Developers Take Heed

There is a lot of discussion about "going mainstream" with cryptocurrency and how to go about get the masses to embrace blockchain. This is a challenge to say the least. However, there is one area that I think to be addressed.

This applies to Steem as well as the industry as a whole.

Yesterday, I delegated some SP to @dlux-io. This is a program that I found interesting and that, from the sounds of it, has incredible potential. The AR/VR technology is going to change how we do business. AR will offer instant access to information while VR will change many industries in terms of training, travel, and experience. To say that it is a not the easiest of industries is an understatement.

Thus, I decided to watch the walk thru video they put together to get the basics to create a post using this powerful platform. It was a 25 minute video which certainly is enough time to get one creating a post using this technology.

Sadly, it did not turn out that way.

After 25 minutes, I can tell you I am no closer to creating a Dlux post than most of you are right now. In fact, at this point, this application only looks promising to developers. If they are targeting that 1% of the Internet, this could be a home run. However, if they want the other 99% of the Internet users, this is way off the mark.

I will ask a question that I would like each reader to answer in the comment section:

How many of you would scroll through hundreds of lines of code simply to change the background?

My guess is few to none will.

Here is something that I believe to be true:

If you want an application adopted by the masses, never, ever have them look through lines of code let alone have to change something in it.

They are not going to do it.

Hence we see the biggest challenge with the entire crypto industry. Ease of use is the next challenge for developers. The masses wants copy/paste, drag/drop and templates. One of the reasons Wordpress became so popular is the ease of use. In about 10 minutes a full blog can be designed using a template as the layout. If one does not like the standard ones, there are hundreds on the web, some for free, others for purchase. My point is ease of use is critical.

Steemit.com is often accused of being to complex for many people. It is true that it can be overwhelming when one starts. Part of that is just the entire ecosystem and how it takes a while to understand what is going on. However, I feel another aspect of this is markdown, something that many are not accustomed to. How many posts do we see with the pictures off to the left and not centered? Even busy.org provides the cheater bar at the top to insert pics, bold and italicize, and change font size. This is what people are accustomed to.

I sense that programmers often forget what they are dealing with. Something that is a simple coding change is not going to sit with the masses. They are not going to take the time to learn, nor do they care. Plug and play is the way today.

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"Dumbing" things down for the general public is vital. In journalism, they use to say write as if your audience was a bunch of 6th graders. This was so that everyone could understand the point of the story. We need to move in that direct. Until everyone can use cryptocurrency and the applications in an easy manner, mass adoption will still be a pipedream.

The Internet was a technical paradise for years when it first started. Many often point to the development of the web browser as the game changer. Before that, it was too technical for the average person. Once the web browser came about, IP addresses were no longer seen. The system still worked the same except 196.xxx.x.xx was replaced with Yahoo.com. This is what the general public understood.

Crypto is at the point where it needs to transition from the technical to the general. There are many applications on here that are easy to use (one a newbie gets passed the posting/active key situation). To be honest, they are no different than using a mainstream app. That is where their value resides. Busy.org, @steempeak, @steemhunt, @dlike, and @actifit have no code visible at all. Using them is as easy as Reddit, Facebook, and Google search. That is where the masses level of understanding is.

Steem has amazing developers who have a ton of knowledge. The ability to create something like @dlux-io shows this. However, developers also need the ability to understand the target market and how technically inept they truly are. The "inspect element" on each webpage only makes the eyes of most glaze over.

Therefore, over the next couple years, in addition to security, I think ease of use is the biggest shift the cryptocurrency world will need to make. This applies equally for the general things like keys along with specific applications. On Steem, I think it vital that developers take this to heart. If the average Joe or Jane cannot be using your site within 5-10 minutes, it is most likely destined to fail.

Remember, people's attention is limited, disjointed, and valuable. This means that all the technical stuff needs to be seamless in the background for them to use it. How many would use cell phones if they had to manually switch from tower-to-tower when driving along?

I believe most equate looking at code to having to switch towers.

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