The Interledger Community 🌱: Karissa McKelvey

Decentralization Off The Shelf — Grant Report #2

Karissa McKelvey — Wed, 19 May 2021 16:25:26 +0000

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Project Update

Overall, our research revealed that web monetization is still in an early innovation phase with significant barriers to adoption ahead. Although the ultimate goal of the process is for the end user is to pay the creator, and for the creator to get paid, we found numerous hurdles to accomplishing this goal for either group. These include the unknowns of the user journey, the in-depth identification requirements and variance of centralized financial services, and the incorporation of new mental models.

Progress on objectives

Our research into the current barriers to adoption for the Web Monetization API revealed multiple opportunities to help expand adoption and mitigate end-user issues. If incorporated, the recommendations offered below would help reduce user confusion, increase transparency, and improve overall retention rates. The recommendations are organized by target user groups.

Streaming platforms such as Coil should:

Enhance subscription transparency. Provide real-time feedback in the streaming platform website (for creators) and in the web extension (for audience members).
Provide better wallet support. Support a more diverse set of options and reduce dependency on a particular type of financial wallet platform.
Add creator-friendly documentation. Provide step-by-step instructions, including screenshots, on how to start making money quickly with existing platforms (such as Patreon, YouTube, or Twitch).
Include a web extension walkthrough. Such a walkthrough could be displayed immediately after installation to help explain why and how the web extension is needed.
Automate the sign-up process. Implement a self-serve user interface with the ability for users to automatically enable OAuth and receive a developer key as part of a user interface.

Creators who want to use Web Monetization should:

Add a payment pointer to their website. After signing up, creators are provided with a payment pointer -- sometimes called a “Wallet URL” -- which is a series of numbers and letters unique to the creator. The creator should add this to the HTML of their website to start using Web Monetization.
Provide an ad-free option. Offer users a button that provides the option to “Remove advertisements” as either a banner ad or a blocking pop-up.
Inform their audience. Explain how to install the appropriate web extension or browser that supports web monetization by using a step-by-step process and links.

Maintainers of the Web Monetization API and Interledger Protocol should:

Remember developers are users. Mobile and desktop applications that support payee-payer relationships on their platforms could be potential early adoption partners if they are targeted and curated through better communication and transparency.
Design for built-in tipping. Enable tipping directly in the web browser itself by presenting a button that would allow for a tip to be sent directly to the creator of the content currently on the page.
Test recommended services. Creating a process for monitoring the quality for any of the services linked to on the main Web Monetization webpage.

Key activities

We published a report, 4 design patterns, and an explanatory zine for the web monetization community. It is all compiled here on https://decentpatterns.xyz/projects/web-monetization/

We also published 26 design patterns for decentralized applications thanks to the support of this grant, which you can browse here: https://decentpatterns.xyz/library

Communications and marketing

We are publishing a blog post on the Simply Secure blog as well as writing an op-ed about this work forthcoming in a 3rd-party publication.

What’s next?

This is the final piece of our grant with Grant for the Web, but the Decentralization off the shelf project continues to produce design patterns for this space.

What community support would benefit your project?

If you are interested in future work and community calls, please sign up on our newsletter (https://tinyletter.com/decentpatterns) or follow our twitter account (https://twitter.com/dcentraldesign)

Contribute to any of the patterns! Each pattern has an 'Edit this pattern' button which directs you to the corresponding GitHub page.

Decentralization Off The Shelf — Grant Report #1

Karissa McKelvey — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 20:46:15 +0000

Project Update

We are currently producing a library of resources, assets, and patterns to support the design and development of better user-facing applications that are backed by decentralized technologies. We have done research and testing on use cases and user stories for Web Monetization, as well as interviewed 8 expert design researchers. We are on track to ship the first version of the pattern library in March, as well as an additional set of 5 patterns in April.

Progress on objectives

Research: We came into this project with little understanding about Web Monetization and the Interledger Protocol. Although this somewhat outsider's perspective has helped us see new user pain points with new insight, we needed to first understand the ecosystem at a deeper level. Our research strategy was to first map the ecosystem of stakeholders around web monetization, and then pinpoint key organizations that have significant influence in the space. We then chose to interview designers and researchers from these organizations, in order to facilitate a "research of all researchers" point of view. This allowed us to more quickly get up to speed by leveraging the already deep-seated knowledge of these experts, who had already done significant on-the-ground research themselves with users and developers.

Over the course of three months, from November to February 2021 we had the following research objectives:

To understand what's technically possible now & near future in decentralized identity systems
To find other projects and people that we should be talking to
To learn more about design patterns that already exist in the space
To understand security, privacy threats, risks
To build trust with the interviewees

We interviewed 10 web monetization experts and ran a small workshop (less than 10 people) with designers and product managers of decentralized technologies that include a web monetization component. This workshop focused on onboarding and identity, and helped us refine a few design patterns we had been investigating as part of our earlier research.

Patterns Website: We are working closely with our web developer to create the new pattern library website, which will launch in March for Mozfest, where we will present on the project. This involved three paper prototype iterations with our design researcher. We are now working on patterns that directly came from the earlier research phases and are related to success of websites, applications, and browsers that incorporate Web Monetization or the Inteledger Protocol.

We also have put together a glossary that defines some common words that are used to mean the same thing in different applications (e.g., seed phrase and passphrase). Through juxtaposition, we will illustrate the choices available to designers when crafting their prototypes, as well as the benefits to converging on a single concept.

Key activities

Research findings summary. In March, we will release our research findings in written format.

Website with at least 10 design patterns related to the following topics. The website is about to be released and the contents with design patterns can be found on the DOTS GitHub repository.

Secret sharing (for account recovery)
Profile details (for web monetization relationships)
Networks of Networks (for bootstrapping trust in web monetization)
QR Code Verification (for multi-device)
Cautious Optimism (for web monetization relationships)

3 case studies. We will be releasing the case studies on our website in the next month or two.

Communications and marketing

We gave two talks at the Internet Archive's monthly Decentralized Web meetup, where we discussed our progress to date on our pattern library research & development.
We are about to release a public-facing research summary in mid-March*,* which we will promote on our high-engagement design community of over 700 designers at Simply Secure as well as on social media.
We also will be facilitating two workshops for Mozfest in the Decentralization Space, where our pattern library will be a reference point and showcased to over 50 participants.
When we launch the case studies and explanatory materials, we will do a virtual community meetup to unveil and demo the project, as well as connect users with each other in a discussion format.

What’s next?

We are on track to ship the first version of the pattern library in March, as well as an additional set of 5 patterns in April.

We also are running two workshops at Mozfest focused on onboarding and cross-functional communication, which was a main pain point we found in our research for Web Monetization. In Explain Decentralization to Me, participants will engage in a self-discovery process of their communication about decentralization technologies, with the goal of improving our overall approach across the ecosystem. In Designer meets Developer, participants will be matched with each other to discuss a problem or paint point they're encountering in their current project. Participants will leave with newfound insights on their problems — and we will get to understand any larger ecosystem patterns that emerge from the conversations.

We had initially planned to include a JavaScript library that would accompany the pattern library, so that teams could easily integrate these designs into their applications. During our research phase, we found that Web Monetization is so new that project teams don't have the proper mental models for how it works and how it can benefit their end-users. Thus, we decided to replace our deliverable for a JavaScript library with explanatory resources about new mental models for web monetization and decentralized identity. We believe this will be a crucial step in onboarding designers, developers, and product managers to understand how this technology works, how it could be integrated, and how it impacts their users.

What community support would benefit your project?

User testing! Since our users are product managers, developers, and designers who want to use decentralized technologies, it would be crucial to meet more of you! Please reach out to us at team@decentpatterns.xyz if you are interested in a short discussion and user test to see how we can improve our pattern library.

We'd also love to speak to designers who are new to decentralization — perhaps this project for Grant for the Web is their first interaction with these new ideas. We'd love to show you our explanatory resources and get your feedback to improve them for the broader design community.