Nostr Web Client

Okay nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm i'm going to try this in two parts. First I'm going to try and walk through my UX when I first encountered Alby. I'll lay out the JTBD I was trying to accomplish and map out my mental state.

Then I will actually RESEARCH Alby and try to better understand what you do. Then filter that back through a suggested UX (or some changes) that might better support the beginners experience.

Obviously this is just me. I'm just a humble minstrel. Not necessarily representative of a specific wider community. Mileage may vary. Yadda yadda.

PART 1: The Minstrel Tries Out Alby

So I joined nostr maybe 6 months ago? it was before the nostr conference in the Caribbean. Anyway, I read up about nostr. Seemed exciting and cypherpunk af. Just what social media needed. I was in.

Somehow I created my account using Damus maybe?

Then discovered that your nostr keys are similar to your bitcoin keys... never enter them directly anywhere.

Found out about the nos2x extension. Loaded it. Started using it. Felt much safer. But it was really basic and felt kind a clunky. I often had to copy and paste the public key. (1st world problems)

Then people started verifying their identity. Somehow they were getting an email address with their handle @nostr.plebs or something. This was mysterious and confusing to figure out and I didn't have time at all.

And of course I was zapping, which was awesome. But could only do this on mobile, as that's where my lightning wallets lived. Plus I didn't like having to tap like 7 times to complete the zap process (zap, select wallet, select amount, add message, send zap, close window, close another window, now up a level, do the hokey pokey, turn yourself around...)

So at this point I had three vague friction points with my nostr experience: nostr key extension, verifying identity, and smooth zapping.

I honestly don't remember how I found alby. I'm sure it was some post in nostr about how cool it was, new shiny thing, smart and handsome dev team, etc.

But I remember what caught my eye is it seemed like an easier way to verify my nostr identity. Seemed like a sleek UX, and I didn't have to ask some other nostr user to "add me to the list and I'll get the email address" or something, which is how it seemed to work at the time with the other service.

Then I remember the UX looking really great. It felt professional. Which is I guess what I needed at the time, since I was just too busy to be the intrepid early adopter.

As I was going through the verification process (i.e. signing up with alby) I discovered it apparently solved these other problems too, with the public key sign in AND was a client-agnostic lightning wallet with a smooth UX.

At that point it seemed like a reliable 1-stop-shop for a lot of nostr/lightning stuff I wanted an easier way to do.

It's a little fuzzy, but I recall going straight to installing the browser extension and only interacting with Alby through there. it's a pretty large pop-out window that's almost the size of a mobile interface. So it seemed to me like "that's all there is to alby".

And it's mostly worked for me that way this entire time. I remember a couple times looking at the menu and noticing there's some other features that I'm not taking advantage of. But my nostr exprience got noticably smoother after installing it, and I had other priorities than becoming an Alby power user. So I just coasted.

Until this morning (yesterday?) when another #nostrich told me my verification is actually not verified. so down the rabbit hole I go and here I am now writing a fucking novel of a UX narrative, which I hope is at least mildly helpful.

Now I'm going to go do some formal research on Alby and will write up PART 2 later tonight. I'll tag you but will post it as a reply to this note.

Cheers!

BTC Minstrel 2y ago

PART 2

Well I've spent the better part of an hour pouring over the nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm website and you all have done a damn fine job. It's an incredibly difficult task to explain lightning, nostr, and v4v dynamics on a marketing website.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm still struggling to understand what Alby is, just a little bit. Probably because it can be so many things to so many people.

But from my point of view, I think of it like a wireless key fob for my car. Cars used to require keys... to unlock them, to lock them, to start them. You had to always be fiddling with them, turning them, jiggling them in the lock.

But wireless key fobs come along and just turn it into a smooth experience that, for a while, feels like magic. The car can literally sense when you're there and unlock for you, turn on with the switch of a button. Turn off if you walk away too far.

It just removes a ton of mechanical friction from the experience.

Alby does this for nostr, and for lightning, and by extension, the v4v ecosystem. So, like, that's pretty brilliant you all should take a fucking bow, because you're killing it.

To stretch that analogy beyond rational limits, you might think of your nostr account as the car, the nostr network as the highway, bitcoin as the gas, and alby as your wireless key fob... if key fobs also paid for gas, I guess.

Anyhoo...

If someone asked me (and to be clear, no one has asked me) to tweak the UX a bit so that it fit better into the bento box of a beginner's mind (see above post) here's probably how I'd frame it.

Make it a two-step process:

1) create your account

2) install the browser extension

Right now they seem positioned as two separate solutions or products. And maybe they are? I don't know, can I use the extension if I don't have an account? Can I use my account without the extension?

Anyway, the dominant UX pattern for all SaaS products is the first thing you do is create an account. Everything else flows from there.

This implies that there is one "back-end" for my user and account data and settings, and that the extension sits atop this information, or is another lens through which I can view and manage.

(Important caveat: it's possibly I am gravely misunderstanding Alby still)

Right now my confusion was that there was an extension, with its own account settings, which mostly helped me send and receive bitcoin seamlessly via other apps. And then there's the account, which does the nostr verification and key management for logging into accounts.

I think what threw me is how you're managing the HTML page for the extension. When I click on the extension I get that rather large pop-out window showing my transactions (and other stuff). But if I go the menu in that window and click "settings" then a full on browser window loads.

Now when that happened I assumed I'd "left the extension" and gone "to the main site". But, much later, when I looked closer I realized that it's just the HTML page for the extension. But since the ar has changed so much in the browser it looked very different.

So my initial, gut reaction is to just have one page/interface where you change the settings to your account (which presumably flow through to the extension) and open THAT page rather than loading the HTML extension page.

On the other hand, if there are actually two different sets of settings (one for account, one for extension) then my recommendation would be to clearly indicate on each page which is which. So label the extension settings page "Extension settings" and maybe put a small link right under that which says "change your account settings here" or something. And maybe even have a tool tip next to that label that explains there are two different classes of settings to help the user grok it.

Anyway, my 2 cents. As before, I'm very impressed by your product and look forward to years of frictionless sending of sats to where they are most deserved.

Now it's possible there's an excellent reason for doing this. And that

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Discussion

BTC Minstrel 2y ago

Whoops. Ignore that last stub of a sentence. It's creative detritus. But since it's nostr it's gonna be there foreva.

saunter 2y ago

This is INCREDIBLY helpful! Your feedback motivated us to really work hard to finally fix it (no, you're not the first encountering those problems), and I think we did good progress yesterday and today on some solutions.

Would you be up for a 30m call next week to take a look at the solutions? Or jump to our community call next week where we will probably show it. Would love to get your feedback on how we try to solve this confusing soup of accounts and settings!