Title: Thoughts_and_Findings_from_the_Web3_UXUnconf
Category: Web

Author: jpitts
Date: 2018-05-08T20:19:31.254Z

(Note: this post is in “wiki mode” and can be edited)

The Web3 UX Unconf was put together by Derek Chiang @derek of Thunder Token and Dan Tsui of Kyokan. The brief / working document was shared by them ahead of time and they reached out / recruited people ahead of time with a web form and direct intros. Many people heard about the event last minute while in Toronto and ended up attending. Please use this to collect links, notes, and other facts of interest.
Have a lot of personal things to say? Write a forum post here or external article, and add the link to the Follow Up Posts section at the end.

Abstract
from the brief
Web3 is facing major UX challenges.  To list a few:

DApps are slow and expensive.
Users are getting hacked, phished, and confused.
Wallets and dapp browsers are struggling to support all the new sidechains, plasma, and state channels.
Developers are overwhelmed by support requests.

Let’s sit down and fix this.  We invite developers and designers of wallets, dapp browsers, and blockchains to join us.  The unconf consists of presentations and unstructured discussions.
We hope that by having everyone in the same room, we will be able to have productive conversations and work on important issues together as a community, both during the unconf and afterwards.
Sponsors
Derek & Dan and the sponsors should be thanked profusule. They rented the venue, provided catering for all meals, and had projectors and live streaming set up.
Stable Fund by L4 Ventures

https://stable.fund/
Kyokan

https://kyokan.io/
Thunder Token

https://www.thundertoken.com/
Attendees
Cut / paste from the original Google Doc. Feel free to add links to your company or project, any other additional links and please do add yourself – and please include your local forum handle if you have an account!

Panashe Mahachi (L4)
Dan Finlay (MetaMask) @ danfinlay
Dan Tsui (Kyokan)
Tom Creighton (Reactive Arts)
Richard Burton (balance.io) @ ricburton
Sid Coelho-Prabhu (Toshi / Coinbase) @ sid-toshi
Stefan George (Gnosis)
Martin Holst Swende (Ethereum Foundation) @ holiman (remote participant)
C. Jordan Muir (Frame) @jordan (remote participant)
Daniel Ternyak (MyCrypto)
Viktor Radchenko (Trust Wallet)
Fredrik Harrysson (Parity)
Philip Lucsok (Parity)
Andy Tudhope (status.im) @ andytudhope
Jeremy Welch (Casa)
Robin Clart (OmiseGO)
Thibault Denizet (OmiseGO)
Derek Chiang (Thunder Token) @ derek
Alex Van de Sande (Ethereum Foundation) @ alexvandesande
Luis Cuende (Aragon)
Alex Komarov (Minimum Inc.)
William Dias (modular.network)
Ligi (Ethereum Foundation) @ ligi
Mia Alexander (MyCrypto)
Peter Jihoon Kim (Cipher)
Will O’Beirne (MyCrypto)
Maciej Hirsz (Parity)
Don Ho (Quantstamp)
Danny Skubak (MyCrypto)
Anna Rose (Zero Knowledge Podcast)
Lane Rettig (CryptoNYC) @lrettig
Zac Morris (vault.io)
Michael Sena (uPort) @ michaelsena
Cassandra Shi (Ethereum Community Fund)
Beltran Berrocal (independent + ENS) @lyricalpolymath
John Egan (vault.io)
Daniel Bar (Tenzorum)
Jonny Howle (uPort) @ jonnyhowle
Yiseul Cho (Perceptra)
Thomas Jay Rush (Quickblocks) @ tjayrush
Ed Mazurek (Quickblocks) @wildmolasses
Niraj Pant (Polychain Capital)
Philippe Castonguay (independent) @ PhABC
Kelvin Fichter (OmiseGO)
Kasima Tharnpipitchai (OmiseGO)
Jack Huang (MyEtherWallet)
Rouven Heck (uPort) @rouven
Boris Mann (Frontier Foundry) @boris
Bryant Eisenbach (DappDevs, SecurEth) @fubuloubu
add yourself!

Agenda
cut / paste from brief, so won’t be quite in sync with what actually happened. Edit away! Also please add links to your presentation or other links of interest, and ideally we can link in live stream video captures too
9:00 - Venue opens
9:20 - Opening remark
9:30 - Tom Creighton – UX lessons from successful startups
10:00 - Dan Finlay – MetaMask’s new UI
10:30 - Daniel Ternyak – Tools and strategies MyCrypto has developed while revamping the wallet interface
11:00 - Richard Burton – WalletConnect: connect to web-based dapps from the phone
11:30 - Lunch
12:30 - Alex Van de Sande – Universal logins for Ethereum
13:00 - Philippe Castonguay + Panashe Mahachi – Smart Accounts
13:30 - Viktor Radchenko – What I learned from building Trust
14:00 - Sid Coelho-Prabhu – Toshi
14:30 - Andy Tudhope – Thoughts about UX at Status and what we have been up to
15:00 - Beltran Berrocal – Web3 Design Principles
15:30 - Lane Rettig – Towards an open data marketplace
16:00 - Martin Holst Swende – The new Ethereum signer
16:30 - Maciej Hirsz – Parity Signer
17:00 - C. Jordan Muir – Frame, a cross-platform Ethereum provider
17:30 - Dinner
18:30 - Michael Sena – Privacy Preserving User Identity Systems for Ethereum dApps
19:00 - Jeremy Welch – Casa/Multisig/Multilocation
19:30 - Luis – Radspec: a safe alternative to Ethereum’s natspec to make transactions human-readable
A dozen or so of us went along to @ricburton’s Balance meetup at the Queen & Beaver Pub afterwards.
Social Media Bites
Discourse will automatically expand individual tweets if there are ones you want to highlight – just paste in the link on its own line
Thread Reader App version of Boris’ live tweets from the event by @boris
Tweet feeds:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/web3uxunconf?f=tweets&vertical=default
https://twitter.com/hashtag/uxunconf?f=tweets&vertical=default
https://twitter.com/hashtag/walletconf?f=tweets&vertical=default
https://twitter.com/licuende/status/993510293102825472
Lyricalpolymath: “ethereum is entering it’s design era”
referencing Chris Remus’s twitter poll 
17590×427 41.5 KB
Follow Up Posts
Have a blog / forum post or other long-form reflection on the event? Add the link here

awesome post recapping the event goes here

Author: derek
Date: 2018-05-08T20:35:57.129Z

There are also:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/uxunconf
https://twitter.com/hashtag/walletconf
(note to future self: mandate a hashtag)

Author: boris
Date: 2018-05-08T21:35:33.913Z

Here’s an “unrolled” version of my tweetstorm that is a little more readable:



threadreaderapp.com



Thread by @bmann: "Getting started with -- UX discussions around wallets and...
Thread by @bmann: "Getting started with -- UX discussions around wallets and crypto broadly. First up, @tomcreighton kicking off. Where does crypto? "What is the UX of TCP/IP?" My question: how do you think about d […]" #walletconf #erc780 #erc1056...





Hey @jpitts can you please make your first post a Discourse “wiki post”? Then we can have one main doc that everyone can edit and add links to.
I started drafting one, but realized I didn’t have a trust level that would let me turn it into a wiki page.
@derek yes! One of the things I’m writing up in my “how to organize a working group” meeting. Thanks so much for organizing and kicking off this first one.

Author: jpitts
Date: 2018-05-08T22:00:41.589Z

Great idea, I just wiki-ized the initial post.

Author: jpitts
Date: 2018-05-08T22:01:14.451Z

@derek, I added these to the initial post.

Author: boris
Date: 2018-05-08T23:39:45.341Z

Perfect – I pasted in the brief and attendees and agenda and such and did some light editing.
I wasn’t able to link everyone’s forum names here because it said I could only mention 10 people in a post. I added spaces to a couple just so I could save. Don’t know if you have mod powers that can fix that.
And on further thought, twitter handles probably useful as well. Please add yours!
Now on to writing up a “How to run a working group”

Author: danfinlay
Date: 2018-05-08T23:50:01.723Z

Amazing event.
My biggest takeaway:
Transactions are just actions are just signatures.
We need to make it easy to iterate on new signature types (each new network is a new key/signature type).
Once we have agreed on protocols for rendering signature types, we can also iterate on how comprehensible we can get them, with tools like radspec etc.

Author: ricburton
Date: 2018-05-09T18:53:59.895Z

Transactions and Interaction are how we separate them.
Can we get the videos of the talks?

Author: derek
Date: 2018-05-09T20:06:58.595Z

Someone from Kyokan is helping us upload them to YouTube.  I will post here once it’s done.

Author: sdtsui
Date: 2018-05-10T00:53:42.266Z

Typing out some of my learnings + thoughts:


So many things around the topic of ‘Transactions/Interactions/Actions/Signatures’ that will be relevant to Kyokan’s clients and I’ve yet to have time to watch the talks. 


Personally: Beltran’s talk, Finlay’s talk, Burton’s talk, the EF presenters, and radspec stood out to me, in case anyone is looking for highlights.  Was also nice to learn more about Casa (their demo was sweet, not sure if anyone else tried).
Also, Ric’s comments on funding dynamics for early stage projects will influence how we roadmap/structure our own projects as well. Thanks for that.


As this was a bit of an experiement, we’d love feedback on how it was run, attendees, how content was curated, etc.

If it’s better for that to be private, please send DMs to Derek or myself.  As for me, I feel like there are two directions we could take it. One: open it up as a larger event to be inclusive of everyone who wanted to attend.
We just didn’t have space this time around.
Two: contain it to a maximum of 30. Say, 12 teams with demonstrable progress + active work in the space, each bringing a maximum of two people: that could help us focus the discussions.


Ending earlier in the day and coordinating an official post-event meetup would have been cool – would have loved the opportunity to hang out more with @ricburton but we had to clean up and catch a flight.  Shorter talks, making more time for discussion might have been better.



If anyone is interested in helping facilitate future events, our ability to do more on this front is limited (Dan running Kyokan full-time, Derek as well for Thunder as it hires/grows/pushing things to prod).

Vision would be a coordinator who helps secure funding and plan the events (including post-event tasks like posting the videos).  With the funding, we could find 1-2 volunteers from the community to help run the event, these could even come from the participating teams.  Optimizing for ‘easier to have productive conversations’ about these topics.