Smartbox, Undergrad Project 2021

Smartbox is an educational platform that offers a risk-free learning environment aimed to help introduce users to the growing world of crypto. Through the use of curated videos and a hands-on simulation, beginners will learn at their own pace. All while receiving rewards and growing connections within the crypto community.

While working on this project, I made an impact by:

Designing component library for the Smartbox app.

Using Figma to prototype all high-fidelity designs and interactions.
Conducting user testing with prototypes, and gathering feedback from users, experts, peers, and professors to refine the experience.
Designing the visual elements for branding and presentations.

Role
Visual Designer

Years
2021

University
Savannah College of Art and Design

Location
Savannah, GA

Project Breakdown & Approach

Secondary Research - What is blockchain and what is the quality of education on the topic?

Blockchain is a data structure that holds transactional records while ensuring security, transparency, and decentralization. From our secondary research, we learned that current blockchain information is overwhelming and not always reputable, which deters people from investing in crypto. Unless people have prior contacts within the community, it’s very difficult to get started.

Approach to secondary research

Admittedly, blockchain and cryptocurrency were not topics I was very familiar with when beginning this project. Our team of five people independently approached secondary research to gather individual perspectives on the technology behind blockchain and the pain points that current and future crypto users are facing. I began secondary research by reading through articles, studies, conversational forums, and watching videos. By trying to learn more, our team quickly saw that there are very few accessible and reliable ways to do so.

Primary Research Part 1 - How do people learn about cryptocurrency?

It was important for us to understand how and where people are learning about blockchain technology today. If they haven’t begun to learn, but have an interest in doing so, understand what is stopping them. 83% of our survey respondents said they have had an interest in learning about cryptocurrency but do not feel confident about where to begin the learning process. 95.5% of our respondents said that they would use a tool that guides them through the learning process. 65% of our respondents said it is very important to have their information come from a reputable and verified source.

Approach to primary research

In our secondary research, we learned that there is a hurdle when it comes to the education of blockchain technology. Our team conducted a survey to answer questions about education on cryptocurrency, current familiarity, and future interest. We gathered 121 responses to our survey.

Primary Research Part 2- Learning from user and expert interviews.

The main findings from our user interviews were that users want a no-stakes way to learn about cryto, they want a streamlined hub with quality information, and as beginners, they would like to be connected to experts.

The main findings from our expert interviews are that experts want a way to help onboard new users without it taking up so much of their time, and experts want one efficient platform to interact with crypto and web3.

After conducting our user and expert interviews we decided to move forward with blockchain technology beginners as our primary audience and crypto experts as our secondary audience.

Approach to primary research

We conducted 13 user interviews with individuals who have shown interest in learning more about cryptocurrency but have chosen to not begin learning yet. We chose to focus our questions on understanding the factors that have kept them from learning more about cryptocurrency, as well has to learn about individual experiences with mentorships vs. self-guided education.

We conducted 10 expert interviews to see onboarding and education from the perspective of someone who has been through the experience entirely and is now helping others through it. Our criteria for an expert in the context of blockchain technology is someone who has spent 6+ months using the technology, someone who is active on platforms that connect them to the crypto community, and someone who has helped others onboard.

Synthesis and Research Findings

Our main focus for ideation for our primary audience is to: (1) Provide a welcoming experience that will pique the interest of beginners and keep them engaged. (2) Address the concerns about crypto and allow them to safely gauge risks. (3) Breaking down the information in a way that people can understand while encouraging a learning balance - not dedicating their lives to it.

Our main focus for ideation for our secondary audience is to: (1) Centralize the knowledge experts have and make a way to benefit both them and the beginners who are learning. (2) Simplifying the tools needed to engage with crypto while also being able to incorporate the sense of community. (3) Find a way to incentivize experts to be more involved in the crypto community by guiding beginners.

Approach to synthesis and research findings

We created 573 data points from research on cryto beginners and experts and approached our synthesis with affinity diagrams. From our synthesis, we created with 30 ‘How might we?’ statements for our primary audience (cryto beginners) and narrowed down our focus to 12 HMWs. We separated these 12 into 3 groups that directed our focus for ideation. We created 16 ‘How might we?’ statements for our secondary audience (cryto experts) and narrowed down our focus to 6 HMWs. We separated these 6 into 3 groups that directed our focus for ideation.

Low-fidelity Designs and User Testing

For the onboarding flow, beginners and experts both believed that users who are not familiar with anything about crypto or blockchain would not know what it is they are looking for, especially knowing which experts to learn from. We also shared flows for a call and messaging feature between beginners and experts, but experts were concerned that engaging with beginners through calls or private messages would take too much of their time, and therefore disappoint beginners. We decided to implement a synthetic coin called $SNBX so that users can practice trading without losing money, but when showing users they were confused by the concept of a stable coin and needed more clarification and context when it is being used in the app.

Approach to user testing

In our first round of usability testing, we shared 5 low-fidelity flows with 25 crypto beginners and 4 experts. We felt it would be very important to validate our assumptions from the very beginning of the designs, especially since this is a very new and complicated web3 technology, we want to avoid any confusion our target audience could encounter with the primary flows.

Mid and High-fidelity Designs and User Testing

We learned that we needed to visually have two very distinct parts of our app, the learning and education of cryptocurrency being the first, and the space or testing “sandbox” area where users can practice without any stakes being the second. In our first round of user testing these two spaces seemed unclear so in our high-fidelity designs we use a dark mode when entering the “sandbox” practice area of the app. This distinction was successful in this round of testing. We also learned that our users were missing an incentive or award to motivate them the way that other educational platforms do, because of this we added the concept of badges. A course completion is equal to several points and you can earn badges as your points increase. This concept was well received in user testing.