My guest today is Graeme Blackwood who is the Head of Design at Argent. In this episode, we discuss the following: - Graeme Blackwood Bio - Realizing passion for design at an early age - Working for the UK government in taxation - Meeting Itamar Lesuisse and joining Argent - Do you need to understand the blockchain to get a design job in the crypto field? - Dealing with fast paced nature of working in the crypto industry - Proactively working with stakeholders as a designer - Conducting user research, usability testing in crypto - Difference between art and design - Compensation for designers in crypto - Investing strategy for buying NFTs, regret minimization - How to contact Graeme Blackwood For show notes, guest bio, and more, please visit: www.designmba.show
Graeme wrote his first line of code aged 8, in 1992 on a Commodore 64, and built his first website in 1998. He's solved design problems for clients such as VW, Johnson and Johnson, the British Royal Family and the UK Government. His expertise spans many disciplines including user research, service design, UX / product design, and creative direction.Graeme began working full time in crypto in early 2018, when he joined Argent. He believes that crypto heralds the biggest shift in history for how we exchange value, and that it will have much more impact than the Internet. His goal is to solve the myriad of UX problems with decentralized ownership and self-sovereignty so that everyone benefits.
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Namaste and welcome. I am Jayneil Dalal and you are listening to the design MBA which is a real-life MBA program for designers. You will learn how to launch a side hustle and level up your design careers from the interviews rock star designers.
Jayneil Dalal: Today's amazing guest is Graeme Blackwood. Graeme is the head of design at Argent. Let me tell you this. Argent is one of the best wallets you can have for buying and storing your precious cryptocurrency. I personally use it. It's one of the best out there. That's all I’m going to say but do check it out but Graeme is not only the head of design at Argent but he is in the truest sense a multi-disciplinary designer, yes, and not only does he to design for digital things but he also loves design of analog things clocks, hats … oh … and he's an amazing drummer.
So, without further ado, Graeme, welcome to the show, my friend.
Graeme Blackwood: That's quite an intro. Thank you, Jayneil. Great to be here.
Jayneil: Yeah. My brother is a drummer. He used to drum a lot but I think his current apartment doesn't … the policy there doesn't let you have a drum and just keep blasting it off. So …
Graeme: No, if you've got a full acoustic kit, I think your neighbors in an apartment block are going to probably break down your door and try and hurt you very much. So …
Jayneil: And he did say there was a digital version of the drums where you kind of wear your headphones. And so, you can't hear it but you got to put in the headphones and you just like … just play the drums but you can't hear …
Graeme: It's not … it doesn't feel the same, obviously.
Jayneil: That's exactly what he said. So, I’m getting to curious about your journey. When did you realize that design is for you? When did you realize that like … growing up as a kid, as a child, maybe later on in your life when did you come to the realization that “Design is my calling”?
Graeme: Yeah, it's a really tough one really. I mean, I have to go back, I think, to my parents. My mum is … she's an architect and she also sculpts. I think, a couple of … well, that's not that one but there's some sculpture in the background actually of hers. And she always kind of instilled this creative stuff. She was always doing creative stuff with us and always encouraging it. She's also a musician and stuff and I think that's where all my musical interests come from as well. My dad is an engineer. He's an aeronautical engineer. So, he designs flight simulators for pilot training but he does the software side of it. So, he always had computers. I mean, I think, he's had computers since the ‘70s. So, I was born into a household which had computers from birth really, from a very young age and I was always kind of exposed both to this engineering kind of computer science side from my dad and then this kind of creative side from my mum. And I used to spend a lot of time gaming. I remember playing Texas Instruments Games. I think it was Maze or Amazing or something like that. It was like a cat and mouse game and stuff right through the kind of Commodores and Amigas and all that sort of stuff. So, I was always gaming a lot. I think I wrote my first basic program “Hello world” when I was eight years old on a Commodore 64, I think, but … so, all the while in parallel with these kinds of two tracks, engineering, kind of coding science gaming and also this creative stuff, I would draw and like paint, all these sorts of things. And my assumption was that I would that into some kind of computer thing because I’d spent a lot of time on the computer. And around the age of 13, I built my first website. Again, it was for a game and I think that was back in ‘98 or something. And then, because very few people had websites around and I started getting interest from kind of friends who ran companies or family friends and stuff and gradually business colleagues, they started to … I started to end up doing websites for these people and freelancing and stuff but it was all kind of code … well, I mean, there's a degree of creativity you have to do when you're creating a website fully yourself but really I’d assume that I was going into full … into sort of a full code base sort of … much more into the hardcore and the depths of becoming an engineer and a developer and stuff. And I went to Canada in 2001 and met someone out there, a lady called Jackie, and she is a sculptor and an artist and I think she did a lot of film set design. Jackie Bagley, her name is. And I just kind of … it was … at that point, something kind of sparked off in me. I just thought, I was like “Hang on. I don't just want to be doing code. I want to do this creative stuff. This is … this is actually kind of who I am.” I realize … I realize now that actually it was both but we can get to that. And it was at that point … so, I was probably around … I just would kind of guess but I’m not going to do the workout … about 15, 16, something that. And then I came back and I thought “Okay, I need … I now need to kind of shift away from this kind of computer science and start doing graphic design and fully understand, learn all the kind of software and all the tools and stuff.” So, that's where I pivoted into graphic design. And then eventually I came full circle back into engineering.
Jayneil: I was also … yeah, I was also in Canada from 2000 to 2002. So, I was in India before. Then I moved there for two years and … where in Canada, by the way? I was in Toronto.
Graeme: I was in … I was in Calgary.
Jayneil: Oh nice.
Graeme: It was only for a six to eight-week period over the summer but it was … it was a really, really kind of good time, yeah.
Jayneil: That is amazing.
Graeme: With the stampede and everything.
Jayneil: In Canada, I’ll tell you this, I love the place but the weather, coming from India, man, I love the warm weather and let's just say that the cold in Toronto, oh my god, it got crazy.
Graeme: Yes. Yeah, yeah. I’ve not experienced that. I was in the summer.
Jayneil: Lucky you. So, you're doing graphic design, you're doing a lot of this design work. How on earth does one end up from the graphic design realm to being a designer in crypto? What made you join Argent?
Graeme: Yeah. So, I’ve always been attracted to, I think, because of that engineering side and the computer science, I’ve always been attracted to kind of pretty interesting problems and purposeful stuff as well but that said, originally, I just wanted to kind of work for companies where the clients were household names. So, that was my … after I got out of university, I did three years of a design degree, I got out of university and I was just looking … initially, actually, I was looking … I was hoping that my band was going to get signed and we were going to go on tour and tour the states and stuff but eventually, I just thought “You know what? I’m not going to hang around waiting for this to happen and I should actually get a job.” So, I got a job working in kind of a code shop. It was a little company that built websites and apps for people, web apps and stuff and gradually found my way through to getting kind of more household name clients. And then, eventually, I moved to Moscow for … I was intending to move there for quite a long time but for all sorts of reasons, we came back early. And then, after I got back to the UK, I found myself working for the UK government in the tax office in fact. So, it’s like the IRS. It's called HMRC, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, very fancy name but it's like the IRS in the states. And I was designing … I was on a team that was designing the fraud detection system, the cyber fraud detection systems. It was transaction monitoring. We were monitoring every transaction that flowed through … every tax submission, every benefit claim that flowed through HMRC, we monitored basically and we looked for any kind of anomalies and we ran machine learning on it and stuff and we were trying to catch anyone who was trying to defraud the taxpayer or defraud the government.
Jayneil: So, this was all the work for the Russian government while you were in Russia.
Graeme: No, no, this isn't Russia. This is back in the UK … not Russian government.
Jayneil: Oh, okay.
Graeme: We might want to clarify that. No, no … so, I was in Russia for six months and for all sorts of reasons, we had to come back early. We were planning to be there for several years but we didn't. And then I came to work for the UK government. Well, I mean, you can imagine how the UK … because I was working in a high security environment, I had to be cleared, security cleared and stuff.
Jayneil: Oh my god!
Graeme: So, imagine how fun that was when I just come back from Russia.
Jayneil: You're like James Bond. You have all this security level of clearances.
Graeme: Yeah. Well, they weren't happy about my having been in Russia for quite a while and they were …
Jayneil: Oh my god.
Graeme: I got the clearance, eventually.
Jayneil: I know this is like a slight tangent but I always thought that if you got a security level clearance like, oh my god, you're a special one, there's like special terminal, you can log in with a security clearance and then you can access like some … I don't know, like top secret stuff. Is that just movie stuff, Bond stuff?
Graeme: No. I mean … I think there's a degree of truth in that. That depends on your level of clearance but it's more that you have to be cleared in order to be allowed to access certain records and have certain … because the … if you … like the access that I had to information about customers was quite high. And so, I needed to be cleared for that but, as I said, because I’ve been in Russia, they were very interested in knowing a lot about me in order … before they were prepared to give me clearance. So, they had … they asked very, very personal questions because they're going to kind of very deep level of information sharing before they were … before they were prepared to.
Jayneil: I stopped you as you were saying that you were doing a lot of fraud monitoring and detection for the UK government.
Graeme: Yes, exactly. So, we were doing … we were … so, I basically was part of the team designing the transaction monitoring system for all of the money that flowed through the revenue, the tax and revenue service, HMRC. And … so, I think that's about … I think, to give you an idea, it’s roughly about kind of 500 to 600 billion Pounds. So, it's like a year … that's kind of how much money flows through the tax service. And that's kind of what we're talking about. So … I don't know how much that is in dollars but probably 700, 800 billion dollars roughly that flows through it just in terms of reporting and money going in and coming out and stuff. And so, you can imagine there's a lot of fraud and there's a lot of error but we were focused specifically on the fraud. And in order to do that job, because we were like this kind of all-seeing eye over the whole tax system, I had to understand and learn about almost all of the tax system. I had to go quite deeply into kind of companies tax and personal tax and really understand all the benefit systems and stuff.
Jayneil: Let me stop you right there. You said that you had to almost be an expert on taxation in the UK like you had to learn about the tax code for companies, individuals. Why do you have to do that? What if you just … I mean, you're a designer. I mean, a lot of times designers don't have to learn all the technical stuff but why did you have to learn and want to learn about that.
Graeme: It's a good … yeah, that's a good point. So, I didn't have to. It was really that … by osmosis because I was going out and meeting the experts to understand their job, to understand how best to build the system to serve their needs. I ended up sitting next to them whilst … and I say “Okay. Well, show me how you make a determination that something's fraud or not fraud.” And so, they would talk me through the whole process “Well, this is how the tax works and this is the sort of thing we see and this is something called carousel fraud which is where VAT companies pass on the VAT allowance and stuff and then someone goes … walk about with the money and stuff.” And they teach you really how to spot stuff. And over time, I just picked it up. And for the kind of … the majority of the time I was there, I really, really believed that we would be able to plug all the holes where all of this kind of money was being stolen or they were being … it was all disappearing and flowing out of the tax system, we'd be able to plug all of these holes and then the money would be used for what it's supposed to be used for, for helping people and for health and social care and stuff. And that was my kind of purpose. That was my driving purpose behind being there but after three years of being there, I realized that the organization itself is so massive and the tax service … and the taxation system is so complicated that you're never going to … you're never going to escape and you're never actually going to … it's just the kind of … you're going to be on this treadmill forever.
Jayneil: And the criminals are also smart. The people who want to avoid those, who want to make fraud, they're also very smart too.
Graeme: It is cat and mouse, absolutely. And so, it's constantly changing. I mean, I tried to think how much fraud was in the checks … the checks that they sent out in the States. That was probably rife with fraud. I suspect that the checks … like some of the benefit stuff that they gave in the UK was rife with fraud as well, I dread to think. Yeah. And so, I kind of thought “Well, actually …” the more I … the more I understood about the tax system and the way that the money works and the way that government is funded, the kind of the more disillusioned I became really. I was like “This is just … it's just a complicated mess.” And as those thoughts were forming, we were … we're in the 2017 kind of bull run and I’ve been kind of dabbling with crypto a little bit and getting really excited and really curious about all this stuff and took part in a few ICOs and got wrecked and all of the kind of craziness that was going on back then.
Jayneil: And what does wrecked mean right away? Wrecked means you lost …
Graeme: I lost my money. Lost all my money. So, come the end of 2017, I’d sort of fulfilled the things I felt that I wanted to do at HMRC in the UK government. And a friend who was also on my team introduced me to Itamar who had been looking for a designer. And so, we started talking, got on really well and that's how I kind of fell in … some of the things I had been experiencing when I’ve been going through all these ICOs and realizing like having to sign a transaction to set the gas limit on Ethereum and all this insane stuff, I was like “This has got to change. People are saying crypto is the future. This is not the future. This is just … this is just pure insanity.” So, when I met Itamar and Itamar pitched me what he was wanting to achieve with Argent, getting rid of seed phrases, not having to worry about gas and making it feel a kind of a neo bank but with crypto, it’s fully decentralized, non-custodial neo bank, I was like “Okay, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is solving all the pain points that I’ve had when I’ve been doing these ICOs and trying to buy crypto and trying to explore Ethereum. So, where do I sign?” basically. And at the same time … so, that was one side of it and the other side of it was actually, the purpose I’d realized, I was like “We're not going to solve this from the inside of government. There are too many vested interests. There's too many fiefdoms really inside government where everyone has their own little bit and they're not interested in solving problems really. They're interested in saving for their retirement and keeping the control of their little domain.” And so, I thought “Well, let's give it a shot changing it from the outside and let's build a completely parallel system called crypto which is going to be really hard to censor.” Actually, I’ve written some stuff on tax on my Medium blog around how hard it will be to tax this stuff eventually as well and the impact that it’ll have on government and I think it will force change. And so, I was like “Okay, I can't … I haven't been successful in changing from the inside. So, I’m going to try and force change from the outside.” And that's kind of what led me full circle into crypto as well as my own personal experience with crypto and wanting to solve some of the obvious pain points like seed phrases and stuff. So, that's how I found my way into it.
Jayneil: Now, when you were talking to Itamar who's one of the founders and CEO of Argent, how relevant was your understanding of crypto or at that stage, even if you didn't know anything about crypto, he would have still hired you? Do you think that played a big role in just like him hiring you, the fact that you had an understanding of crypto?
Graeme: I think … I’d have to ask him but yeah, I mean, when … in the first little coffee that we had together, when I pulled out my ledger and I said “I’ve got one of these.” I think, back then, that was pretty unusual. It was unusual enough to find someone that had one but to find a designer that actually had been using crystal and had a ledger, I think that was pretty surprising for him. And I’m sure that it helped that I’d had some kind of understanding but also the work I’ve been doing, monitoring transactions, crypto is all about transactions. So, it was … I’d just done three years of very relevant work albeit in the tax service but it's all kind of very related in terms of the sorts of things I was looking at, the data, the way that transactions were flowing and stuff and it was the same sort of thing in crypto. So, yeah, I think it was … I guess if someone had come from banking maybe, a designer that had worked in some kind of banking app, that may have been just as good. Yeah, I’m sure that finding a designer that was into crypto was probably quite unusual and he was probably quite pleased but you'd have to ask him, I don't know.
Jayneil: So, now that you are the head of design at Argent, growing your team, hired people, looking to hire people in the future, I’m going to ask you questions that a lot of designers want to ask and that I’ve heard in private conversations but it's like they don't want to sound stupid or greedy or whatever the right adjective is. I don't give a damn. I’m just going to ask you and I would love to hear what you think about these assumptions I have. And what I mean by that is, for reference, this is 2022, so I’m talking in regards to a designer wanting to get into crypto in 2022. So, obviously things have changed from when you got into design world as a crypto designer versus now. So, just for context.
Graeme: Yeah, it's been almost four years since I started, which seems crazy now. I mean, I don't … I’ve always thought for kind of OGs … I mean the true OGs of 2012 or whatever, 2011, maybe even earlier, but some of the … with this new bull run, apparently, I’m considered OG now and it’s like how does that work.
Jayneil: You are.
Graeme: So, yeah.
Jayneil: So, in 2022, Graeme, I want to join crypto but I don't have any crypto experience. Maybe I have some big Fortune 500 company names on my résumé, I don't know, the Googles of the world, the Ubers of the world. Do you think that's enough or how important do you think today understanding of the blockchain cryptocurrency is important if I want to get a job as a crypto designer?
Graeme: I don't think it's necessary to understand the blockchain and crypto because I think that … well, there are aspects of it which are issues for designers just because they haven't really been sold by the engineers yet and it’s hard to kind of go into a few examples but ultimately, if … the way I see it is that if we want crypto to succeed, if we want non-custodial censorship-resistant money to succeed, it has to be 10 times better than what we have today that's centralized and custodial i.e. the banks hold your money for you, they can stop you taking it out. And so, if we are limiting ourselves to what blockchain does today and all of the quirks and limitations and irritations of blockchain today, then we're never going to get 10X and we're never going to actually achieve that promise. So, for that reason, I don't think it really matters if as a designer you don't understand this stuff, the blockchain specifically, because you shouldn't really have to. And in some ways, I think, maybe designers that don't understand are at an advantage because they'll be asking questions … they'll be asking the question why, “Why does that …” like when an engineer says “We can't do that,” a designer should say “Why can't we do that?” They shouldn't just lie down and accept. Maybe if they know too much about the blockchain, maybe they'd be more willing to accept that it's an issue but actually, it shouldn't be and it should be solved. And so, designers need to kind of trust their instinct, I think and push back hard. Unfortunately, this is why I love Argent, is right from the top, the founders themselves are of the same attitude and don't just accept that a certain way of doing things is the right way of doing things. And so, we're all kind of singing from the same sheet, beating the same drum but, yeah, I don't think designers should worry about that.
Jayneil: That's an amazing take that I’ve heard because my assumption was that in such a hot market where the demand I see for crypto designers is high from what I’m seeing and, to me, it seems if one has domain expertise, it might give them an edge but I also see your point about if they don't have domain experience, they're going to ask beginner level questions and challenge the assumption but if I’m going to be a designer in crypto and I’m designing for those users, is it not a lot of work for me to just get on board and up to speed like what's going on and … the industry's moving so fast. How do you do it? Every day there's some new development.
Graeme: There are some … there are some concepts which I think for a new designer a bit strange. So, if you take the idea of tokens like I remember thinking years ago was it “What's the … why are they talking about tokens? What’s an ERC20 token?” and not really understanding what that was. Now, really, in most cases, a token is just a share of something … There are different things like a token that represents a Dollar equivalent or a Pound equivalent. They're called stable coins and they have different types, they're different flavors of that like there's USDC which is backed by dollars, backed … well, in most cases, it’s backed by dollars but then you have DYE which is an algorithmic stable coin which is backed by crypto itself. And by backed, it means that the value of say … let's say you have Ethereum that's … the value of the Ethereum that is then kind of locked up and deposited. Based on that, you're then allowed to draw out an amount of this stable coin. It's a bit having a mortgage of a house. And when you mortgage your house, you can then release some money from the house in form of cash and do what you want with it. And so, you have this this equity that's locked up, this kind of collateral which is your house but in the case of DYE, it's Ethereum or some other coins as well. So, there are different flavors of these stable coins but basically, they're all just tokens. And the majority of tokens are some kind of share … even if they're called a governance token, it's kind of … it's a share but with no dividend off it. And so, it is possible to … if you come from … if you have any kind of experience, any kind of shares … stocks or shares, then it's very easy, I think, to translate that. If you had no experience in any kind of trading or any kind of banking or any kind of foreign exchange like even just swapping money between currencies and stuff, all of that helps, I think, but if you've not done any of that …
Jayneil: It can be very challenging.
Graeme: Yeah, you might find it a bit more challenging just because it is very financial. And that's the only kind of caveat, I suppose, to what I’ve said before.
Jayneil: The reason I’m asking you this question is because I think that Argent is hands down one of the best designed wallet experiences out there even for people who are just getting started out there. So, kudos to you and the team. And I see your activity on Twitter, I’ve had conversations with you before this and it is very clear to me that you are continuously updating your knowledge with the latest developments in crypto, what are things happening. And because you're doing that, the experience at Argent is keeping up to date with that. I can see that in the experience. You're thinking ahead. You're up to date. And this is very different from, let's say, if you're working or designing some tools for some 100-year-old company like a regulated industry. Things are not changing overnight. You go in, you do your job and you're out. That's it.
Graeme: Yes. I think that's probably fair.
Jayneil: But this is different, right? Would you say that? This is a little bit different from that. You can't just come in and do your thing and not expect to update any of your knowledge especially if you're working in crypto?
Graeme: Yeah. I think it's … if you have a team around you that is like a product team that … someone has to understand it, at the end of the day. So, if you have a product manager, they're going to be the ones that understand it and you end up just getting told what to do. If as a designer you're satisfied with that and not fully understanding the reasons behind something and the reasons why you're being told by your product manager “Just do this,” then okay but I would argue that if you want to design something successfully and you really want to solve problems, you kind of need to understand what the problem is fully. So, yes, there is … I think if you want to get into this space and you want to be effective and successful, then, yeah, you need to be prepared to read a lot and really immerse yourself … and not just read. I think, try all the protocols, do some swaps on UNI Swap, send some money between Ethereum and an exchange and do some investments and … you're going to lose money probably, you might also gain some money, you may get an airdrop which may cancel out all of your losses and … but you'll learn a lot. And as you start to do that, you'll start to kind of appreciate how things work and why they work but … there are kind of … there's a deeper level as well of understanding, I think, that I aspire to. And that's kind of getting into like the protocol level and to understand why things ZK rollups, zero-knowledge rollups are a better solution to a competitor L1 chain to Ethereum. I’m sure that some of the listeners probably don't even know what I’m talking about but it matters though, it really matters. If you're wanting to … if your objective is to achieve decentralization and censorship resistance, then you need to understand how certain technologies or certain approaches to … which technology are you going to invest in as a team. Now, the designer doesn't have to understand that arguably but they need to understand the implications of working with one particular decision versus another as a team because there are implications.
Jayneil: And right there, when you mention about that, understanding the ZK sync rollups, I think that's what, in my opinion, makes you so good at what you do design wise. I think that is what makes … this behavior or mindset that you have, I personally think it's one of the most essential things a designer has to have if they want to succeed in crypto is … I’m going to bet that … normally if you have 9 to 5 working hours, I would bet that there are times after work like the traditional after 9 to 5, you might be reading some protocol, you might be trying some new protocol, you might be trying a competitor wallet, whatever that is …
Graeme: Yeah, yeah. And I have a family as well and then … and my wife isn't very happy often about me doing this. I do try to … I mean, there is that as well. It's like it's so full on and it is 24/7. It's not the stock market which closes at 4 p.m. or whatever. It's 24/7, seven days a week and it's quite hard to shut off. So, that is also something to bear in mind, I think, if you're going to get into this space.
Jayneil: And I’m so glad you're opening that up because … I work in companies like Fortune 500 companies in regulated industries where the clients are just again big behemoth companies Boeing or Apple and they're managers there. So, a lot of times, as a designer, you would wait for the product team or someone to involve you in a conversation, right? Because you're “Oh, how am I going to fight all these battles, all these fiefdoms?” And who cares. At the end of the day, I mean, designers may not accept but this is the hard truth. A lot of times I would be sitting in the teams and the conversation would be “Oh, who cares? At the end of the day, it's just some six-figure paid manager who's going to use these tools.” So, I mean, if we fight this fight or not for them right now, who cares. It's okay. It can wait the next day but now, in crypto you're dealing with people's money like this is hardcore money that if … because of some stupid mistake or not good design, people can lose a lot of money. And I’ve heard stories of people losing a lot of money because of just poor design. So, would it be fair to say that when you're working at Argent, and just taking this example, as a designer you're not waiting for someone to say like “Knock, knock. Hey, Graeme, we're having this conversation over here. Do you want to get involved in this new design?” or would you proactively get involved in conversations?
Graeme: I think that's another … that's a good point as well but again, I apply this to … I apply this approach to any design. I don't really think it's specifically crypto. I have worked with designers that wait to be told what to do and … but I’ve also worked with engineers that wait to be told what to do, to developers and stuff. And I find that the most effective people, the best designers and the best engineers are those that stick their all in, curious, want to know. Yeah, we could be irritating sometimes when we do that. On the one hand, it's kind of … it's irritating because if we're always asking questions, it's like “Oh, do I have to tell this person to go through kind of the process of explaining everything to them and stuff?” but on the other hand, I’d far rather that someone wanted to know, then ends up kind of saying “Okay, what are we doing? Why are we doing that?” months later or don't really understand what it's about and stuff and … I’d rather ask questions. So, yeah, I think you do need to involve yourself. And designers especially … design has been undervalued in crypto from the start. I think it's a very engineering heavy space. And NFT is a side where you've got kind of artists and designers and stuff getting involved where maybe that's starting to shift a bit more. It's more on the art side to an extent and I think if you want to … if you have a strong feeling about something or you're concerned about something, you have to stick … you have to speak up. You can't just allow people to … I mean, there's something I tweeted just yesterday in fact, I’ve tweeted something about the debate that we're having inside Argent right now around whether we should surface the 24-hour price change of the tokens in the portfolio. And I shared it on a few private groups as well as with other designers. And my … the reason I raised it was because I am concerned that 24-hour price changes are bad for mental health, they make for bad trading decisions because actually you're short term … encourages short-term thinking and people whoever trade famously lose money. And so, why do you need to see 24-hour? What if you just showed an all-time return which encourages longer term thinking. If you're … if you know of the all-time, I mean, it could be a much deeper drawdown to be fair if you're in a … if you bought right at the top and you're a year into a bear market but for the most part, long term, your investments go up. And so, this is my debate. And a few people … most people say “Well, if you don't show … people want to see the 24-hour return. If you don't show, they'll just go to a different app because they want to see 24-hour return.” Every time I open the app, I’ll just see the same thing. So, that's not very sticky. And I get that but, again, I feel like I had this question, I had a concern around mental health and the impact of the decisions that I as a designer and we as a team make and I could have just kept that … I could have just swallowed it and just not said anything because … everyone else … 24-hour returns. So, we're just going to do the same thing but I didn't. I raised it and we debated it. And we probably will end up going with 24-hour returns just because that is genuinely what our customers want rightly or wrongly but it's still playing in my head and I’m thinking “Okay, how can I … how can I find a way to encourage people to think more long term inside Argent.” And I’ll be probably mulling that for months potentially until I find a way to kind of … to work that in. So, I think, as a designer, you have a responsibility to listen to your kind of internal voice and ask questions and get involved. If you don't understand something, ask. Yeah. So … I mean, it’s a long-winded reply to that question but …
Jayneil: And this dilemma that you raised, was it hard to recruit users for that? Let's say you're like “I really think that this 24-hour return is having a negative impact on the health” and you wanted to test that with potential users of Argent. Is it hard to recruit users? Because I think about traditional user testing and user research, you go to … there's lots of websites where you can put your prototype up, get people to give you feedback, give them Starbucks gift card but in specific terms to crypto, is it easy, is it hard for you to get users to give feedback?
Graeme: So, to the specific point around the 24-hour return and whether that's the best approach I mean, that was really just a thought I had just because we were starting to talk about where we start to surface your profit and loss inside the app and which is a feature we're working on at the moment. And so, we haven't even done … we've barely even done any questions for that yet. So, I won't … I haven't even kind of got around to usability testing it but it was more about the principle, “Is it the right thing to do?” And in that particular case, I think, to get a proper answer, you'd have to do a long-term study really because … yeah, you'd have to go through kind of a cycle of a bear market or see if we do this, then then we measure kind of … is the majority of people's trades causing them to lose money and is that linked to then opening the app, seeing a down day and selling at the bottom. And, yeah, I mean, I’m curious about … I think you need to do that en mass with larger data. It’ll probably be more of a data-driven exercise than a usability test because you wouldn't really be able to truly understand someone's behavior just by observing them opening the app once at a random point in time. In terms of general research and recruitment, what's cool about crypto is that there are a lot of interest groups, there's a lot of Telegram groups and Discords and there's Reddit and crypto Twitter famously … infamously and a lot of people that are really willing to try stuff out, not least because they … there's this whole airdrop phenomenon and if you try out … if you're an early adopter, in many cases, you get airdrops. So, there's an incentive there and it doesn't mean that you always get addressed but there's always this possibility. And so, people are very willing to try out. So, you can just … I mean I just often just post in Telegram groups and there are kind of … there's a Crypto Testers Telegram group, there's 700 people in it and they're all often very willing to try stuff out. That's kind of why the group exists and that …
Jayneil: Oh, wow!
Graeme: … is like a resource right there. You just post a message and say “Who's up for this?” and you usually get a dozen responses.
Jayneil: And I love that. I love the fact that you are actively spending time in these Discord channel, Telegram groups, understanding what the users want, bringing those insights back to Argent. I might butcher this quote but just to paraphrase, in one of our previous conversations, and pardon me if I got this wrong, you said something along the lines of “If you don't really understand what the user's problems are and you just create a product or just create something, then you're more of like an artist like it's just art.” It's your interpretation of what it should be but to really be a product designer, not an artist, to really differentiate between just pure graphic design or just pure artwork versus product design work, you really have to understand the user problems and solve for that.
Graeme: Yeah, that's exactly right, yeah.
Jayneil: That was so mind-blowing to me.
Graeme: Yeah. I mean, we call ourselves designers. Design … how is design different from art? It's because we're solving a problem. If we're not solving a problem, then it's not design. And so, then we need to go back to “Okay, if there's a problem to solve, we have to understand the problem well enough to be able to solve it.” And that's just how … that's kind of how I see things. So, yes, it means then I tend to kind of go to the nth degree of understanding a problem. And maybe I sometimes go a bit deeper than I have to but it's … I like to spend a lot of time with users. I like to spend a lot of time in Discord channels or usability testing but also reading about the technology, the reasons why maybe the engineers say “Well, it's going to be really difficult to do what you've asked to do.” So, I kind of want to fully appreciate their position as kind of not as users per se but they're also people, right? And I’m asking them to do something and giving them hassle for us not being able to do what I’d like to do. So, I feel it's really important to understand as many perspectives as possible from my own team through to the end users and to kind of fully appreciate what problems I’m trying to solve and how best to solve them. And sometimes, I’ll come up with an idea with the engineering team and say “Okay. Well, what if we try this?” and they’d be like “Actually, yeah, we could do it like that.” And none of the engineering teams themselves have actually come up with that idea themselves. And so, by digging, as a designer, really digging into and understanding the problem, just occasionally, you can … you may come up with a solution that even the engineering team haven't thought of. Doesn't happen often. I mean, at a kind of a … at a technology level as opposed to just sort of UI level. So …
Jayneil: Love it. Here's another assumption that I have that involves money. And I know it's touchy but it's not just me. I’m probably sure there's a lot of designers out there who think that, “I want to join or I want to break into the crypto design world because there's a lot of money to be made.” According to your perspective, how much of that is true or maybe just over exaggerated? What is your take on that?
Graeme: Yeah, it's a difficult one really. There's a lot of money to be lost as well from crypto. If you’ve been watching crypto Twitter right now, there are a lot of very sad looking faces and negative sounding tweets around. I mean, I joined … I think I talked about this earlier. I joined Argent because I really wanted to solve the UX problems that I had experienced going through ICOs and stuff in 2017, getting rid of seed phrases and all that. I just thought it was all crazy. And I also had this sort of ideology of having a go at changing kind of government and money from the outside. So, I was a bit ideological and a bit kind of … that was my purpose really … and it remains really … that remains my purpose. And it was April 2018 that I joined Argent and that was in … that was full bear market. We'd come off the highs like just a few weeks before basically and we were really crashing hard. So, my portfolio was well and truly in the red and I wasn't really joining for the money but that said, there have been … by being involved so closely with the cutting edge of crypto, there have been many, many opportunities, many of which I’ve missed entirely to my absolute chagrin like people and like Crypto Punks and like board apes, all of those. I was like …
Jayneil: I was on Board Apes too.
Graeme: I was espousing NFTs and saying … and basically, because open C didn't work with Argent, I was kind of like “I don't really want to open Metamask. It's not safe I don't want to put crypto in Metamask. So, if it's not working with Argent, then I’m not going to do it.” And so, I passed on Crypto Punks. I passed on Board Apes. I passed on getting involved in kind of some of the peoples and getting kind of on to NIFTY Gateway. I was really … I was a bit too ideological and really anti-centralized services like NIFTY Gateway and Megaspace and stuff. And because of that, I am not a millionaire now … in fact, I’m not a multi-millionaire. Even though I was well aware of them at the time I really liked and actually I was really interested in them but it was literally just my own … I don't know what you call it … arrogance or stupidity or just sort of laziness, maybe a bit of all of that. So, yes … so, I suppose that's kind of saying that there is potential money to be made in crypto. It doesn't mean you will because it depends on all sorts of other factors but if you're in the space 24/7, yes, you will be exposed to opportunities left, right and center, some of which are full on Ponzi scams and if you put your money in, you'll lose it all and some of which can 100X or 1000X or in some cases 1,00,000X. So, yeah, it's pretty wild in that sense but overall, I’ve done quite well. I’m kind of quite happy with my position but I’m not like … I’m nothing like as successful as just what … somebody bought one Crypto Punk, for example, and I have friends that are in their early 20s and they just bought up the Crypto Punks early on and they just … they're retired.
Jayneil: Oh my god!
Graeme: It’s like how is that possible. When I’m full time in this space how did they do that and I didn't?
Jayneil: It’s so amazing you bring that up when you said there's a lot of money to be lost. And I’ve lost a decent amount of change in crypto.
Graeme: Yeah, so have I.
Jayneil: And I think people don't understand this is that while there's lots of opportunities to make money, there's lots of opportunities to lose money. And I do feel that being at the cutting edge of crypto exposes you to a lot of opportunities and potentially missing out on it as well. And one thing I just wanted to bring up, this is a side tangent but I think it's so relevant because people listening to this might fear FOMO that “Oh, Graeme got into this in 2018 and stuff but, yes, he also missed an opportunity” and likewise, when you said that, I … so, I was collaborating with one of the folks, Abhinav, he came on the show, a good friend, and he wanted to do like … he's a very famous YouTuber in India in the design realm and he wanted to do this like a daily show, just a weekly YouTube stream … like daily YouTube stream on just NFTs and stuff. And he pitchmed me the idea and I was like “I don't know, man” I really wasn't into the NFT space at that point. I was in the decentralized finance space but I wasn't in the NFT space. So, I kind of like “Well, now, I already have this podcast going on so.” So, it was just like … I don't know … it just wasn't a convincing enough reason to kind of do it just for 30 days and see how it goes because I was like “We should have a long-term goal.” Anyways. So, I didn't do it and he did it solo. And as part of that show to explain to people how to buy NFTs, guess what he bought? He bought two Board Apes.
Graeme: Very nice, yeah.
Jayneil: Which is really awesome.
Graeme: This is life changing. It’s insane. It's life changing.
Jayneil: It is, it is. And, for me, I look at that decision and I had that moment where I was like “Well, I missed out on that even though I had that … someone tell me about it,” right? but very recently, I was talking to as a successful entrepreneur in Chicago, I was having dinner with him and I was talking and he's like “That's all if, but, could, should.” He's like “You're assuming that if you had bought it, you would have held on to it. What if you had just sold it when it’s just like you bought it at 200 and sold it 1000? What if the project didn't go as successful.” So, it's very easy when you have a winning … something succeed, you just go back and just assume that you took all the right steps. So, I know we got off on tangent but …
Graeme: Yeah. No, that's true. There's so many … even if you did, as you said, there are so many steps to that. I mean, with NFTs, it took me a while to realize that the safest … I think one of the safest ways to get into NFTs is if you can get whitelisted. You have … you kind of … you want to be on that on that early kind of pre-sale list. And then you want to buy at least kind of three if you can and if you can … obviously, you want to do your research on products. You've got to flip the first one, flip one of those three as soon as you can to make sure you pay back the cost of the purchase plus the gas. And then you can just hold. And then if you get a short-term kind of bull run, as often that happens, there are lots of people that weren't in the pre-sale that want to buy and they'll buy higher. And so, you can then wait until it kind of peaks out and then sell the second one and then you have one to just hold for the long term. And that is something I’ve not done but I sort of recently realized that actually that's definitely the best way to do this. I have other friends that just go full degenerate into it and just buy loads and flip them and sell them and stuff. I think, for the most part, they've made quite a lot of money doing that but it's just too scary for me. my original kind of … the big part I didn't get into Board Ape was, at the time, not only because of it not working with Argent and me needing to set up Metamask and not wanting to but it was also at the time, I was really determined to stack Eth. I really wanted to get as much Eth as I possibly could. And the thought of spending even kind of half an Eth or an Eth on a Board Ape at the time was just like … but this is precious to me. I’ve been … had this goal for ages and I’m going to be undermining my own goal if I do this, obviously, now in hindsight. Hindsight's a wonderful thing but as you say, could’ve, would've, should’ve, that's not the way to think about it. I think the way to think about it is if you have … really it's Jeff Bezos’ Regret Minimization Framework. If you have an opportunity in front of you and you ask yourself the question “Would I regret trying this and losing all of that money or not trying at all like would I regret actually not just giving it a go, which one would I regret more?”, then choose the one you'd regret less, just minimize your regrets. And if … at the time … I look back and I think ‘Well, if it had gone to zero, I would have been upset with myself.”
Jayneil: Absolutely.
Graeme: And I made the decision at the time, “You know what? I’m not going to dive into this.” And I’ve done the same thing recently with Doodles and I’ll probably regret it. At the time when Doodles were about 4.5 Eth, I didn't have the money, didn't have Eth. Then I managed to do a couple of things. I managed to get that much Eth together but by that point, it was 10 Eth. So, I’m not going to shell out 10 Eth. And it could be the next Board Apes but the risk reward goes … it works against me the higher that price goes. So …
Jayneil: Absolutely.
Graeme: Yeah. So, it's a difficult one. I think you just … every single opportunity, you have to take it as it comes. I mean … I have a short story about Sheba. I could have been a probably a billionaire with Sheba if I just put in 1000 dollars or something because I was aware of it way before … I mean, this is … So, these are sorts of things, as a designer, the opportunities that come along. So, we have a form on the Argent website which allows teams that have released a token to put in their token information. And then I take that information and I’ll add it to the token service which puts the icon and the branding and the information about the token inside the Argent app. And Sheba were one of the teams that uploaded this stuff way before anyone knew about them like right at the start. It was … I don't know what the price of the token was … it was nothing. And I look through and I check all these tokens and I have a kind of curatorial approach to that like If it's really, really bad, I’m probably not going to bother or I don't actually want to expose our user base to that token, so I won't encourage it. And I looked at Sheba and, quite frankly, I was like “What is this? This is just really dodgy. I’m not going to touch it with a barge pole.” And if I had the habit of maybe just putting in 100 dollars to every single token that gets added to that list, I would have been extraordinarily wealthy.
Jayneil: Oh my god!
Graeme: It's not just Sheba. Actually, there's another one, Deep Dopex, as well. They filled in the form. I don't know when it was. Back in March, I think, 2021. And I didn't … I ignored it. And Dopex is now … I don't know how many. It's a 3000 dollars per coin. Back then it was like 10 or something. So, again, I’ve missed out on opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. Again, to go back to that question, yes, there are a lot of opportunities or there have been a lot of opportunities to get very, very rich. Doesn't mean you're going to get very, very rich. It just means that they're there.
Jayneil: But you're happy right now as I’m talking to you because your sole reason to get into the space was not just purely making money because … I can see it … if someone having missed this many life-changing opportunities, right? And then you have access to them and you said you missed some of them …
Graeme: I’ve missed so many, it's ridiculous. And I’m not … I’m not even sure why like it's just … just this is how it's happened.
Jayneil: But that was not your main reason. So, if someone got into the crypto space purely 100% just for money …
Graeme: Yes.
Jayneil: Then I can see that that person would be very, very sad right now. So, I’m just getting that realization as I’m talking to you.
Graeme: Yeah. I mean, they could have been very, very happy. I mean, they may have been fully successful, I suppose, but, yeah, as you say, it's not been my driving … that's not been my driver at all. And any money I have made or will make, it's kind of … yeah, it's great … and don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have a few money basically and to not have to worry about anything ever again but that … ultimately, that's not why I’m here, yeah, and I’m happy with my decisions. And I’m also curious. If at some point another one will come along and I will make the right … or I’ll spot it and do it and it will work but it's more about curiosity. It's not a determination to kind of exhaustively look at every single opportunity and think “I’m not going to miss the next one.” That just is crazy. That's just a great way to blow your mental health out of the water. So, it's better just to accept it and just enjoy the ride really.
Jayneil: Love it. So, how can designers who are in crypto and want to be successful like you, what are the right mindset or designers looking to break into crypto, how can they find you, how can they get in touch with you.
Graeme: You can find me on Twitter. I spend too much time on Twitter. Itamar hasn't said anything yet but maybe he'll watch this and say “I’ve noticed that you're spending too much time on Twitter. Get back to work” but, yeah, Twitter mainly. It's probably the best place. My Twitter is Graeme Blackwood. So, it's just … yeah, I probably share it, I guess.
Jayneil: Yeah, I’ll be including that in the show notes. Just want to say thank you so much, Graeme, for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom.
Graeme: Thank you so much for having me. I hope it's been helpful to your listeners and, yeah, do … anyone, if they ever want to get in touch or ask a question or share anything, please just ping me. I’m always open. I always love chatting.
Jayneil: Absolutely.
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