In case you freaks missed it, Mike Schmidt from the Bitcoin Optech team dropped this very interesting analysis on Replace by fee (RBF) transactions in the wild. Focusing on the UX/UI of wallets, explorers, and exchanges and how they are communicating the initiation and completion of RBF transactions to users. For any of you who may be sitting there thinking, "What the fuck is a replace by fee transaction?", in Bitcoin if you send a transaction with a low fee that isn't being confirmed in an amount of time you are comfortable with you can send an RBF transaction with a higher fee that is more likely to be included in a block. A very important feature IMO that allows users to avoid memepool purgatory.
While RBF is an extremely cool feature, the reason I'm highlighting this analysis is because of how well it highlights the dire need for better UX/UI practices and heuristics in this space. Especially when it comes to service providers like wallets, exchanges and block explorers. I'm not sure how many of you are aware of the Nielsen Norman Group's 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, but it is an extremely simple yet powerful guide to providing good user experiences when building a product, specifically a software product. The heuristics are general enough that they can be applied to pretty much any digital product and it should be obvious to anyone in this "space" that very few of the exchanges, wallet providers, or block explorers have ever seen, heard of, or applied these heuristics to their products.
We talk a lot about UX being a big hurdle to mass adoption. I think it's high time we start fine-tuning the already existing services, making it so the user knows exactly what is happening with their transaction or BTC in storage at any given point in time. Creating experiences that reduce stress and increase certainty.
Luckily for us, the team at Bitcoin Optech is on a mission to make my dream a reality. Help them out by pressuring your local Bitcoin service provider to step their design game up.
Final thought...
My 1st grade Valentine's Day was ruined because Alyssa Magano denied my candy offerings. Really devastating for an 8-year-old.
