“I’m really sorry, but I need to pay with Bitcoin”
This week, we officially kicked off our Bits + Blocks Lab, a 9 week startup creation lab in which 6 teams of design entrepreneurs are exploring the future of trust, transactions and participation by building new ventures using blockchain technology.
Throughout the lab, we want teams to immerse themselves in the human experience of cryptocurrency, and so on day 1 we threw them into the deep end with a puzzle. Each team was given a colorful origami cube. “Don’t tear your cubes! See you tomorrow!”
In reality we stuck around, but we didn’t give teams any guidance. As they unfolded their cubes (extremely carefully, too carefully), they saw a QR code.
“What is this? It must have something to do with Bitcoin.”
Teams opened their favorite Bitcoin wallet, scanned the code, saw an error message, and then wondered what went wrong. Others scanned it with a general QR reader, saw that it encoded a string (“5JtC1vev…”). They pasted it into various search engines to see what they could learn: nothing useful. Like many using Bitcoin for the first time, they were confused and frustrated, but also intrigued by what to do next.
After a bunch of attempts, teams began to discover that they were looking at Bitcoin private keys encoded as a QR code. They figured out how to import those keys into a wallet, and that the keys gave them access to Bitcoin to pay for their team dinner.
Bitcoin in hand, they wondered how to actually use it to buy dinner. We added two rules: you can’t use a Bitcoin ATM to convert it to cash, and you can’t think of it as a reimbursement. In other words, you must buy dinner and pay the merchant directly in Bitcoin, tonight.
Teams had to figure out where to use their Bitcoin. Some teams already knew of places, others used Google to find out. One team saw online that a restaurant took Bitcoin, but then called just to make sure. (When was the last time you called a restaurant just to make sure they took credit cards?)
With a little searching, every team found a restaurant and fed themselves, paying in Bitcoin. But for many, the process was uncomfortable or awkward:
“It felt like we were paying with foreign currency in our own country.”
“I apologized when we went to pay.”
“It was really awkward when the waitress asked us how much we wanted to tip and then just stood there waiting for the response.”
“I wish we could’ve paid when we ordered because we weren’t sure there would be enough Bitcoin left when it was time to pay. We had $0.01 left.”
We asked a couple of teams to share their experiences. Feel free to check out some awesome stories and reactions from Chrisoula’s team here and Shuya’s team here. In the end, the exercise turned out to be a great way to understand what it feels like to use Bitcoin. Even better, it sparked two hours of Q&A about the currency, terminology, and technology, a session that surely would have been abstract and laborious had it not been sparked by a real, tangible experience. #learnbydoing
The Bits + Blocks Lab is a startup creation lab that combines an ecosystem of partners, world-class talent and IDEO’s venture design methodology to build prototypes of the future. It’s a partnership between the Harvard Innovation Lab (the i-lab) and IDEO Futures. For more information, please be in touch futures@ideo.com or @ideofutures.
