Graph Hack 2022

This project is focused on addressing Parallel Finance's following prompt: Best user created demo of Parallel products. We're looking for the best article/video or write-up that helps other people get started with Parallel.

To onboard the masses into web3, platforms, projects, and protocols must first meet the end users they are at and secondly effectively communicate what they do and how they plug into that end user's journey before spending energy on comprehensive product write ups/overviews to get started Scaling NFTs For the Masses - NFT.NYC 2021.

On Parallel Finance's homepage there is a mission listed to "Bring web3 to 1 billion people." However, the current positioning of the website is completely web3 centric, not meeting these 1 billion new people where they are at.

An end user centered website design focused on the value provided and solving the problems these web2 native people have can more effectively achieve this stated goal.

When onboarding web2 to web3, users must first be met within a web2 context and then guided into a new domain of web3. Furthermore, during this guidance and journey into new tool adoption, psychological engagement cycles and styles should also be considered to ensure most impactful adoption (high engagement x high value).

This project stems inspiration from experience in creating connection and belonging with organizations, translating web2 constructs and standards into web3, investigating the state of onboarding and network engagement within web3 environments, and in the psychology and neuroscience of stress and behavior.

This site is first positioned in a value based way communicating the end outcome of Parallel Finance's tools and hosts a form that asks 4 questions to determine the potential Parallel Finance user's needs and goals.

Questions were derived from the most prominent focuses gathered from Parallel Finance's website and documentation to direct users towards the tool they will get most excited by first. After creating that strong relationship with this new end user through a curated Parallel Finance product/tool recommendation, then other tools can be introduced with a much lower barrier to entry.

This site and survey leverage human centered design approaches and emphasizes personal motivations to align with specific products. The site was built on Wordpress and Elementor.

2 challenges were: 1.) Finding the right content - it was hard to completely grasp Parallel Finance's main focuses as there is a wide range of products serving different end users. Although this provides a comprehensive platform and solution the story, even to web3 familiar people, may be lost in translation to the outside world. 2.) Deciding whether to create a next phase solutions in a mockup that would ultimately be rebuilt anyways. One example of this is choosing whether to pass the survey preference data through to an email campaign service.

One accomplishment we're proud of is that it is a site that is as closely aligned with Parallel Finance's brand guide as I could get without having the full brand guidelines.

Communicating the primary point that we want to get across is most important. For example, communicating an easy design rather than connecting to and building out a series of content that may not be completely accurate to the given products.

Next steps include working with Parallel Finance's copywriting and content creation teams to create a customized email campaign series based on the responses each user provided pointing them to resources that also best fit their level of understanding of the web3 space.

Each tool will have at least 2 levels of explanation (high level that is friendly to people coming from web2 and a detailed explanation for those familiar with web3)

There would be a second focus as data comes in, on identifying primary user personas and their psychological motivation and decision making styles to further customize relatable tabs on Parallel Finance's main website to help new people immediately know they belong there and the value of these web3 tools.