First, none of this would be possible without support from OpenSats and for that I am very grateful! Being able to do work on Nostr is one of the best thing I could hope for! Thank you!

TLDR;

1. Launched nostrdesign.org and updated it with content, reference designs.
2. Reviewed a bunch of client UI/UX and provided suggestions
3. Worked on designs - snort, zap stream, and redesigned some clients, while providing visual feedback where I could.
4. “Started” #nostrdesign hashtag to encourage design discussions, questions, comments, and feedback from anyone wishing to participate.

Hashtag

Since creating the #nostrdesign hashtag, we’ve seen a good amount of participation from the community. I am very pleased to see that people are using it to share design progress, ask for feedback, jumpstart ideas and propose improvements to existing clients.

The best part is that people who are not designers are able to chime in (and do so frequently) under discussions originated by designers / developers!

This is exactly what I was hoping to see happen. Instead of establishing yet an other closed group, I wanted the general user base to engage with nostr developers, express their thoughts and ideas. After all, designers don’t have all the answers, all the time.

People are asking great, and very important questions that could impact a large number of people coming into the space.

Designers are providing useful feedback to improve popular clients. I hope to see more designers get involved and chime in with their ideas!

Going forward, I would like to continue using the hashtag to encourage more participation.

Ask:

Developers - don’t hesitate to ask for feedback often. Just add #nostrdesign to your notes.

Designers - your UX ideas and design expertise are needed to make the best experiences possible. Please drop in and chime in with your feedback when possible.

Everyone - you all use the apps and your feedback is priceless! Complain as much as necessary, this is how we learn. Just tag #nostrdesign so we can come up with better solutions to existing issues.

Client Reviews & Feedback

The following is a list of clients I have provided feedback for, designed parts of, or put forth major design proposals during the first quarter (I am currently uploading recordings to a YouTube channel to make them accessible to everyone):

1. Lume - onboarding review and some minor design mockups. Reya (Lume developer) said he implemented the recommendations, but I need to review again (on my to-do list). Video recording.
2. Damus - home page design idea
3. Stargazr - full client review, recommendations and the start of a re-designed client.
4. Pinstr - provided actionable feedback for @Sepehr.
5. Listr - @JeffG asked for feedback several times and I reviewed the client before and after feedback, providing further recommendations. (Round 1, Round 2 feedback)
6. Slidestr - provided feedback and designed what I would consider to be the ideal experience.
7. Swarmstr - @pitunited asked for feedback and I reviewed the entire client.
8. Current (iOS) - egge asked for feedback and I created an issue in their GitHub, along with a video.
9. 0xChat - water asked for feedback. I reviewed the client on video and made recommendations.
10. Nostree - provided feedback and design ideas
11. Primal - some design ideas which may or may not make it into production, we’ll see!
12. noStrudel - minor feedback and designing some ideas for @hzrd149
13. Habla (work in progress). I have provided some styling and UX feedback and I’m currently working on designing the changes.
14. Spring - Artur approached me about the idea behind Spring and needed some help shaping his vision. I designed the product experience (Figma file) and he implemented it on Android, perhaps with his own ideas mixed in.
15. Yana - Yana asked for a full review and I provided a recording of my initial experience and recommendations.
16. Nosta - Christoph asked me to review the client, and I did so in full, providing my experience, ideas and recommendations. Christoph is now implementing some of the ideas / recommendations!
17. Vendata - Pablo asked me to look at the current state of the (proposed?) redesign and I chimed in with my thoughts.
18. NostrNet.work - I really liked the project and pitched an unsolicited design idea.
19. PlebeianMarket - @Chiefmonkey asked for feedback on PM. I provided a recording of my thoughts.
20. Snort - snort has seen many improvements in features. Kieran and I are working closely to shape the client. I redesigned Snort for version 2 that he managed to ship not long ago. This was a major project. I also updated Snort’s CSS, both dark and light mode and improved some of the UX directly through a pull request.
21. Zap.stream - I am also working with Kieran on a continuous basis to improve zap.stream. Due to Snort V2 being in the works at that time, we didn’t have as much time to work on zap.stream but we managed to add a new onboarding flow which I designed. Roland did a lot of the work on development side. I am currently engaging Kieran to see what needs to be done next.

Design Help

The following is a list of clients I was involved with, ranging from major contributions to minor enhancement proposals:

• Snort (major)
• zap.stream (major)
• Damus (minor)
• Spring (major)
• NostrNet.work (somewhere in between)
• Primal (minor)
• Habla (major initially, now minor)
• Nostree (none initially, major design mockups currently)
• Pinstr (design ideas mockups)
• Slidstr (design ideas mockups)
• Stargazr (none initially, major design mockups currently)

Nostr Design Guide

In Q1 https://nostrdesign.org/ was born! There were some technical challenges (for me personally), but thanks to help from Gigi and Daniele, the resource is live.

I’ve made substantial progress in content, including reference designs. The bulk of the time on the guide is in reference designs.

The guide still needs additional examples, and some of the content is missing (like Accessibility). This is a work in progress.

The reference components are ongoing endeavor. I’d like to cover all the basic use cases, desktop and mobile and provide guidance on any new questions that come up (such as mute words).

Since the launch of the guide I have seen a lot of positive feedback with people frequently referencing the website (even on live streams). I am humbled by this and hope to make the resource even more useful.

Next Quarter Plan

In the following quarter, I plan on allocating my time as follows:

• Rounding out the nostr design guide with examples.
• Reference components for nostr design guide - especially the crucial parts that are asked about the most.
• Following up on the feedback I have provided for various clients and devs to see if they are acting on it, why not if not, and if there’s anything I can do to help them make progress.
• Providing Quality Assurance reviews on the work that was implemented.
• Improving existing clients with better UX ideas.
• Engaging with the nostr community to find better ways of doing things, learning about what’s working and what’s not working.
• Exploring UI / UX improvements on new ideas put forward by developers and the general nostr community.
• Helping clients think about growth and monetization strategies. I have already outlined some ideas for Snort (informal ideas) and Zap.stream

Got feedback?

Clients, designs, business ideas, personal, any feedback you have, I am all ears! You can leave comments right on this note, DM me, or email karnage@opensats.org. I take note of all the feedback and consider individually, so you’ll always be heard. Thank you!

To increase conversion rates (people sticking around to keep using your product, and ultimately paying), get people to their “aha!” moment as quickly as possible.

The “aha!” moment is where it clicks for the user exactly why this product is awesome. It's the shortest path to awesome. Once the user sees the value in the product, they are more likely to stick around.

Product designers and developers who are aware of this, know that the name of the game is providing value, and hopefully overdelivering, as quickly as possible. This means setting aside their own desires to showcase the product in its full glory, and focusing on the essentials - minimizing the number of steps required to get to the aha moment.

Design by omission becomes important. What to not include becomes equally, if not more important as what to include. So does reducing friction. The fewer, less painful steps involved in getting insane value out of a product, the better.

This concept is a great rule of thumb for every product founder.
Instead of thinking “what feature should I add to make people love this product?”, founders should be thinking “what features do I absolutely need for people to love this product?” Then de-emphasize everything else.

Nostr clients are no different from a typical startup - they should be trying to figure out the “aha!” moment, and how to get the user to it as quickly as possible.

A useful exercise I often perform is to reverse the process and start at the end - the action the user needs to take to have their minds blown. Once you figure out what that action is, work backwards to the steps where they first land on the product page, or install the app, whatever that may be. The goal is to cut out as many steps in-between as possible.

I’ll demonstrate with a hypothetical, but practical example.

Let us assume we are building a music app where people can earn sats when others listen to their tracks.

Nostr has several layers and steps that most people typically go through, for example:

1. Generate key pair
2. Save keys warning
3. Pick a username
4. Import follows (perhaps)
5. In some cases add relays
6. Navigate to some sort of a feed, either from follows or general
7. You typically need to set up your profile if you want people to take you seriously
8. Have to figure out what sats are, why anyone should care? What are these play tokens?
9. If care enough, find settings to connect a wallet
10. Learn about wallets (now you leave the platform to do a bunch of reading), chances are you are gone for good.
11. Connect a wallet, test a payment.
12. Do something for someone to find your action worthy of a zap / perhaps upload a track?
13. Aha moment! You can get paid easily and fast just for interacting with people.

Perhaps you’ll also have a realization that your comments are showing cross-platforms which supercharges your content distribution, but for now we don’t need to worry about this.

Of course, some of these steps may be optional, but if we are talking about someone who knows nothing about nostr, sats, zaps, key pairs, that’s 12 steps to get to some realization of what is possible.

12 steps!

The barrier to seeing value is very steep unless you already understand the benefits of decentralized social platforms, know about bitcoin and understand the possibilities.

Sadly, this is not what an average user looks like.

In fact, if you look on Nostr.band, the stats show that the number of profiles with an LN address has remained largely flat for a long time. It’s likely that these people are mostly bitcoiners who already understand the value proposition of a lightning payment.

Now, let’s work backwards and just think through which steps could potentially be eliminated. Keep in mind, we are talking about a music client.

Let us assume that the aha! moment is someone getting paid for their creative work (music). I think this is a safe assumption.

Final step: Pay bills with your creative work

This is going a bit beyond the aha moment, but we’ll roll with it.

Let’s ask some questions…

• What’s the fastest way to demonstrate that a user can collect payments for uploading tracks? How about a web client that is visible without logging in? Perhaps you can see some songs right away and notice that they are earning money? It’s not a personal aha moment, but it’s a preview.
• Can we get the user to skip signup entirely?
• Can the user upload a track as step 1?
• Can they see their local currency as a payout option?
• Can they collect payment in their local currency?
• Do they need to know what sats are? At least initially?
• Do they need to care about relays and everything that this entails?
• Do they really need to connect a wallet to get paid?
• Do they really need to follow anyone to see a feed?
• Are usernames even important to see the value in this product?
• Do they need to learn about cryptographic key pairs? How can we delay this step?

Having asked all of these questions, we can draft an ideal scenario. It may not be realistic, far from it, but at least we know what an ideal and amazing journey would look like.

1. Land on a website and see that people are getting paid in your local currency for the same work you offer. Hey, maybe I should try this? 🤔
2. What’s this.. a button to upload music? Ok, I have a file sitting on my drive, or have a link handy, let’s do it! Go ahead and add the track (as few steps as possible). Holy shit, I can add splits? Sounds crazy.. ok, let’s keep going.
3. Now that I’ve made progress in adding some information, it seems I need to sign up to finish. Makes sense. One or two clicks, I’m in and my track is added.
4. Aha moment: I go eat dinner, come back an hour later and see that I’ve just earned $5. It ain’t that much, but it didn’t take long! Turns out new tracks go into the new tab and people can stream them which goes directly to your wallet.
5. Final step: I click a button to cash out, in my local currency. The funds arrive in my bank account. Now I can pay my bills.

It may not be a feasible flow, or even a desirable one, but at least we can see that an amazing journey might only take 3-4 steps. It is still using the old money rails for some parts of the app, but the artist can get paid for their work fast and can come to a realization that there might be something to this.

We don’t need to create this specific journey and outcome, but we can use it as a baseline.

As a technical founder / developer you will have a better idea of what is possible. Perhaps new services need to be created to get to our end state? This exercise gives us a lot to think about.

In our example, we might be able to:

• Let users preview the product without signing up
• Have built-in wallets that require no additional setup (with the ability to customize your experience later in the options)
• Display earrings in local currencies while slowly introducing sats, zaps (surely there is an API that can handle sats to local currency conversion in real time? If not, maybe it has to be created?)
• Allow users to cash out into local currency. Why do we need to keep them in sats? Why not let them make their own option? If this is not possible to do - Why? What service needs to exist to allow lightning-enabled apps to tap into easy, plug and play fiat conversion?
• Let users discover relays later on instead of right away to keep them from being overwhelmed.

Even if some of these things are not technically feasible, at least we are now thinking about the flow from a user’s perspective and empathize with them. We start thinking about their time, their needs, their existing frustrations and how we might be able to brighten their day.

This user-centric approach helps founders skip the fluffy parts and focus on the guts that truly matter.

New founders specifically tend to enjoy adding features, thinking the next one will do the trick, only to be disappointed.

I encourage Nostr client developers to start thinking about their users as customers who are looking to solve their own problems.

• How might you make that journey as effortless as possible?
• What is your customer truly seeking? Is it distribution? Is it attention? Is it money?
• Are you delivering it in as few steps as possible?
• Can the “customer” take a more familiar path to get to the same decentralized destination that we all love?