Having collected some feedback, combined with some personal ideas, here are what seem to be the areas for most improvement in Nostr / clients:
Discovery is an issue, people don’t know who to follow. Since the are not that many diverse profiles that are easy to discover, it might be easier to recommend topics (hashtags).
We could also add profile descriptions on other clients (I think Damus already has this).
Spammy global is a turn off.
Could be solved by recommending Hash tags to follow. What if we create a list of common hash tags (kind of like subreddits) and show those to people? To help populate them, we could (if technically possible) create a client-side list that can be autosuggested as you type in a hashtag. For example, if I typed #p - it could suggest Photography, Plants, Parenting, Philosophy, Programming, etc… This way people who are using hashtags to tag would have an easier time picking something that already exists instead of making totally random ones that nobody is going to discover unless they see it in a note.
Grownostr (IMO) is not a useful hashtag as it is too generic and mixes too many subjects into one. If it were up to me, I’d ditch this one and use auto-recommended ones if/when implemente.d
Crypto talk is a turn off. Can’t stop people from talking about what they are passionate about, so I think the best strategy is to find topics to follow.
Global could become a list of topics you follow instead of actual global notes. Once you follow a few topics, it would become much more useful.
Some (nobody?) understands NIP5 without reading into it. Personally I think this is a terrible name to begin with. Either rename it, or get rid of verification entirely. Since impersonation is likely to affect a smaller number of accounts, we could add paid verification for people who only exceed a certain number of followers. Not sure how you’d enforce this across clients though.. ideas welcome.
People are very confused about keys. nsec, npub, what to enter into a website, what not to… totally understandable. I propose we add small explainers and use old terminology within labels to help people understand these concepts. For example, an input field could be Username (npub) Password (nsec). Of course, I can already hear people shouting at me “But this is not what they are!” Rightfully so. Perhaps, then have tiny explainers, visual, video or just text to plainly explain the concepts right within signup.
Relays - hard to understand. No onboarding process talks about relays now. Idea I have here is to automatically connect people to top X relays while showing this screen in onboarding AND giving a quick explanation of what’s a really. Use fun, engaging copywriting combined with an image or a video to increase the odds of people reading / watching it.
People have a very hard time in profile setup. I think Damus is leading the way on this. Personally, I would stop immediately all development of other features and focus 100% on profile UX. This is a critical step IMO and needs to be absolutely nailed. We can’t expect people to use 3rd party image services to add a profile picture. It needs to be as easy as every other social platform.
People don’t know what zaps are, or how to find a wallet. Steep learning curve. Ideas here: Add old school terminology along side in labels. For example: Zaps (payments).
For wallets, create a section within the client that explains wallets and recommends a few options (are there a few options, perhaps WoW, Alby).
Overall people are not familiar with many of the concepts of Nostr. Solution here would be to create an educational area in a client that covers terminology / concepts and has fun ways to explain what things are. Perhaps even a game or an interactive quiz. I know… a lot of work!
One idea floated was having no signup process at all and generating a key on Post. I am not sure if this would be a good UX given people might get confused why there’s no way to signup or may not take their key seriously and misplace / ignore it. But, it would be cool to test this idea with some client.
