This was a Zero-to-One project that started with multiple theories of how emerging tech such as Ethereum blockchain might help solve one of supply chain's biggest problems. It ended with an open-source protocol, a revamped product for EY, 3 new ConsenSys start-ups, multiple external start-ups following the model, and a community of over 1,000 members.
ConsenSys partnered with EY and Microsoft to tackle an ambitious global supply chain issue. The collaboration aimed to solve the two shortcomings of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) which are 1) the inability to support syncing up multiple parties and 2) no common business logic between the same parties.
"Value leakage" in the supply chain caused by inconsistent contract data computation between partners is one of the largest problems in this industry. This inconsistency can lead to substandard outcomes, such as over or under-pricing, which can result in legal action and audits. The complexity of the contract can exacerbate the issue further.
Our ConsenSys R&D team's success hinges on discovering new value with Ethereum blockchain solutions. By 2020's end, Ethereum must prove its worth to Enterprise companies by demonstrating secure and private transactions on its network that outperform existing SaaS applications.
We used advanced cryptography on the Ethereum mainnet to ensure auditable data sharing. Our solution demonstrated the reliability of blockchain as a source of truth, connecting different systems. It's now an open-source project governed by OASIS for further improvements by entrepreneurs and engineers.
Lead Product Designer
I was the only "design" member of the team. My task was to take the visions of four different executives and align them into one coherent and actionable goal that would add value to the customer and all three companies. After untangling these visions, I worked with 1 Product Manager, 1 Project Manager, and 14 engineers to execute the beta and alpha versions.
Here is the "TLDR;" summary of the activities I performed to get there...
Industry Research
Stakeholder Interviews
Customer Surveys
Customer Interviews
Workshop Facilitation
Product Strategy
Journey Mapping
Service Design Blueprint
Before this assignment, I knew very little about how supply chains work. So to get myself up to speed, I crammed about 3 months of online supply chain courses in 2 weeks to familiarize myself with how it works and the titles of people that run it.
I also read up on industry insights from PWC's strategy + business, Bain & Company, and Gartner while following the "Let's Talk Supply Chain" podcast. I wanted to understand the process, personnel, and lingo to ask good questions.
There were four major stakeholders among the three different companies. They had held a few meetings together prior to pulling their individual teams in. I interviewed each stakeholder in person or through Zoom.
All four stakeholders collectively stated that they were all aligned on the project goal and success metrics. However, when interviewed individually, not one vision statement aligned. Some significant conflicting priorities needed to be sorted out before we moved any further.
After stakeholder interviews, I created an online survey using Airtable. Then, I distributed the survey using my LinkedIn network to find our target audience and ask for their participation. We received 44 submissions.
We wanted confirmation that the problem we were trying to solve was valuable to our target audience. From the survey, it appeared we were either off about the problem or the target audience.
At the end of the Customer Surveys, I added an area to ask if I could follow up with a 10-minute phone call. I use 10 minutes because that's a minimum commitment to an unknown ask. Most interviewees will stay longer than 10 minutes if the questions are intriguing. Twelve people were willing to participate.
Much like the survey results suggested, the problem we were trying to solve wasn't as significant or valuable as we suspected for this specific group. Most were satisfied with how their current platforms performed and found little disconnect between their partners.
Michael
For this project, I ran eight total workshops that ranged from 1 to 3 days each over the course of six months. My style of workshops is a blend of Design Thinking exercises, Lean UX methodologies, Strategyzer, and Design Sprint, with my little spin on each. I determine what to run next based on where we are in the project, if I see knowledge gaps or a need for alignment, along with the personalities and skills of the group. Here are some examples of what was run during the project kickoff.
I start each workshop with an icebreaker. The icebreaker gets the group participating from minute one and starts to build relationships among the team. It also makes participants comfortable with the tools used in strategy sessions, whether Miro or Sharpies & sticky notes.
I also like to understand each teammate's view of success and failure. Of course, the key stakeholders hold the most prominent voice. Having alignment on this is critical. However, I also want everyone to feel heard and not have to slog through work that drains them. It shows in the quality of work if the production teams' needs aren't met.
I run a few exercises to ensure the team is aligned on the big vision and understands what we are working towards. The activities also include prioritizing the most valuable items to work on first. Then, I also like the team to know where the gaps and risks are and develop a collective solution to run tests and solve for those unknowns quickly.
Service design blueprints are a great way to map a user journey and what processes need to be implemented in real-life to make it work (i.e., what is the user interfacing with, what are the tech stacks, what are the dependencies we don't control). I struggled to get clear answers on how the target user achieves their goals today. Therefore, I created a customer journey map based on one of the stakeholder's visions. I also added a service design blueprint with it. The service design blueprint allowed everyone to follow along the complete product journey, how the customer would interact with it (front-stage), and what dependencies and backend functions needed to work for this to be possible (back-stage). Viewing this blueprint helps everyone see where the opportunities and gaps are.
During this phase, I use various techniques to generate and explore ideas for the product design. User Flow Diagrams are a great way to map out the user's journey through the product, identifying requirements, user pain points, and areas we can immediately create value. I like getting the whole team involved in the process. Sketch sessions are a tool I use quite frequently. They allow the team to quickly sketch out different design concepts and explore various options without falling into groupthink. I then tidy these ideas up in a wireframe and create a low-fidelity prototype that can be tested and refined.
I created several rounds of prototyping using varying degrees of complexity. First, I used a guided slide walkthrough prototype for unmoderated testing. Then I continued growing the fidelity to a freer-form clickable prototype. I used the tool Figma for all prototypes.
Unmoderated testing technique allows visitors to comment
Used for moderated testing and in-depth presentations
Along the way, I'm always thinking about reusable components rather than recreating the wheel every time. As the prototype tightens up, I create a component library and UI Kit resources. Since we were going to repackage this project and put it out as open-source, I decided to make my own simplified version rather than using something like Bootstrap. I also wanted to make it simple for front-end developers to follow and stand up quickly.
An interesting task given to me was to brand the protocol. I've never heard of creating a brand for a protocol, but this proved quite valuable when encouraging builders to use the open-source project. In addition, it was fun watching the Baseline brand explode into the Ethereum scene and be used on numerous slide decks at conferences and pitch presentations outside of my company.
I designed and built our marketing website before the official launch of the baseline protocol. I used the React-based framework, Gatsby, and Tailwind CSS to speed up the build and finished this in about a week.
The team also included documentation for the protocol. I worked with the team to make the documentation more approachable than what was currently in the Web3 world. We wanted the documentation to be fun and less dry, encouraging viewers to keep reading and grok the concept easily regardless if you were an engineer or not.
I mainly prepped presentation decks for engineers to present at conferences. But, I did have a few opportunities to discuss use cases for the protocol, what I found in my research, and how companies might try and incorporate this innovation in a low-risk way.
Another duty of mine was to create pitch decks to present to potential partners and investors. I worked closely with sales and our executive team to understand their goals and the goals of their target audience.
Once we gained traction with people using the protocol, we contacted the users for one-on-one interviews. It was interesting how each interpreted what they thought the protocol did and how they planned to use it.
We hooked up a virtual chat to our website and documentation using Intercom. Intercom was a great way to answer questions and query interests and expectations for the baseline protocol . This connection also helped us attract more customer interviews.
We tracked analytics across all of our touchpoints to measure growth and retention. In addition, we experimented with different messages and events to see what best fits our audience.
We started a livestream baseline office hours that still runs to this day. We were also very active across social media platforms and conferences and ran our own hack-a-thons and grant programs.
Our first triumph came in the form of an open-source protocol, a groundbreaking framework that embraces transparency and decentralization. By making our technology freely accessible, we have fostered a community of developers, enthusiasts, and visionaries who have joined forces to push the boundaries of what is possible for supply chain management.
Companies signed on as supporting founders immediately following release
Through Github and Baseline events, the community has amassed over 1,800 participants
Post-release, three teams spun up using tools and product strategy created from the baseline project. Those teams were Ligero, END-Labs, and ZK Enterprise. END-Labs was where most of my team headed while I stayed in R&D for ConsenSys. ZK Enterprise is a continuation of the Baseline project with a fresh new group focused on perfecting the zero-knowledge proofs aspect for enterprise clients.
As mentioned, I helped with the material to attract clients along with meeting executives kicking the tires on baseline and seeing what their needs were. As a result, our team was hired for engagements with some major companies to help improve their B2B processes. For the most part, I was a consultant for these engagements. My depth into the engagement depended on how strong their product team was. I worked overall strategy, to coach of young product teams, to getting my hands dirty in their MVP.
I lastly wanted to mention some projects and products that had success with this model outside of my company. I've had the pleasure of sharing knowledge with the heads of these companies and it's fun to see some of my ideation grow into some very large ideas and nifty product concepts.
My information architecture and design system has been utilized by EY in their product, OpsChain. OpsChain is a Supply Chain Management solution specifically focused on combining product traceability with inventory management across an extended supply chain
Provide and Unibright teamed up to establish a “Coca Cola Bottling Harbor”, enabling a low barrier network joining process for Coca-Cola Bottling suppliers. They are utilizing the Baseline Protocol to enable this experience.
Another neat Provide and Unibright collaboration is Baseledger. It makes it easier for enterprises aiming for a productive deployment of the Baseline Protocol across a variety of blockchain business cases at enterprise scale.
