Emmanuel Nogueira

What is your background?

I come from Adland. Worked for 15+ years as creative and creative director in way too many agencies. Eventually, I got tired of it and made the shift to strategy and human-centred design. First I worked as a freelancer and later I co-founded a strategy agency, where we worked for SMBs all over LatAm. 

How did you become interested in web3?

I’m from Argentina, and financial turmoil is sadly a constant for our country. Looking for ways to don’t lose acquisition power and avoid two digits inflation, I discovered Bitcoin. I made quite a few random purchases of it, but aside from hold, didn’t do much with it. Then Ethereum caught my attention, mainly because you could build stuff on it. With the pandemic, most of us, just started digging and digging on it and that was it. I was full time on Web3 before I even knew it. 

How did you get started?

With a huge amount of researching, reading, experimenting and of course, lots of mistakes. Got into many discords until I found a couple I felt comfortable with, a few contributions here and there, minting random stuff… mainly a hands-on approach. I'm a curious, creative person and love to build stuff and experiment with things. So the whole space felt amazing to me. 

What is your role and what do you do?

I co-founded Cryptomexa, a web3 design studio. One of the things I’ve found digging in the web3 space is that lots of projects are built from ideas instead of problems. So we use human-centred design to find users' problems and build solutions from there. We help artists, brands and companies design products and services for digital communities that can identify with a common goal and its utility token.

What is a web3 design studio?

We use a human-centred design methodology to design products and services for Web3. This helps us find pain points, insights and incentives for people and communities. As this space is driven by incentives, we find this methodology super-useful to design business models, find ways to lower barriers of entry and rise new forms of creativity and innovation.

We also have a strong background in marketing and social media, which boosts our capabilities in community design. 

Is design different in web2 and web3?

We adapted a lot of service design frameworks from Web2 realm to Web3. Sometimes it can be pretty similar, but most of the time it's not. Because there's a whole new approach on how to reach users and build incentives around them. Most web2 flows have years of being built and people are used to most of them, so we also gotta have a special focus on education as this space is designed as we speak.  

What do you look for in new hires?

As this space is so early, it’s pretty difficult to find people with a grounded knowledge of Web3. So we look for people with curiosity, eagerness to learn and proven skills for the task needed. The knowledge on Web3 eventually will come up. We also believe this approach helps keep onboarding people to the Web3 realm. 

Any tips for aspiring web3 founders?

I think the same tips for any founder as well, take care of your health, mind and family. 

The space is moving at light speed and taking care of yourself is a must. A clear mind goes further than you can imagine.