Designing bitcoin products is fun ! (1/2)
When I got selected in the Summer of Bitcoin 2022 internship program, I had no idea how different and fun designing bitcoin products could be— its super cool
I was selected for the project — Padawan Wallet
Padawan Wallet is an app that helps users start on their bitcoin journey by teaching them basics and eventually helping them create their own wallet. It uses testnet coins to teach the users about the working of mainnet wallets.
For the hardcore star wars fans, yes I know what you’re thinking — but it’s not exactly that. You see the whole idea behind padawan is to teach people about bitcoin and make them a master. ( hence the word padawan )
So is padawan related to star wars or based on star wars ?
No, its not.
For those of you who are new to designing bitcoin products, there exists a very marvelous creation that was crafted with extensive research and understanding — The Bitcoin Design Guide
This happens to be a goldmine and an excellent standard for designing bitcoin products. This not only covers the essentials on concepts, but also includes a high number of edge cases for people to look at and understand from, while doing their own research.
The best part of this is that the guide is open source and is actively maintained and updated by the design community.
Now coming back to padawan wallet, the things that got me hooked onto the project in the first place were -
- It’s free
- It provides a learning platform for newbs like me
- It allows you to practice while learning
- It involves no account creation and user data manipulation, providing the smoooothest experience for everyone
I started understanding the concepts ( atleast what I could ), figure out the core problems and started connecting them with the padawan project.
The Padawan Problem
My task was to redesign the app and deliver the perfect blend of learning and practice.
The dream team
The guy who started it all, the creator of the Padawan wallet is thunderbiscuit. He is one of the most passionate and hardworking people I’ve met. He’s open to so many possibilities and ideas ( cries in dev pain )
On the developer team is dark who handles dev things with thunderbiscuit as part of the summer program.
My design team consisted of total 3 people — Autumn, Precious and me. They are some of the best people I’ve worked with. Also, I’m fortunate to have mentors like Stephen and Christoph, who are also great contributors and managers of the bitcoin design guide. They helped us immensely with their experience and excellent feedbacks.
A new challenge
It was my first time working with people from different timezones and it took some time to finally adjust to it. We work with the async methodology which is — figuring out a common meeting time, planning objectives, discussing progress and moving ahead. Easier said than done, but when you got a great team, things get done efficiently.
So I ran through the app, studied it bit by bit and broke down the problems I felt. This is what I found
The visible problems
- Lack of a great UI — Pretty much the entirety of the application was very bootstrapped and template styled, and it kills the user retention considering its a learning app.
- Onboarding Issue — There was little to no onboarding to get the user started. It makes for a dull first impression and the user might not figure out what the app is all about.
The not-so visible problems
- Little to no UX — Even though the app has all the necessary stuff, the order of things along with the placement is not easy to use for a potential user.
- Technical Problems — While going through the app, I felt some technical bugs and glitches, for example — testnet faucet not working properly and the sync button not fetching the data at times. These issues are frustrating for users and we must make sure we avoid them as much as possible.
Core Features
The app primarily focuses on two features
- Creating a testnet wallet
- Learning via tutorials
However, a major problem with the existing UX was that these two features don’t seem separate and they lie within the same page. That makes things look forced and unclear at times.
User Research
The app’s goal is to act as a platform for new users who want to get started with their bitcoin journey. It is created to serve this purpose in a very limited time frame and for as many users as possible. To understand the potential user scenarios better, I created some User Personas to better identify certain aspects and to establish a starting point.
Case — 1
Problem : Josh is a teenager who is thrilled to learn about bitcoin, but his main issue is lack of ordered, structured resources on the internet. As a result, he loses his energy and the interest washes away.
Solution : This is where Padawan comes in. Josh hears about this app that solves this little problem and he wishes to use it. He completes the tutorials within 2–3 days and has a blast while learning about bitcoin.
Case — 2
Problem : Kylie is a hardworking woman who manages her life between family and work. She heard about the bitcoin hype and wants to get familiar, however she barely has any time to spare. She loves the idea of having a bitcoin wallet and wants to teach her children about it as well.
Solution: Kylie comes across Padawan wallet and starts using it. To her satisfaction, she finds that it is beginner friendly, interactive and fetches great results. As she is a busy working woman, she is only able to give a minimal portion of her time to the app, but she gets good results from it.
Important Q’s
As I started researching and exploring the app more, there were certain essential questions that I wanted answers for
- Is wallet recovery even required for the scope of Padawan ?
- How can we provide a thorough and clear onboarding ?
- What non-account features can be used ?
- How can we better classify the current features ?
- How much content do we put in tutorials ?
- Do we explain the lightning network in tutorials ?
Market Research
This is one of the most fun parts in research. The sheer amount of apps you can explore and learn from is endless. So, Padawan being a learning tool along with some elements of a fintech app, I looked into some of the best examples across the internet.
Some core issues such as onboarding were really bothering me, so I felt Padawan needed a strong and a unique experience so that it not only delivers its message, but also stands out as one of a kind application.
Interviews and Forms
My team was also coming up with great ideas meanwhile, researching more on the user side and brainstorming potential solutions.
Some important questions for the interviews that my teammate Autumn came up with and conducted were —
- Have you ever used a bitcoin wallet before?
- What are your feelings towards using a wallet?
- If you have used a bitcoin wallet before how did you feel when setting it up?
- If you have used a bitcoin wallet before what is something you wished you had that could make the experience better?
- If you haven’t used a bitcoin wallet before what are some things you are
seaking for before using one?
Alongside, she prepared some questions in advance to be used for the usability testing ( yet to reach that stage )
Some of them are —
- What are some things you wish this app had?
- What were some things that confused you?
- Do you have any comments or questions?
- What things did you like about the features in this app?
- What features did you not like in this app?
- Were the tutorials helpful?
- What topics would you want to see covered in the tutorial section?
- Was it easy to send and receive testnet coins?
- On a scale from 1–10 how easy was it to navigate throughout this app?
- Do you wish the tutorials were longer or shorter?
User Pain Points
We also wanted to get a good picture of the current users, potential users and understand how they feel about bitcoin and learning. My teammate precious did some fantastic user research that helped us build a solid foundation.
Now that we had a ton of ground covered, it was time for some brainstorming.
Brainstorming and Ideation
Our team came up with a lot of interesting points and starting trying and testing out ideas.
Some ideas that my teammate precious came up with were —
- People have doubts about bitcoin as a result of it’s complexity.
Goal: Simplify bitcoin explanations.
Some interactions that can support the goal of simplify bitcoin explanations includes:
— Explain bitcoin concept in plain, simple language.
— Use real world analogies to explain complexities.
— Support this with illustration
— Discuss complexities with other people.
— Ask question in app, that way they feel they’re following. - It is hard to make the transtion between fiat and bitcoin.
Goal: How to get into the bitcoin sphere using fiat
Some interactions that support the goal of How to get into the bitcoin sphere using fiat:
— Suggest exchanges and wallet services.
— A simple explaination(with illustration) of the user flow of how an exchange is done and how it is to be transfer to a wallet. - People need to feel related to others who use BTC.
Goal: Let Padawan be that friend.
Some interactions that support the goal of Being that friend includes:
— Changing the scary Bitcoin narrative that makes users afraid and have that mindset that they will make a mistake.
— Make user feel welcome: Through tone of voice, Make onboarding exciting(like a friend visiting home)
— Suggest where to find answers by recommending communities. - Tense Onboarding
Goal: Calm Users down. Empower Users!
Some interactions that support the goal of Calming Users down includes:
Let padawan be their no fan 1.
Say stuff like: You’ve done incredible stuff before bitcoin! You can do it again. Remind them that they’ve done all of this incredible stuff before, so this time will be no different.
Bitcoin is hard, i understand, that’s why i’m here for you. I gotchu.(Perhaps before a concept is explained?) - Complexity of the backup Process. Why? how can it be simplified without compromising security
Goal: Show backup in a useful and timely manner. Maybe not during onboarding but in the tutorial section
Some interactions that support the goal of explaining bitcoin includes:
lead users through the backup process as tutorial and a fun exercise.
Also emphasis on recovery too
To simplify things, I came up with the user map and the information architecture for Padawan
User Map and Information Architecture
As we were quite early stage, the maps and architecture were very basic and since then, we have constantly worked and added more and more edge cases in this to create a solid reference point.
Tutorials Contents
Tutorials being an important part of the app, it was essential that we came up with a way to include every necessary thing in the lesson. To achieve this, we came up with the idea of a notion document where we all can dump ideas and information on tutorials.
There is also the idea of breaking the tutorials into concept and skill.
Concept is a plain lesson format tutorial, intended to teach the user the information via text and illustrations.
Skill is a task the user must perform in order to learn how the thing works. This is highly valuable as when the user performs a task, they feel confident in their abilities and the effectiveness of learning is increased.
Some of them are —
- Tutorial 1: What is the Bitcoin testnet? — Concept
- Tutorial 2: Bitcoin units — Concept
- Tutorial 3: Receiving Bitcoin — Skill
- Tutorial 4: What is the mempool? — Concept
- Tutorial 5: Sending Bitcoin — Skill
- Tutorial 6: What are transaction fees? — Concept
- Tutorial 7: What is a wallet recovery phrase? — Concept
- Tutorial 8: Recovering your wallet from a recovery phrase — Skill
Design
We were in a good position by now, to start with the next phase of our project — designing everything. So we took out our pencils ( on figma ) , some rectangles, and started with the wireframes.
Low Fidelity Design
We quickly started experimenting with different ideas about layouts of certain pages. A primitive idea was to create a navbar instead of a split navigation in the older version of the app. So we used that to segregate different parts of our application in a meaningful way.
- Wallet
- Learning
- Settings
Also, we had some different ideas for onboarding, as the current onboarding wasn’t exactly thrilling and also didn’t cover much about what the app is all about. So here’s what we came up with
Starting with UI
Since we are just getting started with UI , I have nothing much to show. So I’ll show you something that will never make it to the final design ;)
I wanted to experiment something with star wars themed for Padawan wallet ( because why not ). Using lightsabers as a theme and using them as a loading bar felt cool to me. What an awesome way to bring the users aboard.
However, this is not gonna sit well with Disney (and it also deviates from the app’s vision ), so I’m just gonna dump it here.
*sobs*
Well, that covers the first half of my project journey on Padawan wallet. I’ll be discussing more on wireframes, UI and awesome prototypes in the second part of my blog as we move ahead.
