People Centred Design = less risk

We would like to initiate a programme of work that helps projects building on Cardano build faster with less risk by giving them access to user insights, user needs & behaviours. These actionable insights will create a framework that will help teams to adopt a user centric view of their products and services which will be particularly helpful when defining their MVP and beyond

We would do this by:

Conducting a number in depth interviews and workshops with projects within the ecosystem gaining an understanding of their needs, goals and potential pain points. Understand where their projects may encounter real users and where they need further support in terms of insight. This may be from consumers or perhaps focused on enterprise or governments.

Synthesizing this primary research will likely uncover patterns and common needs for these and pipeline projects that will require further investigation. These will then be prioritised based on the collective needs of the projects and the value they could bring to the development community.

Design researchers will be tasked with gaining these user insights using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods including video interviews, surveys etc. Primarily remotely but with some travel for group workshops if necessary and travel restrictions allow. The results will then be synthesized and assembled into a series of design documents to help projects make better user focused product decisions. Typical outputs would be intended to help inform design and development teams and may be in the form of user need statements, personas or user journeys that indicate possible friction points and opportunities to delight.

The intention is that these insights which would grow over time and be augmented by the community would form a knowledge resource hub that could be accessed by any project building within our ecosystem.

What does success look like after 3/6/9/12 months?

First 3 months, mobilised a core international team and identified key projects to engage with together with objectives and methodology.

Within 6 months we would of engaged with key projects and identified prioritised research/UCD objectives for the primary research.

By 9 months, we will be actively engaging with geographically dispersed user participants.

By month 12 we will have synthesized research insights into easily consumable design documents and will be actively sharing with the community and assembling a research prioritized backlog from community feedback.

How I address the challenge question

Creating a knowledge base around user centric research and design will ultimately empower teams, to unlock their projects potential. Understanding the landscape and people that are ultimately using or affected by their proposed development, products or tools will reduce development risk and expedite product design decisions. Understanding user needs goals and motivations helps devs considerably to focus on elements that add human value. Embedding this user centred process and creating communities around this will raise this agenda, increase conversations about people and usability- ultimately making the Cardano eco system more valuable to humans.

Public launch date:

Design/ research teams would work in the open in an iterative an collaborative way which would mean assets could be available for consumption by developers within months on an alpha basis. This is a scalable proposal and ultimately the end rather than launch date will depend on the volume of effort required.

Budget overview

Labour: 257,000

Recruitment and participant incentive fees:15,000

Travel and subsistance allowance: 30,000