Yoz Labs is a Web3 notification platform start-up that is working on building a scalable messaging rail to enable developers to send instant notifications directly to their users. Their team came to Catalog seeking to build out their app from scratch across desktop and mobile.
Client
Yoz Labs
Industry
Web3
Role
Product Designer
Tool
Figma
Scope of Work
Mobile
Desktop
UI/UX
Prototyping
Wireframing
THE PROBLEM
Users needed to follow companies, individuals, or projects on various places such as social media platforms, apps, news outlets, and individual websites. This forced users to seek out more information on their own, which is time-consuming and difficult to keep up for a long time. Without consistent interest, web3 entities struggled to get their projects noticed and keep users engaged over the course of their growth.
THE CHALLENGE
Having discussed the risks and opportunities with Yoz Labs, I identified these challenges:
1.
Web3 is still a new area that is split among different apps and software. Consolidation can be complicated and difficult.
2.
Keeping notifications up-to-date and easy to find can be challenging when things move quickly.
3.
User privacy is foundational to web3 and needs to be built into all aspects of the design.
BUSINESS GOALS
The world of Web3 is being built quickly. For Yoz Labs, they knew that they needed to get to market as fast as possible to compete in this relatively new space. As you will see below, there was already competitors in this space but Yoz Labs knew they could provide a better platform that emphasized community and social engagement.
RESEARCH
RESEARCH
🎯️
Sarah Miller, 31 Female
Location: San Francisco, CA
Occupation: Software Developer
Family Status: Married
Bio: Sarah is a developer at a large corporate who is passionate about creating innovative solutions. Her workplace wants to incorporate more web3 solutions and she is looking for tools that can help her fix these new problems in her code. She tries her best to stay informed about web3 trends but does not spend all of her free time keeping up to date.
Goals: Sarah wants to stay easily informed about new developments in the AI and blockchain projects. She wants to increase productivity in her work and use the latest and greatest in web3 coding trends. She hopes to start getting involved with her own web3 personal project soon.
Motivations: Confidence, efficiency, career advancement
Devices: Laptop, smartphone, tablet
Pains: Lack of centralized location to hear about web3 coding advancements, limited time to keep up on web3 trends.
Trigger: After being asked about incorporating blockchain and AI features in a meeting at work, Sarah realized she is does not feel prepared to speak to those features and did not feel she had enough know-how about what is happening in that space.
Barriers
Brand Affiliations: DigitalOcean, GitHub, Slack
✅
Ethan Park, 25 Male
Location: New York City, NY
Occupation: Data Analyst
Family Status: Single
Bio: Ethan is a data analyst in his mid 20s who works on coding various blockchain projects in his spare time. He is enthusiastic about web3 technologies and loves to dabble in buying cryptocurrency. However, he struggles with keeping up to date in all these trends. He does not have a reliable way of getting notifications related to changes and developments in projects he’s involved in or interested in.
Goals: Ethan wants a reliable, centralized notification system that keeps him updated on project changes and industry updates, allowing him to focus more on coding and less on information management.
Motivations: Time-saving, productivity, innovation
Devices: Laptop, smartphone, tablet
Pains: Ethan has difficulty managing notifications across multiple platforms, which leads to missed updates and slower project progress. He wants a streamlined way to gather all pertinent notifications from various web3 projects without getting bogged down by irrelevant information.
• Increased workload due to missing critical updates
• Frustration from sifting through irrelevant notifications
• Fear of falling behind in a rapidly evolving tech space
Trigger: After missing an important update that caused a project delay, Ethan realized he needed a better way to stay on top of notifications and decided to actively seek a solution.
Barriers: • Concerns over the integration capabilities with his existing tools
• Doubt about the effectiveness compared to current methods
• Worry about the learning curve associated with a new platform
Brand Affiliations: DigitalOcean, GitHub, Slack
RESEARCH
Sarah's user journey reflects her career development needs and the desire for quick and effective solutions. She is looking for easy-to-use source code and hands-off notifications.
Ethan's user journey reflects his budget-conscious needs and his wariness of untested, feature-lacking solutions. He is very savvy about web3 technologies and wants all the bells and whistles.
RESEARCH
Yoz Labs' platform is focused on finding projects and profiles to like, subscribe, and fork (forking is when developers copy source code to use in their own projects). Much like social media platforms, the IA is not deep but the platform is rich with thousands of profiles and projects to explore.
RESEARCH
User interviews
I led user interviews with 6 participants. They had a variety of needs around web3 notifications. Key needs and priorities identified include:
🎯️
Benefits + Advantage
Users want to see why they should download another app on their phone and why getting web3 notifications on the go is beneficial.
✅
Transparency + Trust
Users want data, social proof, and facts that show that Yoz Labs is secure and worthy of trust in order to feel safe sharing their Web3 information.
⚡
Ease of Use
Users want to use the mobile app as easily as they use the web app. They need to be able to find, analyze, and engage with ease.
🪄
Customization + Utility
Users do not want to be “bombarded” with useless notifications - customizing the experience is very important.
RESEARCH
Insights + Limitations
Based on the insights gathered from the user interviews, it was clear that users expected a smooth, feature-rich experience. For development, this would mean balancing precision so that there are minimal errors or missed features with the need for speed create a MVP to meet Yoz Labs' business goals. Technical limitations around forking mean that it is only available on desktop and would need to be made clear to users. In addition, Yoz Labs at this stage would need to balance between the social engagement aspect and the technical, Github-like source code sharing.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
On this screen, I explored showing two different placements for the Like button on the For You tab (top right or bottom left). While this might seem like a small change, it was important to help Yoz Labs visualize the information hierarchy on mobile and help them decide what is the most important action for users.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
There are two sets of nav bars on desktop which proved to be challenging for mobile as multiple nav bars can be confusing. I overcame this issue by making the top nav tabs part of a hamburger icon and keeping the tabs below. You can also see the dropdowns offering filtering by type and sorting as well as additional actions.
MVP
Users emphasized searching as a priority. First, we presented the ideal option. To the right of the screen, search is accessible as an icon in the top nav. This option shows search previews as you are typing.
For the second option, the search function is within the hamburger icon without search previews. We presented this option as an alternative both for the client’s preferences and in case they could not prioritize developing the ideal option in the MVP state.
MVP
Inspired by GitHub, I used tab navigation to help condense and organize all the information from the web app. I used an expand button to minimize excessive header information. Like the web app, I used cards to organize each activity notification with further dropdowns for sorting and filtering.
MVP
There are two sets of nav bars on desktop which proved to be challenging for mobile as multiple nav bars can be confusing. I overcame this issue by making the top nav tabs part of a hamburger icon and keeping the tabs below. You can also see the dropdowns offering filtering by type and sorting as well as additional actions.
MVP
On this screen, I explored showing two different placements for the Like button on the For You tab (top right or bottom left). While this might seem like a small change, it was important to help Yoz Labs visualize the information hierarchy on mobile and help them decide what is the most important action for users.
MVP
Users emphasized searching as a priority. First, we presented the ideal option. To the right of the screen, search is accessible as an icon in the top nav. This option shows search previews as you are typing.
For the second option, the search function is within the hamburger icon without search previews. We presented this option as an alternative both for the client’s preferences and in case they could not prioritize developing the ideal option in the MVP state.
OUTCOME
Following a successful beta launch of their desktop and mobile app, Yoz Labs was able to secure $3.5 million seed fund on April 19, 2023.
