A rant about terrible personas
And web3 personas in 2023.
Personas aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
But in the spirit of starting with the conclusion, here are some lightweight proto-personas for web3 users:
The Expert
- Background: Early adopter of cryptocurrencies.
- Characteristics: Knowledgeable about DeFi concepts and comfortable with managing digital assets. Owns a significant amount of crypto in both absolute terms and relative to their overall net worth.
- Motivations: Excited by the idea of financial sovereignty. Actively seeks high-yield opportunities through yield farming and liquidity provision. Balances that urge with continual risk assessment. Enjoys exploring promising projects but values security over trying every new thing.
The TradFi convert
- Background: A traditional finance enthusiast looking to diversify investments.
- Characteristics: Experience in traditional financial markets. Seeking to understand DeFi as an alternative.
- Motivations: Interested in ways to generate passive income. Owns a lot of crypto but barely does anything with it. Nervous about DeFi. The sort of person who bought Microsoft stock in the 90s but was too scared to go online shopping.
The NFT enjoooyer
- Background: Collector at heart, often artistic and creative themselves.
- Characteristics: Spends all day in Discord. Individualist who nevertheless values community.
- Motivations: Highly subjective. May flip some NFTs for profits, and hold others for their aesthetic value. Surprisingly, the NFT crowd is quite separate from the DeFi crowd. There is overlap, but you will often find people who express a preference for one domain over the other.
The Grinder
- Background: Less capital available, but loves the opportunities DeFi presents.
- Characteristics: A “very online person”. Prefers smartphone over desktop. Constantly seeking.
- Motivations: FOMO. Little regard for risk. Will farm airdrops, hassle communities for “gems”, and buy memecoins if they think there’s a chance of a 100x. Strongly prefers cheaper chains over Ethereum due to transaction costs.
These are some very broad strokes, but will hopefully ring true to anyone who has spent time in a crypto telegram group.
I think these are fairly accurate descriptions of the major segments we see in 2023 and are, at the very least, a starting point for further research.
Proto-personas are based on assumptions to validate.
Accurate personas are created from new research on specific users.
Now that’s out the way, here’s the rant…
The problem with web3 personas
- Web3 is now so big, we’re really talking about multiple industries
- Anonymity is valued highly
- Web3 is an international, decentralised, phenomena, so any questions/assumptions/data about demographics are hard to parse
- Personas are often bullshit
- You need a lot of data to do them properly
Web3 is so big, we’re really talking about multiple industries
If you’re going to make personas, they need to be specific to whatever your dApp does. A user of complex financial tools will be different from a user who just provides liquidity.
Anonymity is valued highly
A lot of users will simply not answer certain questions.
Web3 is decentralised, demographics are complex, this is a challenging area etc
Most teams are internationally diverse. I’ve worked with some people for years who are still anons to me; I don’t know their real name, their pronouns, and have never seen their face. People are amusingly stubborn about this — Scoopy Trooples was asked in an interview about the pseudonym and their response was “Well, this is my real face. I am a 2D character. Let’s make that clear.” Web3 lawyer Wassielawyer insists that any article quoting him must refer to him as “a hentai anime penguin”. Anon culture is reflected among users as well. It’s hard to infer much of anything from someone’s name or avatar. So if the whole point is that nobody knows who you are, or where you are, or what you are, why should we care? On the other hand, demographics can be important and you could come up with a dozen reasons why we should care. But…
Personas are often bullshit anyway
While they can be useful tools for building empathy and aligning teams, they often devolve into little more than creative writing exercises. They end up being way too specific, and filled with cringey details.
You know the type…
Meet Savvy Sally, the Discount Diva! Sally can sniff out a sale from miles away. Armed with her smartphone, she has mastered the art of coupon clipping, price comparisons, and timing her shopping sprees to perfection. Loyalty cards are her secret weapons. Savvy Sally is a master at accumulating reward points and cashing them in for exclusive perks and freebies! She is 32 years old, drinks a frappuccino at 10am each morning, and watches 2hrs and 20 minutes of Netflix at 8pm each evening. Here are her favourite shows and here are some quotes we’ve put in her mouth! Also, her eyes are blue.
Most of the time, these aren’t really based on anything except the imagination of the writer.
You need a lot of data to do them properly
A better way is to generate very large datasets, then run factor analysis to find hidden clusters. From there, you can use assorted statistical techniques to tease out more patterns. Unfortunately, this requires knowledge of data science.
A better way forward
Web3 personas are most useful when they:
- Are specific to each app, and target user types
- Focus on behaviour and not demographics (which is good UX in general).
Conducting a real factor analysis would require a comprehensive survey with a wide range of users. However, based on the characteristics observed anecdotally, we can hypothesize some potential main factors that might emerge from such an analysis.
This is hypothetical, but even so, you could use these pointers to generate much more useful insights than the personas described at the top.
Technical Proficiency
- The level of technical knowledge and familiarity with blockchain technology.
- Axis: Novice to Expert.
Risk Appetite
- Willingness to take on risks.
- Axis: Cautious to Adventurous.
Financial Goals
- The financial objectives driving users’ engagement with DeFi.
- Axis: Income Generation to Capital Appreciation.
Financial Background
- Prior experience of traditional financial systems.
- Axis: Traditional Finance Background to No Prior Finance Experience.
Community Participation
- Involvement in DeFi communities and governance.
- Axis: Passive Observer to Active Community Participant.
Security Concerns
- Attitudes towards security.
- Axis: Security-Conscious to Less Concerned about Security.
Another useful scale would be simply “how much money do you have?” Hard to find out, but I suspect disposable capital might overpower almost any other factor in explaining behaviour.
It’s really boring, but you could just divide users into quadrants of High net worth -> Low net worth, and Expert -> Novice. That might be all you need.
Maybe instead of personas, we should just plot our users along various axes?
Once you’ve done that, you could even plot two together and look at the relationships between characteristics.
Again, totally hypothetical, but you might notice e.g.: a positive correlation between community participation and how adventurous they are.
This is a much better approach than writing personas based on a few quotes and gut feeling. Once you have enough data to uncover some correlations, than you’re well on your way to some genuine insights about your users. At this point, you could feasibly make some high-quality personas. But lets not put the cart before the horse. Proto-personas are tools for getting the ball rolling, but don’t forget that’s all they are. A stock photo and a quote isn’t the goal.
Unless we’re talking about specific segments, and/or we have much better data, I feel uncomfortable talking about who the “typical web3 user” is.
I’ve been working in crypto since 2017 and this is a big change in my thinking.
Sometimes, the more you know, the less you know.
About Me
I am a product designer and UX consultant specialising in web3.
I created The Web3 UX Handbook — a free guide full of the most practical, useful advice you can find about designing for Web3!
If you’re after some more insights, you might want to check my competitive analysis on DEXes, my case study for a project I did with Element Finance, or my series on DeFi Design Tips.
https://web3ux.design/
https://twitter.com/JonCrabb
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-crabb/
