In the past few years, blockchain has grown from a novel idea to perhaps one of the century's most influential technologies. It promises to disrupt countless industries but is still on the edge of people's consciousness. This lack of awareness is a major obstacle that blockchain faces for mainstream adoption. A lack of media awareness makes blockchain seem more like a fad than a technological revolution.
BLOCKTV — a media organization built around the blockchain for the benefit of blockchain. BLOCKTV provides a framework that tangibly rewards consumers and forges a dedicated news channel that follows the evolving world of blockchain every step of the way. This channel provides a reputable, professional and meaningful source of information, commentary, and analysis for the next Internet iteration.
Project Summary
Successfully launched a cryptocurrency-focused media website with an 11 million viewership base and 35 million views of its 1,200 hours of original content and developed a mobile application available on the App Store and Google Play.
While there is significant hype and noise in the ecosystem, it is impossible for the average layperson to become knowledgeable enough to invest in it. Several factors are responsible for this:
Lack of Blockchain Awareness. There is no easily accessible area for blockchain-related updates, and no news organization is dedicated to providing the public with digestible content designed for the mainstream audience.
Lack of Consumer Loyalty. There are a lot of media companies, but no one has a specific fan base. It leads that the blockchain community sees a bunch of articles from various outlets without any single source of truth.
Incomplete Engagement Tracking. It is exceptionally difficult to determine the explicit impact of advertisements on traditional television and cable formats as well as some online formats. This is causing issues related to transparency and analytics in diverse media organization channels, including television.
Normalizing blockchain via media makes it possible to revolutionize the entire industry. Doing so not only spreads awareness, it creates the engaged audience that is needed, and can be rewarded for its attention.
Create a 24/7 news channel that is available on broadcast television and online streaming, which leads to increased awareness of the blockchain. It also builds the infrastructure framework for further advancements in decentralized engagement.
No Media organization dedicated to normalizing the blockchain revolution for the currently exists mainstream audience.
I started my research from identifing and analysing competitors. To find out their business strategies and to define their strengths and weaknesses.
To empathize, I interviewed users aged 24 to 61 to better understand their behaviors, frustrations, and core goals.
An example of the questions that were asked:
1. Which news platform about cryptos and blockchain you use and why you like it?
2. What problems do you face? Is it something that annoys you?
3. What feature do you like most?
4. What features would you like to add?
5. When do you usually access the news?
6. How many times a day do you check the news?
7. What formats do they prefer?
8. What do you usually use for reading/watching the news?
Creating user persona helps better understand user needs & experience. Based on the research I created two main type of persona.
As a crypto trader, I want to keep up to date with the latest news and technology from the world of blockchain and the cryptocurrency industry, so that I improve my financial literacy and plan my day's trade, and invest my money wisely.
HMW inform user with hot, relevant, and trending news?
HMW ensure that users get only notifications that they need?
HMW makes sure that the user is not overwhelmed by ads?
HMW inform users about reading and viewing times while using the platform?
HMW optimize users news feed to increase engagement and time spending on the platform?
HMW ensure that users have access to all the features of using the platform?
For better understanding of what customers want to do I choose job stories instead of user stories. The problem with user stories is that it’s too many assumptions and doesn’t acknowledge causality.
By focusing on the triggering situation, motivations of customers and the intended outcome, we frame every design problem in a Job.
After many rounds of testing and design work, we launched our website platform at the end of Q4 2018. During the following months, thanks to many media campaigns, the traffic to our website grew daily. We have received positive feedback and are working on improving the platform's features.
In the first stage, we support only articles and video content. We launched live TV broadcasts and the podcast feature at the next stage.
A continuously updating, 24/7 livenews channel that is watchable on all media viewing outlets (Broadcast, Online, Streaming).
Top tech, blockchain, & gaming news streamed on Roku, Amazon Fire, AppleTV & many more through the partnership with BINGE Networks.
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A price-tracking market website to easily view the prices and charts of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and more.
With a world-class team of journalists and producers and a state-of-the-art studio, BLOCKTV’s daily news show is the only TV program dedicated entirely to the blockchain and cryptocurrency community.
The latest news, features, and analysis from across the blockchain world in a straightforward, spin-free package that viewers can trust.
During this project I have grown a lot as a UX Designer. I felt a lot of responsibility working on a project as big as this one and I felt like everyone was relying on me as a solo designer all along, and my ideas, assumptions and concerns were the focus of discussion. Collaboration with my teammates was accompanied by a lot of energy, brainstorming and communication. The business side had big plans, ranging from launching a web platform to launching their own tokens. This project gave me a huge number of useful case studies and lessons on how to create a product that focuses on user needs combined with business goals in a very competitive news market.
Challenges
Conducting user interviews was a bit difficult for me due to my poor knowledge of the blockchain and cryptocurrency niche. Before starting my process, I spent a lot of time to find out what blockchain is and how it works in the context of government regulation and how many people are involved in this industry. The main thing on my part was to find out if there is a real need here or not - to find the real problem of the user.
What would I do differently today?
I would like to do user testing and more user interview before and after launch. Due to lack of time and budget, we did not have the opportunity to do this. I would also like to be more involved in post launch process and have more awareness of user feedback and data analytics, so that I have more of my own assumptions and opportunities to improve the project.
