Case Study on how to build onboarding processes that actually support members w/ Luan

Sat down with Luan de Souza who is the former Head of the Community, Onboarding and Server Architecture teams at DD Labs/Developer DAO. We unpacked everything about their brand new ‘Guided Onboarding’ process, and how Luan and his team (also comprised of Aakansha and Alex at the time) leveraged Guild to create a smooth and customized experience for new members.

DeveloperDAO: the place to be for web3 developers

DeveloperDAO is a vibrant web3 community that helps onboard developers into blockchain technology. It offers various activities and opportunities, such as demo events, a developer academy, and access to a collective of web3 venture builders called ‘Agency’.

Initially, DeveloperDAO aimed to attract Contributors who actively built the community by hosting events, moderating Discord, and creating products. However, as the community grew, a more casual Member persona emerged, seeking collaboration, project feedback, learning, career opportunities, and membership perks without getting involved in the community's inner workings the way a contributor would.

Acknowledging this shift was crucial, but with this DeveloperDAO's community team faced significant challenges to address.

Challenges: Overhauling onboarding and Discord server architecture

Challenge 1: smooth, gradual onboarding

For new members, DeveloperDAO felt too big and complex. The community had grown quickly and new members got onboarded into too many channels and interest groups right off the bat, without any gradual onboarding or customization to their experience.

Challenge 2: dedicated experiences for Contributors and Members

Contributors and more casual Members were all sharing the same digital spaces, adding friction. Only a tiny subset of Members wanted to get involved with DeveloperDAO’s operations, the rest wanted to enjoy the many opportunities available.

As a result, DeveloperDAO needed to adjust the entire onboarding and community experience taking this into account. The Discord Server Architecture team lead, Luan, decided to partner with the Guild team for this ambitious, multi-layered project.

Solutions: Re-architecting Member onboarding using Guild as the permission layer

I like the fact that with Guild everybody goes to the same location. The Guild Page is the permission layer and the entry point into the Discord community. The flow felt really intuitive compared to other tools I had tried in the past.

- Luan, former Head of Server Architecture at Developer DAO

Since Guild has been introduced to the community over 6 thousand members went through this onboarding process and roughly a thousand continue to do so monthly.

The community team leveraged Guild as a way to sort newcomers and members onto different paths and customized experiences, and do that in a scalable way. The whole system has been created through a combination of an Otterspace badge system and Guild as the memberships management tool. Interoperability for the win!

According to Luan this design automatically unlocks 3 things:

1. Distinguish between old and new members

2. Create customized onboarding paths for different member personas

3. Bring much more clarity to the Discord by abstracting unnecessary channels from each member’s experience

Below is the visualization of the recently rolled-out onboarding flow as designed by Luan and the Discord Server Architect Team. Let’s go through the new member experience together.

Step 1: sorting old vs. new members

The first step consists in sorting members between old and new in order to adapt their respective experiences, by setting up Guild roles and corresponding server permissions.

Coming into Discord: If members do not hold the “Here Before Season 2” Otterspace badge, then they are assigned either the “721” role (if they hold a Genesis NFT), or the “20” role.

The “20” role requires them to hold 400 $CODE tokens — which they can conveniently purchase through the Guild UI.

We had more than 500 channels and everyone was complaining about the server's complexity and noise. Thanks to the negated requirements in our Guild roles and the Otterspace integration, we improved the situation.

On the safety side of things, it also minimizes the number of people who come in the server thanks to the role requirements. Thinking about it Guild is a launchpad to layer in the initial member requirements.

Step 2: onboarding

While old members unlock the full DD experience. New members unlock just 4 channels in order not to overwhelm them right when they join. Here they have access to an optional onboarding call and an onboarding cheat sheet that keeps everything simple. Eventually, they can decide when they feel ready to enter the wider DeveloperDAO community experience.

Step3: gradual customization through opting into interest groups

Finally, members can further customize their experience and unlock packs of channels by selecting one of the following hubs:

Results: personalized onboarding for members, utility for $CODE, and more peace of mind for the community team.

Since they’ve adopted their new onboarding system, members can enjoy a more straightforward experience that is tailored to their interests. Old members also benefit from the overhaul by having more contextual spaces ready for all the convos to happen.

One interesting data point is that we’ve recently created a re-onboarding program for members who have disengaged with Developer DAO in the past. As we were re-onboarding these members, we asked them why they left. The number one answer was that they had difficulty engaging. It is clear that now Discord is much more orderly and that’s in large part thanks to the onboarding setup we designed with the help of Guild. Aside from the tech itself, the Guild UX is really easy and self-explanatory.

A positive externality of the role requirements designed through Guild is the increased utility of DeveloperDAO’s ‘Developer NFTs’ and ‘$CODE’ tokens as newcomers need to hold one or the other in order to access onboarding.

Tips from Luan for making the most out of Guild

When it comes to looking at creative ways of utilizing Guild as a permission layer, it’s best to consider the current list of integrations, as a way to layer on top of role requirements. Rewards can be pretty varied, such as minting an NFT, being assigned a role, gaining access to a document etc… All of which, can be dynamically updated. Everything is iterative, so don’t fall into rigidity. It only harms your community’s member experience. Structured, yes; but still fluid. Ultimately, being thoughtful about how to craft more connections and communication with your community, is where the power lies.

Give this a go on guild.xyz and check out the Developer DAO Guild