User interviews

[mouxdesign]

Bitcoin core app user interviews

Bitcoin core app is in the process of being built and the research initiative aimed to support the build process. While there are many users of the current Qt Widgets GUI for Bitcoin Core. We currently do not understand this user base and have not connected with them to establish their needs.

Understanding the goals and needs of people using the QT widgets GUI would support the build process of Bitcoin Core App by helping to identify their needs, goals and pain points

Research goals

• Understand the personas using Bitcoin Core
• Understand the jobs to be done by each of these personas. This is as if users hire Bitcoin core to perform a job or a set of jobs.
• Understand the parts of the UI that are being used more heavily than others.
• Understand their struggles and hopes of people when using the GUI.
• Understand what frustrates or makes people happy when using the GUI

Process

Step 1: Plan the sprint

We set out to ideate on the research objectives that we wanted to achieve by the end of the sprint. This as a collaborative effort in the Bitcoin Design Community.

Step 2: Create interview script

We then decided that the best method to get this information would be by directly interviewing both current and potential users of bitcoin core. This would then help to shape the direction of bitcoin core app.

Step 3: Connect with people

We then set out to speak to people. A few of us visited a conference and found this the perfect opportunity to speak with current and potential users.

Step 4: Evaluate the conversations

We then put all of the conversations into an affinity diagram and sorted through them. The goal of sorting was to identify bigger buckets or patterns in the data.

Bitcoin Core current user profile

Duration they have been using a bitcoin wallet

• 10 Years or longer: Larger bucket (more than half)
• The majority of the people we spoke to have been using a wallet for 10 years or longer.

8 Years or less: Smaller bucket (less than half) The smaller group of people we spoke with have been using a wallet for 8 years or less

Wallets used next to Bitcoin Core

Observations:

• Most people were using at least one or more wallets next to Bitcoin core.
• Every person which we interviewed had more than one wallet.
• Sparrow was by far the most popular wallet choice of current Bitcoin Core users.

The most popular wallets that are being used next to bitcoin core are listed in the order of use. Listed from most to least used:

• Sparrow
• Electrum
• Blue Wallet
• Breeze
• Zeus
• Phoenix
• BTC Pay Server
• WOS
• Peach
• Mycelluim
• Green Wallet
• Bitkit

Insights

The current user of Bitcoin core tends to be a bitcoiner who is:

• Fairly experienced in the bitcoin space, they have been using a wallet for many years now.
• 4 years: This was the shortest time that an interviewee has been using a bitcoin wallet
• 10 Years: This is the longest time that a interviewee has been using a bitcoin wallet
• These more experienced users are using at the minimum two wallets or more, each one for a different use case.
• Sparrow was by far the wallet that was used the most.

The push: What pushed them to start using Bitcoin Core?

Pushes

A push fits under the Jobs to be done framework and assumes that a user “hires” the software to complete a specific job. During the process of “hiring” the software they expect it to perform a specific role.

During this stage there is a particular reason or “push” that results in them installing the software onto their device.

For Bitcoin core the main reasons that pushed people to install and start using it were the following:

The top 3 reasons were:

Self custody, Node running, developer testing

1. Self custody There was a bcash fork happening and they wanted to have a self-custodial solution. “There was a bcash fork going on, I wanted to have my keys own before it happened.”

2. Node running Bitcoin Core was installed to run a node “I wanted a node primarily, and wallet functions was only secondary.”

3. Consensus making They want to help contribute to consensus on the blockchain. “For me running it its about contributing to the community..”

4. Curiosity They were genuinely curious and just wanted to try out the software. “At first just to explore. Just to understand bitcoin better.”

5. Transacting They wanted to buy something.

6. Inscriptions They wanted to inscribe ordinals.

7. Developer testing They are a developer working on Bitcoin Core and downloaded it for testing purposes.

“I was trying to recreate a crash that someone reported.”

Fears during push stage

During this stage of “hiring” the product the person might have fears.

One of the main fears of people when installing bitcoin core came through the syncing process.

1. Syncing time I want to be informed:****

• They were not informed of the time it would take to sync and this resulted in them feeling confused.
• They were not informed as to why the app remained stuck on 0% syncing.

“It was 0% of synchronizing, he wasn't informed about the whats happening or why it didn't started to sync.”

“Didn’t really understand it at first. I was confused the first time I was running it. Mostly the sync process.”

I want to be educated:****

• Their fears came mostly from the feeling that they did not understand the software.
• “I had this feeling of maybe it comes from not completely understanding..lets say you have to fly a plane and land it but you’ve never done it before.”

What do you like the most about the wallet you use?

1. Visualization

• Users like it when the interface design makes them feel in control, what makes them feel in control is the visualisation of information. Sparrow wallet was the favourite here in terms of how they visualise information. Some of the points that were mentioned about how Sparrow does this well were:

2. Addresses:

• Shows all the addresses

3. Transaction details:

• Expand transactions and see UTXO’s
• Add transaction notes

4. Transaction construction:

   • Visualisation of transaction construction

5. Ease of use

• The interface was easy for them to understand
• It was easy to transfer between wallets
• The onboarding process was easy
• The mobile user experience was good

6. Assurance

• Authentication features are quite important to users, they especially like it when the authentication features are on default.

• Also when the recovery process is important that they feel they can recover their wallet quickly and easily.

• Users also want assurance that their privacy is being protected on Sparrow this is being done by using a color code.

7. Fees Being able to adjust fees as well as the ability to consolidate fees is something that is important to users.

8. Self custodial The wallet being self custodial was also a philosophical reason as to why users mentioned that they could not support a custodial wallet.

9. Testing A few people who were using Bitcoin QT were using it for testing purposes.

Insights

• The visualization of constructing transactions, transaction details as well as seeing all of the addresses makes users feel in control.
• Users want to fee that they can recover their wallet easily, Sparrow wallet has a visualization aspect that shows the level of the users privacy, this visualisation is something user liked.
• Visualisation and ease of use were the two largest buckets in terms of what users like the most about the current wallets that they use.

Consumption

When asked when was the last time that they opened bitcoin core as well as the context in which is used. There were 3 main use cases they are mentioned below. Secondary to these 3 main use cases were other smaller use cases.

We received the following insights:

- Node runner: The largest group was running a node - Data enthusiast: The second largest group were using it to access blockchain data - Transactor: The third largest group were using it to transact

Node runner

I use core to run a node

Data enthusiast

I use core to access blockchain data

Transactor

I use core to make transactions

Enjoy about core

When asked when was they enjoyed about using core, the top two aspects where:

• Reliability and trustworthy
• Visibility of peers

Secondary reasons were:

• Easy installation
• Open source and helping decentralisation
• Different features

Find frustrating

When asked what they found frustrating about using core. There were 3 areas that were the primary frustration points:

• Connecting and syncing
• Interface
• Set-up and configuration process

Next to those larger areas people found on a smaller scale the following to be frustration points:

• Console issues
• Cannot batch transactions
• No multiisig option
• No option to manage PTSB’s
• No BIP39 support
• Customer support
• Node/wallet separation
• Development process
• Output descriptors
• Ordinal use

[mouxdesign]

[mouxdesign]

What did we do? Milestone 1 of Bitcoin Core was tested on a small group of people using Guerilla testing.

During this call we jumped on a community call and the team who designed/built the application all jumped on and we observed a small group of people using the interface.

Why did we do it? We wanted to test Bitcoin Core App on a smaller audience before sharing it with a broader audience. The goal of this testing process was to identify:

• Initial impressions of the interface
• Areas that we can improve

Links to documents

• Call Recording
• Raw Transcript
• Insights

Insights

Onboarding flow and installation process

MacOS:

• If Bitcoin Core has previously been installed on the device the onboarding flow is skipped.
• The signing path needed to be changed after downloading from Github. They would have to change a specific path in order to get the download to work.
• When Bitcoin Core has previously been installed on the device there was a error during the installation process.
• Failing to sync: When the application fails to install on the device, there is a message unable to install, however there is no solution provided to the user if the installation process fails
• Block clock: Feedback on hover states. The person testing the application did not understand the various states of the block clock. "I think at that point there was, it's five dots, like four of them were white, and the last one was grey, and I wasn't sure what that means."

Settings

• Users did not expect the connection and peers and network traffic to be on this screen. "But I'm a little surprised now that I look at it that the connection and peers and the network traffic types are here."
• Part of the peers connection screen was hidden.