Decentraland Studios — Grant Renewal

by 0x9942c18de1b386d77828f79e4ebe4ed60bcd3fce (Crespi)

Should the following $34,620 grant in the Platform category be approved?

Abstract

We are seeking a grant renewal for Decentraland Studios. Our mission is to create job opportunities for Decentraland creators by developing and maintaining Decentraland Studios, a platform where creators can showcase their skills and apply for commercial projects exclusively available to them. You can check our previous grant proposals here (July 2022) and here (March 2023) to read our latest updates.

Grant size

34,620 USD in DAI

Project duration

3 months

Beneficiary address

0x256874B9FD26cBf11a4E2DE5CFFE5a877603044d

Email address

studios@decentraland.org

Description

This initiative will keep Decentraland Studios running and enhance the user experience for our community and brands looking to bring their vision to Decentraland. During our last grant, we launched the Jobs feature, which listed 14+ new commercial projects for our community, and drove 20.000+ unique visitors to our platform.

For this grant, our main goals are:

1. Maintain platform operations:

We will ensure a smooth operation by addressing user inquiries, onboarding new studios, and staying connected with Decentraland's ecosystem. This includes but is not limited to overseeing studios.decentraland.org, Discord, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

2. Enhance User Experience:

2.1 Improvements to Jobs feature: Nowadays, brands (aka “customers” in this proposal) are unable to see their projects after they post them to our platform. Also, communication between studios and brands happens exclusively via email. Even though our MVP was intended to work like this, we are aware of its limitations:

• Brands can’t directly manage their projects, especially if they post more than one project simultaneously
• Brands have a hard time tracking their communication with each studio that offers to collaborate with them

Because of this, we will develop a dashboard for potential clients to monitor and manage the job opportunities they create and a messaging system that will facilitate communication between studios and brands. These two features will allow brands to easily manage and keep track of their project's status. By improving the brands’ experience in our platform we are looking to make them returning users, thus growing the number of job opportunities for studios.

2.2 Improvements to resources, projects and studio profiles

We will improve the UI for Resources making them easier to understand before opening them on GitHub. We will add filter and sorting functionalities to the projects view, allowing users to find projects that are relevant to them. We will also improve the studios' profiles to better showcase their skills and talent. This includes adding a messaging system so that users can contact studios easily.

3. Generate leads:

Create performance marketing campaigns in web2 platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, Google, and Instagram targeted to brand owners and marketers interested in building a presence in the Metaverse. We are not requesting a budget for this task, as we still have a ~15.000 DAI surplus from our previous grant which we will use for the same purpose.

4. Discover market needs:

By accurately addressing brands’ pain points and needs, we anticipate more job opportunities for Decentraland creators. To accomplish this, we propose a brief product discovery and user research cycle, involving interviews with brands. This research will provide valuable insights into their preferences, challenges, and desired features, shaping our future development decisions and feature enhancements.

Check the financial report of our previous grant here.

Roadmap and milestones

Continuous tasks:

• Moderate job posts, onboard new studios, maintain social media channels, and engage with our community and potential customers.

Month 1:

• Design a login and dashboard for brands. Design a messaging system for each project to facilitate communication between studios and brands. Introduce filtering and sorting options for projects.
• Begin development on the login interface and dashboard. Enhance search capabilities for improved user experience. Optimize the performance of the resources section.

Month 2:

• Update studios' profiles to showcase their work and capabilities more effectively. Design a messaging system for each studio profile. Design an automated email system for efficient surveying and communication with studios and brands. Enhance the resources detail page to create a more informative experience. Initiate product discovery activities.
• Launch the login interface and dashboard features. Develop messaging system. Implement updates to studios' profiles.

Month 3:

• Conduct product discovery activities, including interviews and analysis. Present the results of product discovery to the community. Design automated reports of new job listings.
• Deploy messaging system. Implement automated polls to gather data about job listings and user preferences. Create automated reports of new job listings for studios. Enhance the display and details page for resources.

This proposal is summarized due to technical limitations. To view it complete and vote on it, visit the DCL DAO Governance dApp