I have no UI/UX professional credentials, but I’ve used Curve quite a bit.
As to color scheme, I like the DOS look and feel. To me, whether it’s DOS or new fangled interactive React whatever makes zero difference.
I just want to be easy to use and laid out in a way that makes sense.
Here’s something that always confuses me. When I try to withdraw from a pool, I’m presented with a set of choices:
Withdraw
Withdraw & Claim
Claim
Unstake from Gauge
Unstake Staked
I can see how 1-3 are different, but 4&5 always confuse me. Do I first have to Unstake and then Withdraw? And if so, do I Unstake from Gauge or do I Unstake Staked? And if I just hit Withdraw will it handle the unstaking (I think it will)? If there were only a few help popups to guide me in the right direction.
The point is that helping people feel confident that they’re making the right usage choices is important, even for experienced users.
Something else I find more complex than it needs to be is the veCRV calculations on the curve.fi/usecrv page, which tell me that the “Max $ per veCRV to have 2.5x boost” is 1.648$ in the Compound pool, for example. To me, this is backwards. What I really want to know is ‘how many dollars can I put in the Compound pool and still get the 2.5x boost?’ That is something that would help me to allocate capital across pools.
I absolutely dislike proposed design. While i understand that some newcomers wish something more “modern”, i sincerely hope that you would keep old - current - design as well.
Interaction Designer and expirence lecturing in HCI. Reach out if you guys want any user testing. Or tips or thoughts. I will try find time for evaluation. The main issue with current and new seems not well defined contrast boundaries. For example this grey while very 95 is awful at showing separations. Is there a style guide or brand swatch ?
Current Curve UI is very retro and for tech nerds. I am ok with it but a lot of other people are not.
As @RJ-2020 pointed out, new look is same retro look. I don’t see it fundamentally different from current one. So if we are keeping Curve identity, current one is OK.
My biggest pet peeve is the navigation. Been doing a lot on this platform but still find myself lost once in a while. Should logically organize the menu/sub menus better.
I think the approach is backwards. The problem with the Curve interface isn’t the look. The problem is that to take the most common decision you have to have three browser tabs and a spreadsheet open at the same time. Rather than putting lipstick on the front end, wouldn’t it be better to think about information design and workflow design? What data and computations can the website do for you to empower you to take a sensible decision without doing the computations yourself?
Now why do I need to use three different tabs with different tabs to accomplish this most fundamental task? And my mental arithmetic is such that I’m typing numbers in Excel in the fourth corner of my screen. I haven’t even gone into the scenario where I have a bigger amount that I should split across multiple pools, or if I add to a pool I already have an investment in, I may lose the max boost, or whether the bottom boost of a pool is still worth investing in (or side tokens like LQTY).
Now let’s do another workflow
(2) I have some CRV accumulated from investments that have been in place. Is it worth harvesting today (not at today’s gas prices but imagine it’s anormal weekend day)?
Let’s skip the dashboard because that’s going to make me angry because I click on CRV in the claimable tokens next to the pool name and instead it takes me to by and sell the underlying rather than to claim CRV.
Let’s start here https://dao.curve.fi/minter/gauges
I can claim 500 CRV from the IB pool. Yay. Oh wait, but if I do my boost goes from 2.5 to 2.25. Is it worth it to claim? How much is that in APY terms? How will that change my CRV / day? Maybe worth putting it off.
Oh but I have 250 CRV in the AAVE pool. What’s more is if I claim now I’ll take my boost up from 2.0 to 2.4. Maybe it’s worth the gas to claim now? What is the difference in the APY ? Oh it’s 14.9% x 2.4 / 2.0 (?) How long will be the payback period to make up for the gas if CRV stays at current prices?
The main problem with the interface is that any decision needs to involve computations on the user side, combining data from multiple tabs with inconsistent nomenclature and sorting.
Oh and one more thing, all the tables are made in a way that you can’t copy paste them into a spreadsheet.
None of what I saw on the UI design proposed addresses any of these fundamental information design elements.
As community member and DOS-kid have no probs with using Curve today’s interface, however, it could be faster since Curve will expand with more liquidity and features.
More features - faster pages you have to maintain and also interface shall be slicker for faster user experience.
I love AAVE’s interface simplicity, they just have right buttons in right places in right time letting interact with App blazing fast (especially polygon hosted App😏).
UNI interface also pure and provide fast interaction, not sure if it is scalable far beyond swaps and stakes.
For proposed new Curve interface, IMO don’t think it is the best what Curve really deserves. It’s also not necessary that Curve UI shall be different to what is available and works well at market. I would vote for review and integrate some existing good designs like AAVE or UNI and for invite professional UI designer to complete “Audit” of UI.
So, new Curve UI shall be refined, sleek and fast, taking best from available market experience)
Just another thing that I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that I found extremely offputting when I first used Curve that just came to mind. First thing that happens when you go on the website, it demands to connect to wallet. Before you’ve even had a chance to see what Curve is about in the slightest or even read any of the documentation. Every click, a giant popup demanding to connect to wallet and not showing enough information for anyone to make a remotely informed choice about whether to put money into Curve before you do.
Why does the site need the wallet immediately and obsessively pop up demanding it with an ominous “This Dapp requires access to your wallet”? I wondered if I’d gone on to a scam site that imitated curve. I can understand on a tab like “My Dashboard” or “Deposit” or “Trade” (although the trade tab doesn’t make a popup, it just does the right thing and display a little box “You haven’t connected a wallet with a button to connect one” if you so choose) that it won’t work without it. Certainly a popup is appropriate if you start inputting a transaction, but not just to see rates and such.
But the very front page where someone who’s thinking “What is Curve? How does it work?” just sees that the site refuses to work until you connect to wallet - especially for a person new to Eth ecosystems and not knowing that it’s all visible on etherscan anyway, or maybe paranoid and thinking that it’s a way of using your browser cookies to try to link your wallet to your real identity would leave in less than a minute.
Before doing anything, try to find someone who’s intelligent, financially literate, and maybe knows a bit about crypto but has never used Curve. Sit them down in front of a computer and ask them the workflows that I posed in my post yesterday (“You have 25K and want to invest (assuming you’re already comfortable with Curve risk). How would you choose a specific pool?” and “You have some accumulated CRV rewards. Should you claim it now or put it off til later?”). I would be astonished if this person managed to figure either answer out in a reasonable time.
I’m not saying turn it into Robinhood-style spoon feeding and addictive, but lay information out in a clear way, preferably in the same place, make tables exportable into CSV or set up so that they copy-paste correctly, use consistent naming for the pools.
