[Design Better Steemit Contest] Design-thinking approach to improve our user experience on Steemit - Introduction > Resteem to Spread The Word
Calling all the users (need your votes in the contest as well as feedback), designers and anyone using Steemit with ideas.
How successful anything is depends on the User Experience (UX) - how the user feels using the platform, how easy it is for him to get what he wants from it (features), how enjoyable it is to be on the platform and how is the whole process and flow of getting from one point to another.
Steemit is no an exception. Though good and proper User-Experience takes a long time to design and develop and often it is something technical teams don't think about at all.
Though it can be argued that using design-thinking first is the best approach to creating something life-changing and something that will have a lifetime impact.
Image Source(direct link to img)
User is a centerpiece of a good UX and the whole design is made thinking about solving the problems of the user. Someone with good human-centered design knowledge and some rapid prototyping can manage to create a good user experience by iterating and testing their hypothesis with the users.
Though if at the end User is the centerpiece and is the one that will be impacted why shouldn't he be the one in the driver's seat from the complete get-go of the design -from idea generation, prototyping, testing, etc.? So why not do something like this more decentralized and let Users decide what they want to improve and change and let them take part in the whole process.
Therefore I want to utilize the Users of Steemit as they know the best how they feel about the current UX, what can be improved and changed, or what is missing.
This would help Steemit even more and in turn help everyone on here.
What are the benefits of this?
- decentralized, giving the ability for the community to drive change and vote for what they want
- Better experience of using the platform for all of us
- Improving Steemit from the bottom-up and giving power to the users of deciding their UX
- Better the UX better the conversion of new users into regulars as well as attracting new users
- The easier it is to use the platform the more active the community will become (Look at all the great Social apps)
- People will recommend Steemit more as it would be easy to use and understand
So I hope you can see the benefits.
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How will it work?
- There will be a selection post deciding on the (wide-spread) Theme of the contest for that round voted and decided by users (I will provide some suggestions, too)
- The Theme will be announced and there will be time to submit entries
with design-thinking solution for that Theme (more on this in later posts). - People then submit their Submissions with thought process behind certain Feature or UX design, create a simple prototype, and then let people vote for the best "solution" to the problem (More on that later).
- Then the Submissions would be collected and voting for the winner will begin.
- The winner will receive the price and then the feature will be submitted for development with the payout from the post funding the development as well as further design.
The theme will be very generic to offer freedom for creativity. So it won't be too specific as "Improve the experience of voting on comments".
Some ideas of the topic could be "Improving Onboarding", "Improving finding relevant content", "Improving long-term quality of blogposts by supporting great content that's valuable for lifetime", etc.
I have more but I will reveal them in the dedicated post and obviously users should submit their ideas, too so they can be voted on.
Why do I want to create this?
The obvious one would be that I want to make Steemit better and more user-friendly and therefore make it more appealing for other people. I would also like to drive in more designers to the community and provide them incentive to help.
There are some selfish reasons, too :). I want to love Steemit even more and make it more convenient to use for me.
I also want to quit my job and change careers completely and User Experience Design is on my mind as I have experience with that too when trying to create something so this could also offer me a chance to practice.
And I want to see how it could work if the actual Users do the design.
So please, share this, resteem it and let me know for any ideas for this challenge as this is also a work-in-progress and a prototype and without you I will not be able to improve it.
Plus, we need you to vote on what you want and give feedback, etc.
Thank you
If you want to know how I modify my Images with a quick copy-paste, check out my post about a tool I created
About the Author;
Hi, I am Joe and I love freedom.
Freedom of all sorts, social, financial, emotional, physical, freedom from your stuff or place.
My biggest passion is to show that it is possible to live life being free, work towards my freedom, and help others obtain their own versions of freedom.
I also love exploration and experimentation (of all senses).
My articles are about all of this (Freedom, exploration, experimentation)
as well as my own transparent and authentic experiences.
I can see you are terrified. Please talk to me. What scared you? :P
Is surprised by the information :b
Let me know what and I can clarify or provide more information like that :D. (I like surprising people ;) )
This sounds great! I'd love to be involved.
Awesome to hear that :). I will be posting a bit more within next few days :). Stay tuned.
Check out the Theme Post where you can win 5 SBD for almost nothing :).
Hey Joe, although late to the Steemit party, I've been browsing posts related to user experiences and found this post. I know this was posted a year ago, but did these design contents get off the ground? I'd be interested in contributing knowing that I'm wanting to flex my UX muscles. Thanks!