done
- Favorite Brands: Short Form, Long Form, Automotive, Finance, Apparel, Lifestyle.
Here are some guidelines we followed:
- Integrate details from multiple user interviews rather than drawing generalizations from those interviews.
- Keeping content original and based on real user encounters. We have not imposed artificial diversity requirements, nor have we made any effort to find the specific types of users we wish we had, or think we should have.
- Tell stories that will make users remember and love you. We should want to spend time with these (fictional) people—we should think they’re at least somewhat cool. If your characters aren’t likable, how much real effort are you going to put into building products for them?
- Keep the number of characters low, so we can remember them easily.
- Stick to a minimally viable product. As UX professionals, we love design and storytelling, so it’s easy to get carried away with over-designed products. Instead, send us a good-enough document for your user persona, then move on to building some software.
You can download the final product at Bitcoin Design Foundation website.
What then
People who care about Bitcoin are on the cusp of a truly user-friendly experience. The new Apple Pay feature Click to get cash This is a prime example of improving the user experience of digital payments. It’s an indication that we may be entering a period where the user experience of payments takes a leap forward. Bitcoin certainly has a role to play here — as Bitcoin-focused UX practitioners, we’re well-positioned to make an impact. We’d be delighted if sharing this work inspires someone to contribute to the important project of making Bitcoin more user-friendly.
Want to get involved? Check out the Coinbits app. We proudly invest a tremendous amount of time and effort into product design, We would love to hear what you think about this topic. If this area interests you, consider getting involved in the community on Bitcoin Design Foundation.
By presenting the results of this research under CC BY-NC 4.0 By obtaining the license, we aim to make a small contribution to making Bitcoin more user-friendly.
This project includes contributions from Tiffany Lee, Rashwan Rajab, and David Waugh.
This is a guest post by Dave Birnbaum. The opinions expressed here are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.