🌟 Jubi Dao

Designing a more trustworthy, transparent, and human-centered Web3 experience for founders and investors

Role
UX Designer & Researcher

Duration
12 weeks

Tools
Figma

🌱 Introduction

Web3 can feel powerful, but also overwhelming, complex, and uncertain.

When I joined JUBI DAO, I had the opportunity to explore how UX research could help make Web3 feel more approachable, trustworthy, and usable for both founders and investors.

This project focused on understanding the real experiences of people navigating Web3 and identifying how we might reduce fear, increase clarity, and support confident participation.

🌼 Overview

JUBI DAO is a Web3 platform designed to support founders, investors, and angel investors through the creation and management of smart contracts.

This research project explored:

  • How users currently discover and invest in Web3 projects
  • What tools and workflows they rely on
  • Where friction, confusion, and risk appear
  • How trust and transparency shape decision-making

At its core, this work asks:

How might we make Web3 feel safer, clearer, and more human?

👀 The Problem

How might we design a Web3 experience that supports founders and investors—regardless of their level of technical knowledge, while building trust, transparency, and confidence?

Web3 platforms often create barriers through:

  • Complex technical language
  • Lack of clear guidance
  • Fear of scams or “rug pulls”
  • Limited onboarding for new users

This creates hesitation at every stage—from learning to investing.

🔭 The Process

Using a research-led approach, I focused on deeply understanding both business goals and user realities.

Research methods included:

  • Stakeholder interviews
  • Secondary research and UX heuristics analysis
  • Semi-structured interviews with Web3 founders and investors
  • Current-state journey mapping

💬 Stakeholder Insight

Through conversations with JUBI’s leadership, a clear vision emerged:

  • Simplify smart contracts to save time and cost
  • Build trust within the Web3 community
  • Enable faster, more transparent transactions
  • Move toward a future where ownership is managed through tokens, not traditional systems

At the same time, key challenges surfaced:

  • Building reputation in a trust-sensitive ecosystem
  • Addressing fears around scams and rug pulls
  • Navigating identity verification in a decentralised environment

🔍 User Research Insights

I interviewed 9 participants, including Web3 founders and investors with varying levels of experience.

A few themes came through strongly:

“Trust is #1 for me when investing.”

“Transparency and education are key.”

“I need help understanding the technical side.”

“Smart contracts are expensive and slow to set up.”

💫 Key Insights

1. Trust
Users are cautious and risk-aware. Trust is the foundation of all decision-making.

2. Transparency
Users want to clearly understand what’s happening, especially when money is involved.

3. Education
There is a significant knowledge gap, particularly for newer users.

4. Community
Web3 is deeply social and users value shared knowledge, validation, and connection.

👩🏻‍💻 Designing for Real Users

To bring these insights to life, I created personas representing key user groups:

Founder Fiona
“Smart contracts are costly and time-consuming. I want to focus on building my project.”

Web3 Investor
“I’m interested in investing, but I need help understanding the technical jargon.”

Angel Investor
“I want reassurance that my investments are safe from scams.”

These perspectives helped ensure recommendations stayed grounded in real needs—not assumptions.

🗺️ User Journey & Opportunities

Mapping the current-state journey revealed key friction points:

  • Confusing onboarding and unclear entry points
  • High cognitive load due to technical language
  • Lack of transparency during transactions
  • Delays and complexity in smart contract creation

This highlighted opportunities to simplify, guide, and reassure users at every stage.

🎬 Experience Vision

A future-state journey and storyboard explored a more supportive experience:

  • Clear onboarding that builds confidence from the start
  • Guided flows for creating and investing in projects
  • Transparent system feedback at every step
  • Educational support embedded into the experience

The goal was to move from intimidating → intuitive.

💡 Design Recommendations

The final recommendations focused on four core areas:

📘 1. Education

Help users learn as they go, without overwhelming them.

  • Use familiar, Web2-inspired language and patterns
  • Provide onboarding that is simple, guided, and reassuring
  • Include tooltips, glossaries, and “how-to” guides
  • Introduce concepts progressively, not all at once

🔐 2. Trust

Build confidence through clarity and proof.

  • Showcase real-world case studies of successful projects
  • Explain how smart contracts work in simple terms
  • Clearly communicate how risks (like rug pulls) are mitigated
  • Provide visibility into audits and protections

🔍 3. Transparency

Make the system feel open and understandable.

  • Show how calculations (e.g. token allocation) are made
  • Provide clear system feedback during actions
  • Offer different layers of information for different experience levels
  • Communicate openly about limitations and security

🌐 4. Community

Support connection and shared learning.

  • Create a resource hub for discovering projects
  • Enable users to explore and learn from others
  • Foster a sense of belonging within the platform

🔑 Why This Project Matters

Web3 is often designed for those who already understand it.

This project explores what happens when we design for everyone else.

As a designer, I’m deeply interested in reducing complexity and creating systems that feel safe, clear, and human, even in highly technical spaces.

⭐️ Final Thoughts

JUBI DAO showed me that trust isn’t just a feature, it’s an experience.

In spaces like Web3, where uncertainty is high, design plays a critical role in helping users feel confident enough to participate.

Clarity, guidance, and transparency aren’t optional, they are essential.

This project reinforced the importance of deeply understanding user behaviour.

One of the most impactful insights:

If flexible payment options weren’t available, many users simply wouldn’t enrol.

Accessibility isn’t just about UI, it’s also about financial and emotional accessibility.

🌠 What’s Next?

  • Exploring how to design for trust in emerging technologies
  • Investigating ways to reduce cognitive load in complex systems
  • Designing onboarding experiences for high-uncertainty environments
  • Continuing to bring human-centered thinking into technical spaces