[Timestone as a Minimum Delightful Product]

Background Timestone is a way to snapshot any web page and store that capture as a NFT on the blockchain. One of the first conversations we had as a team was going through the maze of potential use cases for a tool like this - everything from controversial tweets, deleted / edited articles, to journalism and legal utility. The overarching theme that we noticed, however, was the fact that most of our target user personas are non crypto-savvy, and either unfamiliar with web3 concepts or actively skeptical of them.

Priorities We wanted to create a crypto product that was a genuinely delightful experience for any user, especially with our vision of Timestone as a self-funded public good. This required us to prioritize certain things like accessibility, low fees, and frictionless onboarding and played a major role in our decision to launch Timestone on a chain with those specific advantages.

UX Design The cropping interactions of the full-size webpage screenshot required some careful design work to make it intuitive enough for any casual user to easily buy into the idea and get attached to their snapshot. We also optimized the end-to-end user flow to reduce as much as the usual friction of a crypto product (friction that often comes before delivering real value in alot of web3 products) as possible, delaying things like wallet connections and using libraries that made onboarding web2 users seamless.

Branding (Typography, Colors, etc.) We were very intentional about the branding for Timestone - starting with a mood board of old school investigative print journalism, magazines, and other academic and literary inspiration. We chose the primary body fonts to mirror fonts that are familiar to an audience that is comfortable with academic and literary contexts, vs flashy modern headline fonts or the latest design trends. Other subtle choices makes Timestone look more like reading The Village Voice, vs getting sold on a scammy PFP NFT.

Summary We believe that we made significant inroads in solving a number of the trickiest design challenges of a product like this - whether it be creating a magical experience for users via our user interfaces, or outlining the right guardrails and systems for a sustainable, public good product and ecosystem. We're incredibly proud of what we've built, and are very excited to share Timestone with a broader audience!