Usability in a Token-Based Ecosystem

Blockchain, a distributed database based on a pure peer-to-peer network, has drawn attention of many services for many advantages: transparency, transaction efficiency, and security. Blockchain services serve with token-based ecosystems and the systems have usability problems resulting from complex user interfaces. To maximize the value of a blockchain service offered to the users and prevent disuse of the system, studying the usability problems is necessary. To study the usability in token-based ecosystems, experiences in using three blockchain services: Lympo, Soda Play, and Pibble, were collected with a diary study. A total of 232 experiences related to tokens were collected. Based on the collected experience, we derived six interactions that mainly describe the usability problems in the token-based ecosystems through open card sorting. This study will help blockchain service to avoid bad interactions in their token-based ecosystems and contribute in serving good token-based ecosystem.