Electrum Wallet
Visual Design / UI / Mobile
Overview
The Electrum wallet is a simple, easy-to-use Bitcoin wallet. It was released in November of 2011. As a result, it is one of the first Bitcoin wallets. It's also one of the most trustworthy. It does not, however, have a mobile application, making it difficult to use for most daily functions. I created a mobile wallet user interface to make Bitcoin payment adoption more intuitive.
Problem
Buying Bitcoin is easy, using it is not. As soon as you want to actually use bitcoin, the trouble starts. While an experienced bitcoiner who is used to it will have no problems sending or receiving money, the situation is different for a first-time bitcoin user. Many people see it as a sea of numbers that don't add up.
Investing in Bitcoin is simple, but using it is complex.
Track Expenses
Within the app, users can sync thier financial wallets. Electrum allows the user to view all wallet transactions in one location and keep tabs on their daily spending. The application arranges their spending automatically, allowing them to see totals by category at a glance.
Multiple Wallets & Cards
It is improbable that users will make all their purchases only through their electrum wallet. Until this is possible, the app should serve as a hub for other cards and serve as a wallet for them as well. Electrum will keep track of transactions and will enable users to utilize non-bitcoin payment cards.
Electrum is simple, and using it is easy.
Requesting bitcoin
The simplest way to receive bitcoin is by generating and sharing a Bitcoin address with the sender. Receivers can share the address by either as a scannable QR code, or as plain text via any regular communication tool like email, instant messaging, SMS, etc. Electrum allows payment request to be made with their contacts.
Receiving bitcoin
For someone to receive bitcoin, they must provide the sender with a payment destination. They can do this by generating an address in their Bitcoin wallet application. A new address should be generated for every payment, as addresses should only be used once. This helps safeguards the receiver’s privacy.
Built with Security in Mind
Designed with Security
When a user generates a new wallet, it creates something called a recovery phrase. A recovery phrase, is a group of 12 or 24 words that lets users recover funds if wallet access is lost. Likewise, users who lose both their recovery phrase and wallet access permanently lose their bitcoin. Arguably, this creates one of the toughest design problems within the space.
Private Keys
Protecting a user’s private keys comes with no less responsibility than safeguarding their bank accounts. That puts private key management at the center of all bitcoin application design considerations. It also presents a problem: if your application is not secure enough, you risk losing the user’s funds. But if it’s not convenient enough, you risk losing the user.
Send Bitcoin like a Text
Contacts
When you download electrum and sign up, users may be asked to grant permission to access their contacts. Electrum will access the names, phone numbers and email addresses of their contacts to improve your search results. Syncing will friend your contacts that use electrum, so users can easily find, pay, and share payments with each other.
Notification
Push notifications can considerably enhance the customer experience. They're less intrusive than other forms of user engagement and can effectively drive traffic and help users by providing useful information. They allow users to keep up with the latest payments, transactions, and offers
Social Impact
Bitcoin's user interface needs to be improved. Current products expose the end user to too many "blockchain" complexities, which hinders adoption and simplicity. In open source communities, developers wield far too much power, while product managers and UX designers have far too little. Programmers frequently create interfaces that make sense to them, and the interface evolves as the needs of the users change. I disagree that a complicated interface is a trade-off for decentralized systems. I believe that there is an easy-to-navigate interface while maintaining all the ideals of decentralization.
