Onboarding Studio Slowcore's First Paid Keyholder
JUNE 24TH, 2026
Editor's Note: We plan to share this post more widely, but we're posting it in our own Dark Forest first, just in case any unforeseen changes need to be made beforehand. Suggestions are welcome.
Studio Slowcore recently onboarded our first paid keyholder, David, into our DFOS space and into our Public Domain Art Appreciators group. He'd been a patron of my work elsewhere, and was excited to learn about DFOS.
He kindly agreed to meet with me IRL to do the onboarding — and, since our studio is among the earliest cohorts of spaces going through these processes, he also gave his permission for us to share some behind-the-scenes process notes with the DFOS community.
We learned a great deal this way!
Here are some screenshots and quotes from David (paraphrased and lightly edited for readability) plus a few screenshots from the spacerunner side.
You can draw your own conclusions. :)
Applying, Joining, and Setting Up a Profile
"Will I be using the same username across multiple spaces? Am I picking a name just for this one space, or also for other DFOS spaces I might join later?"
"At first I thought that plus sign in the lower left was a way to get to settings, but it's actually 'create a new space.' I didn't realize I'd have to expand the left-hand sidebar to find the wheel icon at the top to get to my settings."
"We'd like to show you notifs for the latest news and updates." Does that mean news and updates from your space that I just applied to join? From DFOS in general? I'd like to know what I'm consenting to here."
"I'd like to begin with a concise overview of what it (DFOS) even is. I signed up for DFOS through Studio Slowcore and landed on your desktop, but since I'm new I don't have even a rudimentary understanding of what I'm looking at, even after reading your Introducing the Public Domain Art Appreciators Keyholder Group. What are these things in front of me?"
"Are there descriptions of the folder contents that I could see at a glance before opening them? A summary of what's in the folder would be helpful. Right now I just see intriguing little tiles. The text underneath the tile (the name of the folder or link) is not fully visible until I hover, and for some tiles it doesn't show up at all."
"I see a lot of cool stuff, but it's hard to know how to access all the cool stuff. It's like a new kind of internet. It's not a social media site. It's not just a website. It's part of a network of things that are interconnected in novel ways."
(After clicking on our main chat app and scrolling back through the chat history): "At this point I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I see lots of text and I don't know how things are connected."
"I appreciate the visual language in the left-hand sidebar (search, inbox, wallet, bookmarks, discover). It's also immediately clear which spaces I'm in and how to get there (just click on the space's icon + name)."
"The page with the list of all the members is really cool!"
Purchasing a Key to Unlock the Group
On Stripe:
From the Spacerunner Side
Exploring the Public Domain Art Appreciators Keyholders Group
"If I were looking for a way to cancel my subscription, the icon in the upper right-hand corner is not what I'd be looking for. I thought maybe clicking on that icon would take me back to my previous location."
(Inside the "Art By Theme" folder): "I clicked on a post inside a nested folder that I wanted to see close-up in full screen, but the image is cut off, and when I right-clicked on the image to open it in a new window, I only saw a tiny thumbnail."
Suggestions
"Make it more obvious that there are paid groups your readers can join to unlock cool stuff. Right now I only see a small key icon in the lower right corner of the group's tile."
"Consider making an audio or video explainer about DFOS and your space to welcome newcomers. It would've been nice to begin with some basic context before being dropped onto your desktop: a brief overview of what DFOS is, what your studio does, and maybe a pointer to a conceptual 'map' or something that gives a sense of what the larger DFOS ecosystem of spaces is like. I'd like to understand where I am relative to other things. I want to see both the trees and the forest!"
