Increasing Crypto Literacy through Educational Content for Surge
Surge is an organization focused on educating and onboarding women and newcomers into Web3. Newcomers often feel intimidated when getting started in Web3 due to a lack of accessible and easily digestible content. As one of the first writers for Surge, I created beginner-friendly how-to guides, articles, and Twitter threads with the goal of making learning approachable.
Timeline:
2021 - 2022
Role:
Content Designer
Team:
Content Lead, Editors, Founders
Problem
Highly technical language makes learning crypto intimidating for newcomers
Newcomers enter the crypto space excited to learn about blockchain technology. However, the lack of digestible content and highly technical language discourages newcomers, especially women and non-binary people from getting started and participating in the crypto economy.
Research
What is it like to learn about crypto as a newcomer?
Through secondary research, I gained insights about the crypto learning experience for newcomers. The learning experience can be summarized in three main points:
Design Goal
Make learning crypto simple, inclusive, and approachable
Increasing crypto literacy and adoption starts with making learning approachable.
User Impact: Increased Participation
By making learning approachable, women and non-binary people will feel empowered to participate in Web3 and the broader crypto economy, bridging the gender and education gap.
Business Impact: Growth
An increase in quality educational content will result in growth for the Surge community. Surge will grow to become a trusted source of educational crypto content with a strong community of people who are eager to learn about all things crypto and Web3.
Solution
Beginner-friendly how-to guides, blog articles, and Twitter threads
With a research-first approach, I simplified complex concepts and delivered beginner-friendly how-to guides, blog articles, and Twitter threads.
Use the arrows on the sides of the image to view the content I’ve designed. Click on the image to view the entire article.
Impact
Increased crypto literacy
Surge was founded in October 2021 with the goal of empowering a community focused on learning, educating, and securing women's place in Web3. Over a year later, Surge has grown into a community of approximately 30,000 women and non-binary individuals who now identify as crypto literate. Read the full report here.
Surge has also shifted to provide to the needs of a crypto literate community by offering mid-level educational solutions such as the Surge course, which provides a deeper dive into crypto with lectures from top Web3 organizations.
Conclusion
Improving the reading experience by implementing content design
I learned that implementing content design when writing about highly technical topics can improve the reading experience and increase the accessibility of educational content. Blockchain technology and Web3 projects usually involve a lot of technical information that can be hard to explain to beginners. By developing a deep understanding of who I was writing for as well as the topics I was writing about, I was able to determine what type of content to include in articles and how to structure the information architecture of the content.