Web3 Digital Assets Forum
PROJECT
SUMMARY
Hudl was created to be the world’s first web3 forum / Q&A site centered around blockchain projects. Hudl came out of the growing need to provide a space where enthusiasts and investors can discuss and exchange real knowledge and information through a verified and secure social platform.
Title: Product Designer
Capacity: UI, UX, Branding
Year: 2022
Client: Cinchblock
RESPONSIBILITY
My Role:
In the dynamic and rapidly evolving landscape of Web 3 and cryptocurrency, I spearheaded the visual design and feature definition for an online forum dedicated to these topics. My role was multifaceted, encompassing the creation of a compelling product identity and the development of features that balanced user needs with business objectives.
Defining Target Users, Identifying Underserved Needs
Our Findings
Before we began ideating features and designing layouts it was important for us to understand if the product we were making would achieved a product market fit. Will our ideas create a product that meets real customer needs and does so in a way that is better than the alternatives? Achieving PMF was our main goal when building a new product. After all, optimisation and scaling is irrelevant if there’s no people wanting what we build. Hence we took sometime to workshop our ideas and business goals in order to make sure they were aligned with market needs.
To develop this product we worked within the double-diamond framework. Starting with exploring who the users are, and the problems that they faced in the crypto industry through early qualitative research.
After running more interviews and talking to potential user groups we were able to gain key insights that would help us validate our assumptions and possible solutions.
We found that the majority of people who want to get into investing in crypto projects have a hard time finding sources for credible information.
People posting on forum sites such as Reddit are anonymous and there is no way of knowing if they are just there to spread FUD or are actually investors in the projects.
We also discovered a set of common criteria which investors look for when judging a project's safety and health, and there was no place a potential investor could go to get a quick overview of a project without resorting to hours and hours of research and having to filter credible information from all the noise.
Based on these results we plugged our findings into a Problems / Solutions space. In the problems space we broke down the insights into smaller bites that directly translated to a user need. From the breakdown we were able to identify and group needs in a higher level such as providing Empowerment, Confidence and trust. Having a clear under standing of the Problem Space helped us come up with features to implement in the MVP that were directly mappable to user needs.
In order to build a truly market fit product we had to first identify target users and their needs, then identify the problems they faced with current solutions in the market or lack thereof. Through customer research we created a hypothesis of our potential user base and developed personas around them which would become the anchor to test our solutions. We came up with personas that embodied the 3 types of users identified through our research:
Casual investor, Crypto Whale, and the Project Owner.
Trust the process
The Product Market-Fit Pyramid
Double Diamond design framework
Building
the brand
In tandem with doing research for the product I was also tasked with building the visual identity of the brand. I began by running a brand strategy workshop with key stakeholders and internal teams to get a clearer picture of our brand values, vision and goals. The workshop helped to align everyone on a framework for our brand personality and helped me create a brand identity that resonated with our internal teams and our identified users
The name Hudl is both a reference to the acronym HODL “Hold on for Dear Life” a term commonly used by cryptocurrency investors who refuse to sell their digital assets despite wild changes in price, and to penguins grouping together to form a huddle when temperatures drop to stay warm.
The logo and brand needed to live in between our main competitors of Reddit and Quora. Reddit fell on the more casual and playful side whereas Quora was branded as educational as serious. This also reflected the types of content that was found on their sites. Hudl had to be seen as a professional and trustworthy source for crypto discussion yet still feel approachable by its demographics of millennial investors
Putting It Together
Working closely with the project team and product manager I helped define how feature sets worked and lived within a focused user experience through user flows, user stories, sitemaps and wireframes. I then brought that into low-fidelity mock ups and prototypes to review with stakeholders. Some light user testing after was done to make sure that flow and UI layout was logical and intuitive to the users before designing into High fidelity and hand off.
User Flow
Discover / Home
The Discover page shows updates on projects that the user is invested in once they have connected their wallet to the platform. It also shows trending projects, or topics that are generating a lot of buzz keeping the user up to date with the latest happenings in the crypto space.
Project Space
The project space consists of all discussions surrounding the project. Users can view information such as trade volume, current price, and wallet contract address...etc. Based on user research that showed a lack of anything in the market which gave users a summary on crypto projects, we added a feature called the Project Score. This feature grades the project based on set criteria which give an overview on a project's health to help them with their investment decisions. As market sentiment plays a big factor into how well a crypto projects price will trend, we added community score where users can vote on how they feel about a project daily. This provides a general overview on how investors are feeling based on current real time feedback, giving more data to help with investment decisions.
What makes Hudl unique as a platform is through our ability to leverage web 3 technology and connect with users wallets. By doing this we are able to identify if users are currently holding a projects token in their wallet. We use this data to give users unique badges which relate to certain milestones such as being an early investor, or holding a large number of a projects token among other things.
This provides more reassurance to users as they know that people who they are interacting with most likely have a stake in the project and are offering genuine news or discussions.
Post Threads
Profile / Bages
In the profile page users are able to have an overview of recent activities they have performed in the platform such as their latest posts, upvotes and comments. They can also view all the badges they have received so far as well as choose the top 3 badges they want to display in their profile card.
Let’s talk?
Got a partnership idea, or a project you need help with? Shoot me a line and let's talk.
