Ep.9 [EN]: Tian: Attempts to offer a user-centered UX design in Web3 with STEPN
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You are now listening to Hotlong. I'm the host, Mabel Zhang. This show attempts to shed light on the broader Web3 community. The guests will include Web3 operators, investors, or ecosystem participants of other forms. The show will also have a special focus on the Asia-based Web3 world. Connect East and West. Enjoy the warmest Web3 conversation.

Hello everyone, welcome back to the latest episode of Hotlong. Today we actually have a very special guest to come to our episode. The reason I said this is very special is because in the past we never invited anyone who's focusing on design or on user experiences onto our pod. Today we are having the lead UX and product designer of StepN. Welcome Tian. Hey, hello everyone. My name is Tian Ye, but you can also...

Everybody just call me TM because it's easier for Western people to pronounce that. Awesome. Maybe just give a round of very brief self-introduction of yourself.

What do you do? And then, you know, you're kind of focused at Stepin. Yeah. So I usually call myself a designer because I always believe that design is kind of a very integrated thing. Right now, I'm doing the UX design.

like user experience design at step in basically kind of designing um the the product design combining with the user interface and how user kind of interacts with the product and also have very close collaboration with product manager as well and before this i had

three years of experience as an architect. So I would say myself as like a pretty integrated designer and kind of tackling questions, design problems from all different angles. Very interesting. How was the transformation from architect to designer?

UX designer feels like? Yeah, I think architecture is a very traditional type of design, which to me feels like is very, compared with UX, architecture is very subjective.

meaning like kind of like top-down where architects decide or control the design discourse and kind of use speculative ways to make design decisions rather than kind of UX design is more user-centered. I feel like it's more bottom-up. So all the ideas, inspirations coming from the user or the research work

user research or user data kind of inform the design decision. And I think this is kind of from a more subjective aesthetic based architecture design into a more kind of objective combining objectivity research as well as design thinking to be a UX designer.

Got it. Yeah, you mentioned user-centered design. I want to come back to that question a little bit later. But before that, let's talk about what UX for a Web3 product or Web 2.5 product is. I think it's going to be interesting to hear from you.

how you compare that versus the UX for Web2 products. Right. I think, yeah, first of all, a lot of listeners here, because I always follow your Ha Long podcast also, the Wuxi Yishuo, the previous one. And I feel like the topics are always centered around like investments, Web3, or sometimes technology.

And so I think it's very necessary to kind of get introduced a little bit of the context of UX design. So I think UX design is...

basically design, like the traditional design itself. But also the specific thing about UX is it sort of combine the scientific and user-centered approach. So the two parts, user-centered, I think it's firstly based on all the things are user needs driven and a lot of design intentions are

is based on the user research findings and then using usability testing or A/B testing to kind of using a scientific way to prove the assumption that you had from the first place. So I would say like the design assumption come from user research and then using scientific research to kind of prove it right or wrong. You mentioned that you have

I guess, experience like working at other web two companies, what was the kind of day to day it feels like, or I guess like the general working process for you in, in the traditional company versus like, you know, working at a,

I guess like an open space for UX. The way I think about like how you design step ends, UX is really like, you know, you would have to come up with a lot of thoughts. I was curious about, you know, maybe more, a bit more details on those kind of comparisons. Right. I think, yeah, you mentioned actually a very good point. Currently I'm working at Twitch and the product is very, I would say,

is very mature and basically the whole procedure of UX is very much established. Starts from user interview to kind of discover the user needs and using combining qualitative and quantitative research to kind of make sure to kind of decide a design direction.

and then running different types of iterations, and then collaborating with PMs and researchers to sort of finalize and testing to validate the assumptions. So you had also background in art history. So I think it's very interesting to kind of compare UX design with the traditional kind of

design to put in the context of the traditional type of design. Can you expand a little bit more on that? Yeah, so I come from the background of architecture and you know probably you have the knowledge as well. So architecture at the beginning starts from the middle age like church design addressing kind of transcendental relationships between human and God and

And then going to Renaissance and the Enlightenment era where things get more rationalized and kind of the form and the systematic language become more and more clear, the use of geometries and mathematical rules in the design.

and then goes into the modern architecture where they call it like Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier, they said form follows function, right? So it become more and more rationalized. But all in all, it's still like kind of a justification for a sort of certain type of aesthetics. But when it comes to right now, the UX design, it becomes more...

it becomes more bottom-up. So just basically very research and data-driven and the inspirations will come from user-centered research and using more scientific and objective ways to test and prove it. So I don't say the new approach is better than the previous one. I think to

to a certain level, the user-centered approach is definitely more effective in terms of making money in the capitalized world or context. But on the other hand, it's actually kind of data-lized or objectified by the humane part. So I think actually

the digital design or the current UX design is very effective in terms of addressing user needs and solving problems very directly. But on the other hand, it's kind of lose some sort of humane in a traditional design.

That's a very interesting contrast. So you mentioned that in your day-to-day job, you'll probably interview a bunch of users and ask what they need. What if they don't know what they need? I think that's kind of a constant question people have for a lot of these Web3 products because people may not know what they really need until they get

catered by something that they felt, oh, this is it. I actually just want this very convenient stuff, you know.

So I feel like that is a very, almost like a paradoxical thing for the user center, because for user centers, like you, you kind of ask people what they want, but they may not really know what they want. So what's, what's the current status for Web3 UX in your eyes? Yeah. I mean, first, I really want to address the first part of your question, like what if user don't know what they want, right?

So I think this is very interesting UX question. So one type of UX research approach is to sending out

to sending out surveys, right? Asking questions, what do you want? Oh, okay, so during this process for certain stage, do you feel satisfied or do you feel it's hard to find certain features on the interface, right? Then user like answer yes, no, or whatever. But in the end, oftentimes these qualitative kind of feedbacks about like user, how many percentage of users saying, I like this,

and versus people saying, I don't like this is not real because oftentimes what they use or say is not what they actually think what, or what they actually going to be doing. For example, like if you are asking like what

asking a user what do you like um in terms of like if i'm saying like choosing an nft like what what drives you to make your your decision of buying certain entities and probably some user will be like saying some some factors that makes themselves look smarter or makes themselves feels more like ethical or whatever but in reality it could be totally different you

This is one layer. And on the second layer is that even if the user really trying to be honest, sometimes depending on different contexts, they really do reacting differently. For example, if a user saying, okay, usually he really think he or she wants to choose an NFT.

because of this community culture or certain narratives from this project. But if in certain scenarios, if all of her or his friends are kind of in another project, which kind of become like another layer of strong drive for this person to make another decision, or even like just imagine like if

if you are shopping in a retail store, a lot of things can sort of decide, in fact, your decision making. It could be the environment, it could be the music, it could be how friendly the staff are. So all of these factors, it's all like contextual based. Also, another layer is like how people want to show a certain image to the researcher. So usually,

Usually what we do in this scenario, trying to be more unbiased, trying to get more unbiased results, we use contextual inquiry by observation. We don't give guides to users very specifically and putting them in that context, giving them certain tasks and really just observe what they're actually doing. And sometimes like...

Sometimes you always get really unexpected results from that. And usually those results are very, very helpful, much more than just directly asking questions. Makes sense. That's what you said was very interesting. But when you came into the space, because I'm sure you started to pick up things very quickly, but when you came into the space,

What's your view on the current status of Web3 UX? That was the latter part of my question. Yeah, actually making Stepin is my first acquaintance with Web3.

which I came in starting to design Stepin with very little knowledge of Web3 and like, um, I'm myself is a fresh user for testing. So I think a lot of things are actually the opposite of, of user centered approach. Like, first of all, um, right now everything feels to me very technical driven, like the buzzwords, like gas fees or

or what is on chain, what is decentralized, what is in the app can be centralized. And then always whatever transaction you want to make is always through a thing called wallet. And actually people, it's kind of an easy word wallet, but nobody really understands wallet means decentralized. All these mechanics are very technical driven. And I think

it makes

Oftentimes, actually, this community, a lot of people think it's kind of cool to be inside this small, small, cool group that are very kind of cool nerd group. But I think it really hinders the scale of Web3 product. And I think another part is the financial part as well. It's also very technical, financially technical.

like if i i went to the marketplace earlier open c or magic eden i see the first thing i saw like the stats are floor price trading volumes all those things doesn't make any sense like i don't like i see a lot of informations there but it's like very intimidating to me um i believe also to another user other users i actually did run uh um

some user interview, like trying to figuring out the current problems for marketplaces. And it's all of problems. It's everywhere. It's all the usability problems. Users, especially like Web2 users who don't have experience, they

So many things doesn't make any sense to them. And yeah, I think still have a lot of potential, but it's really a, I think it's really a collaborative thing. It's not like I do user experience so I can like improve the experience immediately because it also come from the technical improvement, the infrastructure, like

like the transaction efficiency, the transaction speed, and sometimes things got lost and all these things are all like grow together. Yeah. So I think one other thing is right now, user needs to take a lot of effort to get into the community.

once they get into the community, they talk to these people, they started to understand how to have fun. Like it's not, it's not a very casual, like I just come in here and I think, oh, this is so cool. I can enjoy it. But right now it feels like everybody comes here confusing and they need to like being very active and doing a lot of research by themselves. Then they able to kind of started to enjoy the

the Web3 products and that's a very sort of a very turn off for if Web3 products wants to scale over normal users. You mentioned a very interesting point which I think in your past experience may not ever encounter that which is

like a newcomer, what's your newcomer kind of perspective, you probably can just identify a lot of the problems that makes you confused. But then when you are also working on this, you know, product design role, you realize that a lot of like, in order to realize a lot of the, like the solution of those complications, it's actually not as easy because it doesn't work. Sometimes it doesn't work like that for blockchain based related things.

So I think that's what you mentioned about the evolving piece of both, you have to understand how transactions go and whatnot, and then at the same time, we try to make the optimal design selection for your users. So I think this is definitely a self-reinforced kind of process than a lot of the other centralized design for the Web2 apps.

I'm curious, though, how do you learn, how do you acquaint yourself with the products in the space beyond just the design, but also, like, understanding how things work? Like, how did you actually learn? I'm really curious, like, how you kind of onboard yourself. It's all through those conversations, all through those conversations with the step-in founders, especially with Jerry. We had, like, hours and hours of, like,

like phone calls. I remember when I first get in, um, uh, Jerry contacted me through actually LinkedIn and we started this conversation. Um, he said, there's a, there's a project, right. Uh, they're doing called step in and already get some like, uh, nice investment and something. Then I go to Jerry's LinkedIn page and found out there are like, he has like two links for

or something, I feel like, oh, it's, you know, you kind of become like suspect. Well, what is this? This guy's lying or what? He has two connections and he come to me. He doesn't even have a profile picture. And just started this conversation. And we had a phone call.

just super quick. And then we found out we both graduated from the same university in undergrad. So immediately get us more closure. And then we started to talk about this project into more, more into details. And like I had,

back then I had no experience in Web3, but he said, "We need to finish this design in two weeks or three weeks," very urgent because the investor is waiting for the product to launch. There's a certain deadline. So I remember I started part-time just doing

making a lot of phone calls with him. He explained all the game mechanics to me, as well as the transaction. The game mechanics is the step in itself, right? But on the other hand, what is wallet, how to transact assets from decentralized on-chain into the app and how it works altogether. So I think

By doing that design sprints and a lot of collaboration also with game designer, with PMs, it really makes me dive into that context and learning these concepts.

It's funny, I think your answer kind of reflected one of the problems existing in the space even up till today we still couldn't solve, which is the information silo. People just don't know where, if there's a Wikipedia or whatever they can go to. And it is tricky because a lot of the knowledge are also evolving quite a bit. So even if you read something, but that's only a snapshot and things are still growing very fast.

So it's only that you can keep reading and keep learning. I think that's definitely the kind of reality. It's also like, I feel like I never used Twitter before. I seldom use Twitter and Discord. I'm not a fan of Discord as well. So a lot of these current community and platforms are very...

kind of towards a certain group of people. And I think a lot of population are not exposed. Yeah, no, I think one of the big differences, like our generation may not be very used to is the fact that we are very used to the top-down approach of learning. Like we just believe we only need to go to one source, absolute authority,

authoritative source of information and we just learn about the facts versus I think in this space people are more kind of used to the decentralized source of information in a sense. Twitter, Discord, it's all like that. Everyone becomes their own broadcaster and then they just like give out information. Obviously not all the information is right or true but then like everyone because they have this vehicle for them to express themselves and then

So like, you know, information flow just kind of become more complicated in that way because, you know, each information flow would also have their own reaction to each other.

So it's more like a typology where you have a network. Different points scattered on this space. Yeah, exactly. I would love to ask you to talk a little bit more about how you took the step on the UX design of StepM because maybe one of the things that I was constantly thinking is that

the UX design from an outsider might actually become more intuitive. I think when designing Stepin, there are two aspects, I would say. The first aspect is thinking about Stepin as a

gamification or running ads like a running game. So first aspects of the step in design is kind of how to design the game itself, how to at the very beginning, we really want to just finishing the MVP, which is running move to earn right really fast and then launch it to see the reaction from the user and actually make gradual updates later. So

One of the challenges at the beginning in terms of game design is that there's kind of complicated game mechanics. How do we show that to users? How do we make the users be able to kind of learn while playing? I sort of divide the different game elements. By game elements, I mean like sneaker types or like

earning caps or daily energy, these sorts of elements, I put them into different tiers.

So what is the very basic tier for a user to get started? Maybe like sneaker type, energy, and another one like lower tiers. Like if it goes to tier two, it can be like different properties, like efficiency or whatever. I don't want to go to that so much detail, but the

the thing is that we're trying to make the user understand the tier one, the very fundamental principles very easily. And then for the tier two, tier three or tier four, all those small details, we want users to kind of gradually grasp or understand the mechanics and gradually become better and better. So this is also

Like imagine a game, if you clear all the levels very easily, that immediately lose all the interests. So we want user to get on board easily and still be able to keep them getting better and making them putting much effort into the game.

So this one part is game design. And on the other hand, in terms of the transactions, which is because we're doing the game fire, right? So part is game, part is fire. The second part basically is the transaction. I think it's very challenging. I, me, myself, it's like designing through learning and designing at the same time. And it's always like,

you have to let the web 2 users understand there is a thing called decentralized there's another thing called centralized and then these two are separated every time all the things that really counts is the on-chain part is the decentralized part and what it is in the game and how you like move move to earn in the game will be like centralized so um

It's all about how do we make the flow more smooth, but also how do you choose the wording to make people understand. I remember we have the decentralized part called wallet and the in-game part, we change so many wordings. At the beginning, we call it vaults, which is...

kind of like gaming words. And in the end, we call it spending, which is more straightforward, right? So just by iterating different ideas and then really testing

When the time is really limited, we even just testing among ourselves, asking people outside the product team or just a random engineer to scrap them here and asking, "Oh, do you understand? Or does this make sense to you?" The only way you really see this working or not is through usability testing.

always give you unexpected results and just really refine the product step by step. Make it fast, reiterate, improve it. Yeah.

I was laughing at this because sometimes like Jan and I create a tweet and then send it to Shady and Gilgamesh and they'll be like, what? What do you mean? And I realized that like, you know, even just within the team, you know, sometimes like there's loss in the language. So I completely understand what you're talking about. I thought it was pretty funny. And I think usability test is actually very important.

in any aspect of operating a project. So I thought that was a really interesting point. Right. When you talk about usability testing, actually, there's one more point I really want to...

to see, because testing is a very important thing in terms of UX design. But actually one of the most important way of doing usability testing is called A/B testing, where let's say if I did a new feature, I'm not sure whether this is going to work. So I'd like

take 10% of users to kind of to use the new feature, but they don't know they're like, they just, they don't know what other people are using. They only like

automatically update their applications, right? They started to use a new feature and 90% of users still use the controlled experience, meaning the old design. And to really compare the data, whether this new feature is effective or not. This is the very most common testing approach in any like big or mature Web2 company. But this is actually

not work so much in Web3 space currently because a lot of Web3 projects involve a lot of financial products and say like StepN is gamified. If we invented a new mechanics or invented a new feature that really going to directly influence the income of the users, it's kind of not fair to put

you know, like part of the users that use a new feature and the rest using the old feature, you know, because it's like different earning efficiencies and they really already like invest so much money. So it's not fair for them, two groups of people using two things.

And also another thing is in the Web3 community, it's so decentralized and users are within this community. They have very direct discussion all the time. So if you're doing even these two groups of A-B testing, people immediately find out. No, I think this is super interesting. I bet most of my audiences have never heard about any of these in the past because I think most people are just more thinking about

the kind of, I don't know, like web three interoperability or composability and whatnot, but then seldom really focused on the consumer facing aspects. So I think what you shared was definitely alpha or just kind of give people a different lens of thinking to see things. Another question that I had for you though, is that because I think like your

your role, sure, it's like UX and then you also kind of talk about products. Like this also goes along with a lot of the business strategies, right? Because I think just similar to how you describe things, you know, in Web3 world, like how tech work is definitely going to be relevant to the UX. And then so similarly in any product, I'm sure like external business strategies is also going to be working along with

Can you maybe talk a little bit more about that? I think business strategy is always kind of the very important drive for any UX problems. I can give you an example actually, a project that I was doing at Twitch earlier.

So, at Twitch, for those of you who don't know Twitch, Twitch is one of the leading streaming platforms where a lot of streamers provide content and then a lot of game content or whatever. And then a lot of viewers just connect with the creators.

through live stream and talk online, seeing they're playing games and having directly having conversations along the stream. In earlier, the Twitch found out there are like actually in terms of revenue, there are a lot of ad supply

A lot of advertisers finding Twitch saying, "I would like to run ads on your platform." But then a lot of streamers, they don't like to run a lot of ads on their channel. So there is kind of a mismatch between the ad supply versus how many ads it can be run on the platform. As a designer, if you really want to toggle the business goal, the business goal, the

is trying to help this platform to earn more money. So it's basically encouraging the streamer to run more ads so that not only the streamer themselves can earn more, but also Twitch can earn a larger share of whatever the ads income is. And so as a designer, when we tackle this question, we always starting from the user. So trying to understand why the streamer don't run ads

it's really basically goes back to their concern about ads being interactive and can it influence the viewership yeah so as a designer what we do is we divided the streamers into different tiers the um we call it like affiliate streamer which is having less um

less viewers and the more grown up streamers, we call it like partner streamers. They are partner of Twitch. They have like a very stable view, huge amount of viewers. And a lot of them are subscribers, are very hardcore viewers that are kind of loyal to the channel and not easy to lose because of advertisement.

So, especially for the partner streamers where it has a lot of viewers, their ad income can really be significant for them. Whereas for the little streamers, their income is basically come from the commerce, which means like the viewers giving out gifts and subscribe to the channels.

Because ad income is always directly related to how many people are watching. So we give out different designs, different products to partner and to the affiliates. So we run a thing, we design a thing called ad incentive program, kind of giving the large streamers an opportunity to sign contract with us to be able to get a higher, if you run more ads like

If you run more than three minutes, over three minutes per hour of ads, you can get a higher percentage of income. So in this way, it's a monetization drive.

but also like really dealing with the goes back to the user needs. Some streamers are caring more about the growth of viewership, some more about ad income. And another factors that are going to determine how we encourage streamers to run ads is

because we really care about the growth of their channel. We are not like a dark heart or like a divo entrepreneur that solely encourage streamer to run like unlimited amounts of ads and their money. We really want to build this trust between streamers and us.

So we want to show that we care about their goal of growing their channel. So in this way, we take into consideration the contents that they're streaming. Say if they're a game streamer, if they're doing League of Legends, there are really clutch moments that

um user the viewer really hates the ads to come in at that very clutch moment um but for some early stage of that game where like a hero is growing or whatever the where the the pace are slower um we can like smartly run more ads whereas some other contents like there's a section called just chat it's all about

chat and connecting the streamer with the viewer. For those type of contents, it really depends on the kind of the livability of the comment section. When a lot of users are like commenting and when the atmosphere in that channel is like hype up, we really don't want to run ads anymore.

in that moment. And when the streamer is doing something boring, just browsing or whatever random chat, we can give it more run, like came in more advertisement. So depending on the content as well. This problem become a multi-factor or multi-parameter problem. So

the design of this product is really a very collaborative process. The designer has to collaborate with PM, engineer and data team to sort of using

using the data or using all the information we gather as a platform to give the streamer a very easy and smart way to kind of schedule and run their advertisement. And in this way, we really want to make the process, the streamer don't have to be an advertiser.

expert to run ads they really they really can let go and give the job to twitch we will use our data we will use our technology to support you you you are and we also at the same time wants to build this trust relationship so that you can trust us to give this uh agency or or give this um

control to the platform and we help you to to run it very smoothly considering your viewership but also run ads more smartly giving both the creator and the the platform more um ad revenue that's super interesting no i think only people who have done this would be able to talk about a lot of these i'm sure like in uh in a complicated organization like

well, I guess complicated is the wrong word, like sophisticated organizations like Twitch. A lot of the UX design also have to go with the data that you kind of analyze based on the reaction. And I'm sure as different types of content become more popular, less popular, the length of the ads would also kind of just be evolving as well. So I think this is like a constant collaborative process that you just mentioned.

Cool. We'd love to get to the end of this and then wanted to ask you some questions to wrap this up because I think this is probably a lot of the UX designer who wanted to come into the space and wanted to hear about what do you think the new users in Web3 care about the most? And then what do you think would attract people to come to the space and register a wallet? I would say as a new user,

Okay, I want to maybe go a little bit more further to this question. I think right now, actually a lot of new users are really curious about the Web3 product or NFT, all these new concepts, but a lot of them just really don't know what is it and what can they do about it?

So I think it kind of goes back to the earlier question that right now, Web3 is a very niche community. You really, normal user really needs to pay a lot of effort

to understand what they can do or they can get, or they need to like being really active to join these community by themselves. They need to follow people on Twitter and really understand what is going on in order to get into Web3 products. The biggest challenge so far is still like

How do we build up these consensus? So I think another point is the utility NFT right now, a lot of

NFT projects on the market is all about hype up the community and trying to flip over time and then making money out of buying at a lower price and then sell at a higher price. So it's really a financial scenario at this moment. So I don't know if this is off the topic, but I

I remember I read about a very interesting kind of design model called hook model, how to make kind of user, it sounds really not ethical, but how to attract users and get them retaining the users to make them using your app become a part of habit of their life.

So I remember the first step of that model is called trigger and the trigger is being divided into the external trigger and the internal trigger. I think external trigger is the very, very common external trigger is probably the app going to notify you. Okay. Now,

Today you need to drink water or now is the time you go out to have a run, some notification. And the internal trigger is actually the intrinsic, what the user really wants

deep in their heart by themselves. For example, if the user feel bored there, they really wants to kill the bored time. They want some content to look at. They really wants to escape from that bad condition of being boring. And this is some internal triggers that really want, they want to find something to escape from that bad condition.

And this internal trigger becomes a very interesting kind of intrinsic drive for them to do something. I think right now the Web3 field from a normal user perspective is full of external triggers. I always heard this concept of NFT. I always heard the concept of crypto.

But from a normal user perspective, they're pretty happy about their current status and they're pretty happy about the Web2 app providing them all these current services. But Web3 product didn't really address the internal trigger yet.

Because as we said earlier, user doesn't know what they want. We need to discover the user needs, but we need to discover the really the internal needs of the user. What kind of status that they're not happy with right now, and they want to escape by their instinct. And by addressing those issues, Web3 product can get some opportunities.

Yeah, I think this kind of perfectly ties back to what we talked about at the beginning, which is usability.

I think when the market is extremely mature, you already know what the demands are and then you have clear things to offer versus I think now a lot of the UX actually becomes lead generation, meaning like you don't know what people don't know and you just give them things and maybe they like it. I think Stepin was just one of them. That was really like kind of my conclusion after our conversation.

Yeah, I think StepN is really like having several things that are pretty successful. Like, first of all, StepN address the user, like the user needs of exercising, doing sports. That's really what the user needs anyways. Like, we're not pushing you, we're not giving you something new, saying, suggesting you're using this. This is like existing needs. It's very internal trigger from the user to push.

to do exercise. And also another internal trigger is to earn money. Everybody wants to earn money. So these two things are very well combined in this case, in the step-ins case. And then the other, the second part is that it really like through the move to earn really can enjoy the product, can engage the users and give them the rewards. I think this is a second, second important part is, um,

the first part is the trigger is addressing the needs. So what can we give them back? So in the case of StepN, we can help them to build up a healthy lifestyle and at the same time to earn money.

So, which is like scratching their itches, right? But on the third level, if you always just run and earn money, it can be interesting, but it can like user get bored really easily. So the third part is about like certain level of interest

game mechanics and certain level of randomness. We give you what you want, but still leave a certain level of uncertainty and variability, which makes things get more interesting and the user would like to try it for the next time.

And also the last part being the user also has to invest something by themselves. Like when a user invests things

like buying NFTs, they're making their own investment or also like reinvestment to level up a sneaker, really like doing research how to get better at this game. All these kind of input from the user really store all those values back into the product and also improve the experience that

as well so i think this trigger engagement addressing the user needs and the engagement reward to give them what they want and the third level of like having certain level of mystery and randomness to to keep them interested um and the for the last part the encouragement of user investment

back to the product is why step in being successful. Yeah, no, I think, I think you had a good point about, you know, the collaborative effort as in like when you, I think you talked about your Twitter, sorry, not Twitter, Twitch experience, how, um,

you getting feedback from, I guess, business side about user liking or do not like the length of the ads and whatnot. But I think now in this product, you're not just getting the feedback from whoever is on business side within the company, but also directly from the users. And then everyone together shaped the product. So I thought that was very...

unseen before because you never imagined another game where users would run a lot of polls and then provide a lot of suggestions on Discord, on Twitter, and then just, you know, the game designer starts to think about, okay, what are some of the parameters they can adjust to better cater to users' needs and whatnot. So I thought that was a pretty amazing part as well. Yeah, that's very Web3, right?

Awesome. Thank you, Tian, for joining me today. It was a wonderful conversation. I'm sure our listeners also learned a lot from this. Thank you. Thank you, Mabel.