Blockchain Design: A Postcard From The Future

Context

The Blockchain pivotal impact prompts us to research, develop and collaborate to build up knowledge and competencies as much as evolve ourselves within new business model. In the current complexity we live in, we have Artificial Intelligence, we have Design Thinking and a new twist to the digital disruption: Blockchain.

After I started the Blockchain Design journey in 2016,  in January 2018 I launched my Design Research after I studied the topic from different perspectives and attended to events and talks related to the topic. As a stepping stone to develop participatory approach in workshops, talks and conferences, I begun to craft my own vision to empower the communities to engage with Blockchain technologies with a designer mindset.

My approach

The session happened in January 2018. It unfolded with the challenge to raise awareness of the purpose and impact of Blockchain and to bridge it with some tools from Design Thinking mindset: visualization, user needs and iterative process. Explaining concepts like ‘distributed ledgers’, ‘smart contracts’, ‘nodes’, ‘consensus’ and ‘cryptography’ served as an initial glossary to introduce Blockchain from behind the scenes. The architectures, such as permissioned and permissionless networks, helped to clarify that Blockchain is not Bitcoin and vice versa.

Through interactive conversations, we addressed  elements of design with a beginner’s mind. We shared analogies and examples to immerse the participants into their own life experience, their emotional connections. The workshop gathered 25 people: young entrepreneurs, students and a few professionals.

As a result of the team groups, I guided the first introductory workshop to figure out what are the pivots to improve for the learning path to improve. During the session we had two more discussions to trigger curiosity on how to feel and assess the potential impact of Blockchain in our current business scenario. Afterwards, the teams were asked to discuss and design their own Blockchain.

Findings

Their work shows the positive urgency as a consequence of my investigation. Inspired by the audience engagement, my aim and determination is to contribute to facilitating the adoption of Blockchain technology to collaborate and research its impact through these three opportunities:

1) Address the gap in the Blockchain know-how for businesses and technical audience, also for its final users

2) Create experimental learning sessions to explore and discuss Blockchain impact

3) Raise creativity through empathy, awareness and understanding of potential Blockchain users and stakeholders

The next step will be to design and deliver a workshop that will include Software Developers, Digital Strategist and users. Actively they will face aspects of the Blockchain to unlock the sense-making of Design towards the digital disruption.

‘My goal is this: always to put myself in a place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil to grow, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.’

Hermann Hesse