Abstract
The decentralized future is now. The blockchain technology and decentralized applications are changing the way we think about digital software products and the value they bring to our lives. Traditional ways of software design and development are not fully applicable, as there is no central authority to control, decide or direct the future of the product. The blockchain-based software is not controlled by anyone, and at the same time, it belongs to everyone, because the value is distributed among all members in the form of a cryptocurrency. Current product design workflows and methods combined with the blockchain technology need a transformation to become even more inclusive, democratic, autonomous, seek user participation and decision-making. The design solution that is accessible, usable and user-centered can be formed only through the optimization of the product around the users, rather than forcing the users to change their behavior to accommodate the product. Research methods like participatory and non-participatory observations, literature and white paper reviews, analyses, interviews with field experts, are all combined with case studies and explorations of decentralized technology, user-centered design, and democratization. All of which is united in the concept of the decentralized autonomous software, or DAS, which is a software that has decision-making mechanisms embedded in an open distributed peer-to-peer network, that requires vote-based human participation to determine the future direction of its lifecycle, development, and design.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
YouTube: Design Learning Network, Victor Papanek June 1992 Presentation at Apple Computer - “Microbes in the Tower”. https://youtu.be/nMdnjGQQlQU. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Wikipedia: Apple Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Finch, T.J.: Decentralized: Blockchain and the Future Web: An Introductory Guide. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Scotts Valley (2018)
Gray, C.M., Kou, Y., Battles, B., Hoggatt, J., Toombs, A.L.: The dark (patterns) side of UX design. In: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018, pp. 1–14. ACM Press, Montréal (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174108
Dark Patterns: What are dark patterns? https://www.darkpatterns.org. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
YouTube: World Economic Forum, What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution? https://youtu.be/kpW9JcWxKq0. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin Project (2008). https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Ethereum.org: What is Ethereum? https://ethereum.org/what-is-ethereum. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Norman, D.A.: The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition, Revised edn. Basic Books, New York (2013)
The Interaction Design Foundation: What is User Centered Design? https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-centered-design. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Mao, J.Y., Vredenburg, K., Smith, P.W., Carey, T.: The state of user-centered design practice. Commun. ACM 48, 105–109 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1145/1047671.1047677
Glomann, L., Schmid, M., Kitajewa, N.: Improving the blockchain user experience - an approach to address blockchain mass adoption issues from a human-centred perspective. In: Ahram, T. (ed.) AHFE 2019. AISC, vol. 965, pp. 608–616. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20454-9_60
Wikipedia: Participatory design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_design. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Simonsen, J., Robertson, T.: Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design, 1st edn. Routledge, London (2013)
Collier, K.: Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing (Agile Software Development Series), 1st edn. Addison-Wesley Professional, Upper Saddle River (2011)
Stellman, A., Greene, J.: Learning Agile: Understanding Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban, 1st edn. O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol (2013)
GitHub: Ethereum White Paper, A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/white-paper. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
CryptoKitties: Technical Details, White Pa-purr. https://www.cryptokitties.co/technical-details. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Wikipedia: Decentralized autonomous organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Wikipedia: The DAO (organization). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization). Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Acknowledgments
Conference registration grant of this research was supported by the National Social Science Foundation as part of the Artificial-Intelligence-Based Interaction Design Method Research project in 2019, with the associated grant number being 19BG127. I would also like to thank and acknowledge the support of Pine Du, Jun Soo Kim, Dmitrii Vasilenko, Alessio Casablanca, and professor Qiong Wu for their precious contributions and constructive feedback.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gladyshev, V., Wu, Q. (2020). Design for the Decentralized World: Democratization of Blockchain-Based Software Design. In: Marcus, A., Rosenzweig, E. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability. Design for Contemporary Interactive Environments. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12201. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49760-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49760-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49759-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49760-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)