There has to be more options available than just the blockchain for a decentralized web.
As a designer I feel like we are short-changing ourselves if we haven’t kicked over more stones, and brought more options to the table.
In mainstream conversations, Web3 is synonymous with blockchain technology. If you are new to the conversation, that may feel like a brick wall. And it kind of is because it is so much hype and it all remains inaccessible and kind of useless so far.
The story to tell is really about the chewy center of the Web3 Tootsie Roll Pop - Decentralization. It is safe to assume most people who spend any amount of time online have heard this term. At the very least, you’ve seen it in a headline on your favorite news site. The recent garbage fire that is Elon’s takeover of Twitter has sent folks looking for another “town square” alternative, which has led many to decentralized social platforms like Mastodon, Minds, and Pixelfed.
I would wager many users are not aware of how the “decentralized” part of these sites work. But they will encounter the difference in subtle ways. More clicks to sign up. A couple more choices to make. Oddly long username handles. We’ve been conditioned into convenience, simplicity, and not needing to know how the sausage is made. We’ve been given services for free in exchange for our private data. UX has played a major role in how users expect the web to behave.
Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the web, doesn’t see the blockchain as the solution to a free and open web as he originally envisioned it to be. He’s working on his own solution, so good on him for proposing options. In this short talk he posted on the 30th anniversary of the web, he points out an open and accessible web is everyone’s responsibility, and not any one person’s fault for the way it has ended up.
if we continue to click consent without demanding our data rights be respected, we walk away from our responsibility to put these issues on the priority agenda of our governments.
Since user experience designers have been the ones tasked with helping people understand and adopt new platforms and technologies, I wonder about the following:
Can we hide how the sausage is made, in order to provide a seamless experience for the next phase of the web? Should we? Or, is that approach a vestige of web 2.0 and freemium services that sold our data and breached our trust? Most professional UX designers came up during the last decade, and we learned by watching big tech delight us on the one hand while teaching Amazon and Instagram how to fire dopamine straight into our cerebral cortexes.
Should the UX tradeoffs of decentralization involve a few more hoops to jump through in favor of user control, privacy, and less monopoly?
It’s an interesting challenge, and I’m curious what you think. Leave a comment or ask a question and let’s talk about it.