BitcoinDesign
Bitcoin Design Guide: Use Cases and Interviews
The Bitcoin Design Guide is an extensive resource used by builders. Like any resource collecting user feedback and documenting this will provide insight as to:
- Use cases: Understand how the guide is being used by builders
- Areas for improvement: Which areas of the guide can be improved
Interview method
The data in the repo will vary and be collected from various sources:
- One-on-One interviews using the following script
- Publicly available information
Consent privacy
People who are interviewed are asked for their consent to place an edited version of the interview in a public repository where all private information is removed.
This will help to build a higher level overview from various resources.
Previous research done
In 2022 a survey was done on the Bitcoin Design Guide, the survey results can be found here.
Interview 1
Background
X is a developer building and designing a bitcoin lightning wallet, this is a solo wallet builder that also contributes to various initiatives in the ecosystem. A lightning wallet is being built that has more advanced features.
Resource/s used
- Bitcoin Design Guide
- Bitcoin UI kit
Most used part of the guide
- Daily spending wallet
- Glossary
How is it used?
-
Daily spending wallet: The daily spending wallet is used as a reference design as he is building the lighting wallet. He uses it to envision how the user flow is going to look like from the design side. he uses it as a starting point to understand what the first screen should look like in a particular part of the user flow.
-
Glossary The glossary is used as a educational tool to explain seemingly complex topics to others. It is also used at bitcoin meetups to explain concepts to less technical people. When the code in the repo does not make sense to someone to understand he'll go over to the guide to see if there is an explanation or glossary entry about that topic.
Areas for improvement
None
How was research done to build the wallet?
The builder started using himself as the main user of the wallet, building a wallet for people like himself. The wallet is being built with the following thoughts in mind:
- What does the user exp feel like?
- Do I trust putting my bitcoin in this wallet?
Main takeaways
The Bitcoin Design guide is being used by a solo builder who is building a lightning wallet with more advanced features. The daily spending wallet is the most highly used part during the building process and it is used as a starting point for the builder to understand what the starting point of a design would look like in a particular part of a user flow.
The glossary of the guide is used as an educational tool to explain technical concepts in a more human way to others.
Discord chat 2
Background
The following info was collected in the Discord server of a wallet team. The wallet is a self-custodial lighting wallet. The wallet is being built by a small team. The front end-developer also has the role of UX designer. The builder was in the process of re-designing the wallet and spoke specifically about what was useful during this re-design phase in terms of resources and help received.
Resource/s used
- Bitcoin Design Guide
- Bitcoin Design Community Newsletter
Most used part of the guide
Daily spending wallet The following parts of the guide were referenced during the conversation
- Backup and Recovery: recovering with a manual backup
- Contacts
- Activity
Other resources and help received
Other apps and wallets:
- Venmo
- Signal
- Other wallets
- Fantasy redesign: A design problem was presented to an engineering cohort and a redesign was done using that problem, this design was then presented by the UX designer in the cohort and he used quite a lot from that fantasy re-design.
Reasons the guide may not be used
- Time constraints
- Guide has more screens and steps
- Used design directly from another wallet or designed something he really likes
Main takeaways
The wallet builder has used the Bitcoin Design Guide from time to time during the re-design of the wallet. The most used section was the daily spending wallet.
During the redesign process the designer consulted with various sources to refine the design, it is usually a mixture of referring to other wallets, using a fantasy re-design done by another UX designer and referencing the guide.
The Bitcoin Design Community Newsletter was also mentioned as being discussed during meetups in the city of the builder.
A more focussed research initiative has kicked off. We are looking to speak with atleast 10 builders who have used the Bitcoin Design Guide.
Project Overview
The Bitcoin Design Guide was established 4 years ago with the goal of helping builders build more intuitive accessible products. It is a valuable resource packed with:
- Reference designs (Daily spending wallet, Savings Wallet, Inheritance wallet)
- Designing Bitcoin products
- How the technology works
- Case studies
- Glossary of terminology
While it has been around for 4 years now little is known as to how and why it is used. This research study aims to use a research method called Jobs to be Done to help to understand how the guide is being used by Bitcoin builders.
Resources:
We'll use the Jobs to be Done frame work to understand
- Understand how the Bitcoin Design Guide is being used by builders
- Understand what users typically love about the Bitcoin Design Guide + Community resources
- Understand what friction points exist when using the guide
- Collect a list of key takeaways as to how the Bitcoin Design Guide is useful as a resource to builders as well as how it can be improved
Update on this research initiative
Christoph and myself are continuing on this research initiative and are looking to wrap up all interviews and put a report together by end of May/early June 2025.
Putting together comprehensive studies on how the Bitcoin Design Guide is used out in the wild will form a report and possibly a series of artefacts which can be used to:
- Show how designers and developers are using the BDG to build real products
- Show how designers and developers are using the BGG to solve problems
- Show gaps in the guide that we can use to inform new content directions
Right now we have
- Put together interview scripts for two groups a) Group 1: Confirmed Guide Users b) Group 2: Potential Guide Users
We aim to complete:
- 5 - 10 interviews of people who have confirmed using the guide
- 5 - 10 interviews with people who are potential users of the guide
- Show geographical diversity in the people we interview so that we can map it out
- Tell a story of the journey of designers and developers across the globe are using the guide to make informed product decisions
Interviews to date:
Group 1: Confirmed Guide Users
- 2 interviews have been conducted with builders who have used the guide
It is well overdue to create a summary of the research interviews that were conducted on the Bitcoin Design Guide.
In the end we spoke with 3 wallet builders who actually used the Bitcoin Design Guide during the building process. The report reads not as a report but rather as a story. Highlighting direct quotes from the builders themselves and reveals how the guide is being used out in the wild.
Here is the report in a google doc. Will past it here below as well:
Bitcoin Design Guide research report
Understanding how builders hire the guide to solve their problems
Research participants
This research included conversations with three Bitcoin wallet builders:
- Blake, a 21-year-old self-taught developer building BlitzWallet, a mobile Bitcoin wallet with on-chain and Lightning capabilities
- Abubakar, lead maintainer of Vault, a taproot-native wallet with Lightning integration using Breeze SDK
- A builder of a self-custodial Lightning wallet, captured through Discord conversations during an active redesign process
Main takeaways
- The Bitcoin Design Guide serves as a critical onboarding ramp for builders entering the Bitcoin space, particularly those without formal design backgrounds
- Builders consistently use the guide during their first six months of development to establish foundational UX patterns and feature requirements
- The guide's greatest strength lies in providing visual validation for design decisions and revealing gaps in product planning. However, after the initial foundation is set, builders move away from the guide to develop unique product identities
The moment of discovery
Picture a self-taught developer, late at night, staring at a wallet interface that technically works but looks, as one builder put it, "awful." This is the moment when many builders first encounter the Bitcoin Design Guide, not through marketing or formal channels, but through desperation and Google searches.
Blake, a 21-year-old solo builder working on BlitzWallet, captured this perfectly:
"I was trying to recreate MoonWallet's UI. Obviously, I didn't do that good of a job because it looked really bad. It's really hard to look at an app and then try and recreate that app."
When a designer told him, "hey, this is cool, but your design is awful," and pointed him to the Bitcoin Design Guide, it became a lifeline.
For Abubakar, working on Vault wallet, the discovery came during late-night research comparing wallet UX patterns:
"I came across it a while back through a couple of nights where I was looking at how do different wallets handle certain scenarios... I saw some of the screens that were describing some of the flows on I think Blue Wallet or one of the other wallets but that's what I recall. I was definitely down the rabbit hole of comparing the UX screens."
The first impression? Overwhelming. Blake remembered:
"When you open your first Figma file, it's already like, whoa, there's a lot going on. And then with the design guide back then, there were like a bunch of pages and a bunch of different user flows. And I was like, whoa, this is just a lot."
But that overwhelming feeling quickly transformed into something else, relief. The guide wasn't just showing them how things should look; it was showing them what they'd forgotten to build.
The six-month foundation
Every builder we spoke with described a similar pattern: intensive use of the guide during the first six months of development, followed by a gradual departure as they established their unique identity. This isn't a failure of the guide, it's exactly what good resources should enable.
Finding the gaps
The guide's most valuable function isn't showing builders what to copy, it's revealing what they've missed entirely. Blake explained:
"It was a good reference to showcase what are some key features that you need to have in this type of wallet scenario. They have this recovery seed phrase process. That probably is needed. So cool. I'll put that to the list of features that I need."
Abubakar faced a specific problem that the guide helped solve:
"How you display the amounts. Going from SATs to BTC itself, and specifically how you handle larger units and smaller units, because not all wallets handle that well... That took quite a while. But yeah, the design guide was very, very useful because it compared a whole bunch of other wallets and how they did it."
The validation loop
What emerges from these conversations is that builders aren't just learning from the guide, they're using it to validate their own instincts. As Blake put it:
"The problem was you have a good product or you think you have a good product, but a lot of consumer facing products if they don't meet a certain threshold of appearance, nobody's going to use it. You can have the best technology on the back end, but if the design is confusing, if the design doesn't make sense, then nobody's going to use it."
The guide became their benchmark. Abubakar noted:
"The main thing for me was making sure that despite these flows being common it doesn't necessarily mean they're the best... getting into the habit of changing those flows into something even more intuitive as opposed to going with the flock."
The builder of a self-custodial Lightning wallet, summarized their most-used section during their redesign:
They used the Bitcoin Design Guide from time to time during the re-design of the wallet. The most used section was the daily spending wallet. They also consulted Backup and Recovery.
Building with constraints
Time emerged as a consistent theme. One lightning wallet builder noted time constraints as a reason the guide might not be used, along with that the guide has more screens and steps.
When builders need to ship quickly, they sometimes bypass the guide's comprehensive flows, either using design directly from another wallet or they design something they really like.
Beyond the foundation
After those crucial first six months, something shifts. Builders stop returning to the guide regularly, not because it failed them, but because they've internalized its lessons and need to differentiate their products.
The evolution away
Blake was candid:
"After that beginning phase, probably not. I think it was a very good introductory into what are the specific things that I need to have. I made that list. And then it was how should it generally look? I made those notes. And then post that, it was all just who I am as a designer, who X is as a designer, who the community is as a designer. Because obviously, if you just copy it, you're not going to be that unique."
Abubakar echoed this:
"Most of the screen layout has been sorted out through the design. Moving forward, the main things will be fixing some of the ways in which things are displayed on the settings... I'll need to redesign a couple of things just to make it even more intuitive."
The hunger for more
But builders aren't just moving on, they're looking ahead to what the guide doesn't yet cover. Abubakar was particularly passionate about this:
"Honestly, it's the parts that I haven't implemented in Vault yet. Things around inheritance, things around multi-sig as well... We're in a good place in terms of having good UX when it comes to single wallets that have single keys and are basic. The challenge is how do you translate those same UIs and that convenience into a multi-sig approach?"
He continued:
"The closest type seems like Liana, maybe Anchor wallet, but in terms of mobile wallets, I don't think there are too many... Inheritance is going to be another huge use case for a lot of people, especially as the price keeps going up."
Perhaps most critically, Abubakar identified a gap that multiple builders face:
"The only other thing that would be interesting is this all under the assumption that the wallet is either lightning or bitcoin, and I'm not sure if it exactly accounts for wallets that do both... Increasingly, we're likely going to have more wallets that do both lightning and bitcoin. The use for people would be to make sure that we have standardized UX flows as well for that."
The community resource gap
Blake's final suggestion revealed a deeper need:
"The biggest thing for me would be a community resources box... I work in React Native, so React Native packages that are necessary in a wallet. A lot of what I struggled in the beginning was doing a ton of research to find high quality BIP39 mnemonic seed phrase generators... How do you go about picking a package online? Who do you trust as the developer?"
He envisioned something practical:
"A community page where builders put good resources that other builders can then reference... I ran into these six Xcode errors 9,000 times and all you have to do is change this semicolon in this one file. Don't go searching on the internet for 18 hours to find the semicolon."
Three recommendations for moving forward
1. Create a builder's resource hub
The guide has mastered design patterns, but builders need technical scaffolding too. Create a community-maintained section where builders can share:
- Vetted code packages and libraries
- Common technical gotchas and solutions ("the semicolon in the Xcode file")
- Links to complementary resources like Here Comes Bitcoin for community assets
This isn't about expanding beyond design, it's about acknowledging that design decisions are inseparable from implementation realities. Blake's struggle to find a trustworthy seed phrase generator isn't a technical problem or a design problem, it's both.
2. Develop flows for emerging patterns
The next wave of wallet innovation could combine on-chain and lightning in single interfaces. The guide could lead here by:
- Documenting emerging patterns for unified balance displays
- Creating reference flows for switching between layers
3. Maintain the onboarding focus
The guide's greatest strength is being the perfect first resource for builders. Protect this by:
- Keeping the initial experience manageable (address the "overwhelming" first impression)
- Maintaining clear "getting started" paths separate from comprehensive references
- Regularly updating comparison examples that show both good and bad patterns
Blake's approach to design validation exemplifies what the guide teaches. Coming from a marketing background, he understood that "my product's not for me. My product needs to fit where my consumers want it to fit." So he tested obsessively, sending screenshots to friends and family, asking "Does this make sense? Does this flow make sense? Can you find the things here?"
The moment he knew he'd succeeded came when he sent a screenshot to his grandmother:
"I was like, Hey, grandma, does this icon make sense? Like, what does this mean to you?"
When she immediately identified it as a contacts icon, he knew he'd gotten it right. This wasn't just about one icon, it was about learning to design for clarity and intuition. The guide had taught him that this kind of real-world validation matters, helping him develop an instinct for user-centered design rather than just providing templates to copy.
Conclusion
The Bitcoin Design Guide succeeds not when builders use it forever, but when they use it intensively, learn deeply, and then confidently move forward to create something unique.