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#44: The ambition, unknown and excitement of a brand new year.

Alright, here we are on Substack now. I’ll still keep the old Revue site up until it shuts down in January. I also help edit the Bitcoin Design newsletter via Substack, so this actually makes things easier.

Much of what I worked on this week is also listed in the latest Bitcoin Design newsletter, so I don’t have a lot extra to share. Maybe I’ll just list out some expectations for 2023, mixed in with a few thoughts on 2022 things.

Community

I am excited to see where we’ll be in a year with the community. I think it will be good to review the newcomer experience and make adjustments to the website, and how we help people get comfortable and connected with projects, and involved with community activities. Bitcoin is complex in so many ways, open-source as well. It takes patience and determination to make it through these phases of learning and finding your sweet spot. And reality is that every individual has their own unique path (which is what makes them individuals). The Designathon and Legends of Lightning were great initiatives in getting people hands-on this year. Stephen had a design table at the TABConf Builder Day. Dulce had organized a few new members mixer calls. We mentored students via Summer of Bitcoin. Lots of people welcomed new members in Slack with friendly messages. Many other things happened. What can we do next year? Either way, I hope the community remains a great place that people enjoy being part of and collaborate on projects that interest them.

One aspect is establishing a foundation to support design efforts in bitcoin more generally. This is in the works - just takes time to work through the legal & tax aspects while juggling so many other projects (I’ll have to say “no” more often next year). Once set up, this should be a good way to support more experienced designers to make dents in the multiverse. This has to be smoothly rolling within a year, no way around it.

Design guide

As I see it, this was a year of refinement for the guide. We updated the structure and spend most time with lightning and the daily spending wallet reference design. We still have some pages that are a bit rough in comparison (like our other reference designs), and new content to add (like merchants & research), but it might be better to shift some time towards working with projects to get the recommendations in the guide implemented. This will not only improve IRL UX, but also be helpful in identifying ways to improve the guide. We already do this with collaborations, review sessions, research, etc, but there is likely more we can do (like more presence at conferences).

A great thing about the guide as a community project is that it continuously spawns interesting discussions. There really is a lot of content now to solve common UX problems, so we can focus on new and interesting challenges.

One thing is that we have fewer contributors than at the beginning of the year. Part of it is that contributing gets harder because the content is more refined (less low-hanging, easy-to-contribute, fruit). It will take more maintainer support to help others contribute.

Bitcoin UI Kit

The UI Kit has gotten more adoption, and at the same time I have a long backlog of work that had to take a backseat to more timely efforts like the Designathon. For 2023, I have planned a larger revision and the build-out of case studies and how-to videos. Daniel is contributing to a Swift UI library, and Stephen is planning on a React UI library. I’d also like to make sure I can support these. UI Kit workshops also seem to be popular, so I think we can do more of those (virtual and at conferences).

Bitcoin Icons

This has become more of a low-maintenance project that will likely only need 2-3 new releases with a handful of new icons each. The React module now has 1.5K downloads per month, the Figma file 1.2K duplications, and the (community built) Figma plugin 2.1K installs. It might be good to just do a whole project review and polish things a bit further.

Saving Satoshi

Initiated by Adam Jonas from Chaincode via the Designathon, this is an effort to get more developers into bitcoin via an online course in the form of a rich, interactive, sci-fi story. I was temporarily helping Jonas kick off the project in the Designathon, and then took on the role of design lead because it was so interesting. Then we won the design award at Legends of Lightning, which was super exciting. The experience should also appeal to designers, so I’d like to ensure the project generally flourishes over the next year. The team is really good, so I think we’ll be able to move quickly.

Bitcoin Core App

We’re (still) close to releasing a test-version of V1 for running a node on desktop computers and Android. I have a Samsung phone for general testing and have run the latest app builds there, and it’s been super cool to see it work (props to the whole team). On testnet and with a few issues, sure, but it works. I hope that in a year we’ll have V1 out in the wild, used and enjoyed by people, with several rounds of iteration, fixes, and polish under the hood. And that we’re in the middle of building out V2 wallet features. Maybe even have basic wallet functionality live with more complex features in the works. We had several designers contribute this year, and I hope this will continue with the help of our solid design docs and Figma setup.

Collaborations

A collaboration is when a project shows up and we get a community-oriented design project going - free for anyone to be part of. Not that other projects are closed off, it’s just that collaborations are more explicitly public. Design needs are diverse and each project is unique, and often it seems to start with a bigger group effort that then leads to one or two designer supporting the project more long-term. We’ve had several this year, like the new brand and site for Stratum V2, the Blixt sprint, and the JoinMarket Web UI. Right now I’m involved with Wallet Scrutiny, which also has brand and web design aspects, along with a very unique information design task around making security reviews digestible for a broad audience. I wish I could continue supporting projects hands-on this way, but in reality I will not have time for this with everything else. So I will need to shift to connecting collaborations with designers and ensuring a smooth process, rather than being involved with actually doing the design work.

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Some say that planning is guessing. Is it? Sure, various things are out of your control. But then again, without a plan you’re not setting things in motion and might end up free-floating. I try to have a clear idea on the general things to achieve - those should not change. I also like having specific ideas on how to achieve those things - but assume those might need adjustment as events unfold. Particularly in open-source and the context of a loosely organized community unified by a common interest and mission, a certain flexibility is important. With general community involvement, more flexibility is needed as it’s very dynamic. With hands-on contributions to a smaller project, it’s OK to have a well-defined path laid out.

Anyhow, that’s enough rambling for now, there are a lot of conversations that could be had on each of these topics. At the start of the year I’ll sit down and create more specific plans for everything. I’m happy to chat if you’d like.

Merry Xmas, peace and happiness to you. Thanks to all you lovely people that make it a pleasure to help out with bitcoin, design, and everything around it.

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