So, after checking out a bunch of DApps on Ethereum (I wrote an article on Fomo3D here) and EOS (will get to those later) I wanted to summarize how different the two platforms feel in terms of UX.

DApp browsers / wallets

I've mostly been using Metamask for Ethereum and Scatter for EOS. Both work generally fine for the respective purposes, but Metamask seems to be more targeted towards crypto people, with a browser for your tokens, etc., whereas Scatter is mostly about managing your identities and permissions, possibly on multiple networks. That way, Scatter doesn't directly show your token balances, but instead is pretty powerful when it comes to keys and access, but it also means that you'll typically use some kind of wallet of blockchain explorer.

Please note that Scatter can also be used with Ethereum.

Getting an account

Before you can get going, you first need something like an account (yes, on EOS that's actually called an account) with some native tokens, ETH or EOS, respectively. With Ethereum the first step is rather easy, you install and initialize Metamask and voila, you've got an Ethereum address and the private key and you can send ETH there. Buying ETH is also possible at all kinds of fiat-crypto exchanges like CEX.io or Coinbase, whereas for EOS you'll mostly have to buy BTC or ETH, transfer to another exchange that lists EOS, and exchange there. In addition, getting a new account on EOS is not entirely trivial. This is mostly due to the fee and resource model (see below), so there's gotta be a way to prevent spam and provide a new account with the needed resources. This is very similar to how it works for Steem, so most of you are familiar with the process.

There's a bunch of guides how to create a new EOS account like this here and also many of the mobile wallet apps allow you to create new accounts, but dealing with the private (Owner and Active) keys sometimes can be a real pain, especially as it's not always clear which one you need to use for your (D)app.

I was lucky enough to still have my EOS account from the ICO so I could stop trying to get MEET.ONE work for me in that regard. Pretty frustrating.

Fees

I suppose everyone knows that: transaction fees (gas) can get nasty on Ethereum, while EOS advertises itself as zero-fee. And again, Steem users know that in and out (specifically after HF20), but with EOS the whole resource management thing has been brought to an entirely new level.

There's been a lot of discussion about EOS RAM and how it's being speculated with, but as a DApp user, you mostly don't get to deal with RAM issues at all. The DApp devs do, and they buy the RAM needed to put your data on the blockchain. However, what you get to deal with - a lot! - is CPU (and, maybe, NET). You need to stake EOS to allocate network compute resources to your account so that you can't spam the network. First, I staked 2 EOS for CPU and 0.5 EOS for NET and started playing EOSKnights. That worked for a while until it...didn't. The network got busier and therefore the amount of CPU I got for staking my EOS went down dramatically. Then I staked more to be on the safe side, but even that doesn't always suffice.

To give you an example: Sometimes my now ~7 EOS give me close to 1s of CPU time, whereas sometimes it's down to 0.01s. That's a factor of up to 100x and fluctuating within minutes, which I haven't seen happening on Ethereum ever. I know, you get your staked EOS tokens back, but in case you just want to use it and simply don't have enough, getting an additional 10 EOS and have to stake them just for a bunch of hours doesn't feel very user-friendly. In addition, it can cause you to lock up quite a significant amount of money - remember, 20 EOS is more than 100$, which every user would have to stake in order to be able to just play some "silly" DApp game.

I'm not sure what causes the "congestions" on the EOS mainnet, whether that is DoS attacks (lol) or just usual usage, but it's kinda annoying.

Transactions

In terms of UX, this makes a huge difference. EOS DApps can actually put many more transactions on-chain, because transactions are generally cheaper and the network allows for more of them. That way, many DApps actually put a lot of small actions on the blockchain, which makes is really feel like you utilize the blockchain more. On Ethereum, it's mostly the occasional transaction that is executed on-chain, so e.g. on Cryptokitties it's basically trading and breeding kittens. In comparison, EOSKnights has a lot more calls to the smart contract, e.g. rebirth, buying knights or items, dumping items, merging items, buying or upgrading pets, expeditions, crafting and some more. All of that is on-chain, so you get to sign a lot of transactions to the blockchain.

Whether or not it's scalable to put everything on-chain will have to proven. For a couple of tens of thousand of users and only a handful of actively used DApps, it seems really fine and definitely feels more "blockchainy".

Conclusion

Both systems have their pros and cons - sometimes it seems that paying for your transaction may not be all too bad (Peepeth calls this a feature!), but in general it feels more user-friendly to not have to worry about fees all the time. Whether users at scale will be thrilled to have to buy and stake EOS worth 50, 100 or even more $ just to be allowed to use a DApp is really questionable, but maybe it's more of an educational point where they will just have to get used to it. Therefore, EOS currently seems favorable to DApps like games or fun stuff.