How do you make a DAO usable for people who aren't crypto-native?
Service and product design for a Web3 DAO admin platform, turning on-chain governance, team bonuses, wallet setup, and treasury management into flows ordinary people can actually follow.
Project frame: DAO-B: making a DAO usable for people who aren't crypto-native
Role
Product & Service Designer: service design, product design, research & testing
Year
2020
Platform
Web
Service
whole journey
Service design mapped the end-to-end journey across people, money, and governance, not only the screens.
Plain
language first
On-chain concepts were translated into language and flows a non-crypto user could follow.
States
proposal lifecycle
Bonus requests were shown across new, voting, finished, and declined states so admins always knew what needed action.
Wallet
treasury control
Wallet connection, deposits, payouts, and bonus settings were treated as part of the same operational journey.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
01 · Context
The problem
A DAO asks ordinary people to vote on-chain, manage a shared treasury, and govern collectively, concepts that were alien to almost everyone in 2020. The job was to make on-chain governance approachable for people who are not crypto-native.
02 · Evidence
What shaped the direction
Web3's real barrier
The hard part of a DAO is not the chain. Governance, voting, and treasury are unfamiliar to most people, and clarity is what gets them through.
Admin workflow clarity
The admin experience had to make proposals, approvals, teams, profiles, and wallet activity feel like normal business software.
Treasury confidence
Shared money needs extra reassurance, so wallet balances, account connection, bonus limits, and payout periods were surfaced clearly.
03 · Process
How it came together
The brief
A DAO asks ordinary people to do extraordinary-sounding things: vote on-chain,
manage a shared treasury, govern collectively. In 2020 that was alien to almost
everyone. The job was to make it approachable through admin software that felt
closer to everyday workplace tooling than crypto infrastructure.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
The admin dashboard: company bonus proposals, voting status, wallet context, and clear yes/no decisions in one place.
Mapping the whole service journey
A DAO spans people, money, and governance, so I mapped the whole service journey
rather than decorating individual screens. That meant finding where people would
get lost and smoothing those moments: creating users, managing teams, reviewing
bonus requests, connecting a wallet, and understanding what happened after a
vote.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
New requests separate the immediate admin decision from the wider proposal lifecycle.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Voting keeps the active decision visible, with amounts, percentages, vote counts, and simple yes/no actions.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Finished proposals show the result without asking people to decode on-chain history.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Declined proposals get their own state so rejected requests do not disappear or look unresolved.
Designing the admin model around people
The product was not just a treasury view. It needed a usable operating model:
teams, members, roles, bonuses, and profile data all had to connect back to the
governance flow.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Teams translate governance into an organisation structure people already understand.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Team editing keeps budget allocation, staff, bonus amounts, and current percentages together.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Creating a user uses familiar admin patterns, with wallet details treated as one field in the wider profile.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
The profile view ties an individual member back to bonus decisions, votes, wallet, team, and account details.
Translating on-chain concepts into plain language
The barrier to Web3 is the unfamiliarity, not the technology. I translated
on-chain concepts into plain language and familiar patterns, and tested the
flows because crypto conventions can't be assumed.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Settings make the treasury rules explicit: wallet, bonus limit, payout timing, voting period, and notifications.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
The wallet view makes shared money feel auditable, with balance, deposits, payout tabs, and wallet history.
Reconstructed artifact · Product interface
Wallet connection is reduced to a small choice set instead of becoming the whole experience.
04 · Craft
Decision trail
01Used service design to map the whole journey across people, money, and governance, rather than designing isolated screens.
02Translated on-chain concepts into plain language and familiar patterns so non-crypto users could participate.
03Made proposal states visible in the dashboard, because admins needed to know what was new, what was being voted on, what had finished, and what had been declined.
04Kept treasury actions close to business concepts like bonuses, payout dates, teams, and wallet history instead of foregrounding blockchain mechanics.
05Validated the flows with research and testing, since Web3 conventions can't be assumed.
05 · Impact
Outcome
The final admin experience made DAO operations feel closer to familiar workplace tooling: manage teams, review bonus proposals, check vote status, edit people, and control wallet funds without asking users to think like crypto specialists.
