We like to nerd out about UX from time to time here at the Bent. Design is incredibly important in creating experiences that make life as easy as possible for users. When it comes to designing experiences around Bitcoin, product builders have an incredibly difficult task as they have to consider many unique things; private/public key management, fee selection, coin control, UTXO labeling, and interacting with the different layers of the Bitcoin stack, among many other things.

Above is an example of a UX tweak that could be made to invoice payment flows that would be an incredible boon by eliminating the friction and mental step of having to choose whether to pay an invoice on-chain or via the Lightning Network. Simply make it so a QR code encodes both an on-chain address and a Lightning Network invoice so a user can pull out their device and pay with either without having to think about it. This may not seem like much, but design improvements like this make adoption easier as bitcoin wallets have experiences similar to apps like Cash App, Venmo, Alipay, or WeChat which hundreds of millions have become extremely comfortable with.

Up to this point, I think it is fair to say that wallet UX has been suboptimal in a lot of ways, but it has been trending in the right direction over time. Hopefully, as Bitcoin continues to produce blocks, more individuals adopt bitcoin and begin to create businesses and applications that interact with the network we'll see an influx of quality UX designers who can help improve these experiences. One positive force in the industry that has a focus on this is the team of designers that has been working on the Bitcoin Design Guide.

Having this type of information around designing experiences for applications that interact with Bitcoin fleshed out and available to new designers entering the space is a massive asset. The amount of time spent learning about the intricacies of interacting with the network should be significantly reduced with a resource like this.

Here's to hoping we get more quality designers focused on building Bitcoin applications. The industry budding around the network could always use more. And if you're a designer looking for a challenge or wanting to innovate in a nascent space, the opportunities to design experiences around Bitcoin are boundless right now. There is so much to be built and so many potential use cases yet to be discovered. Come help build out the freedom preserving money applications of the Digital Age.

Final thought...

The day after leg day is not very fun.