PART 2
Well I've spent the better part of an hour pouring over the Alby (npub1get…0nfm) 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
BTCminstrel / BTC Minstrel
npub12e…yafkm
2023-08-17 04:15:28
in reply to nevent1q…ja6u
Author Public Key
npub12ezcwnc736grnfgxsxy4ea9tj5n60xl5pp59c7d82gfec80qmfrqayafkmPublished at
2023-08-17 04:15:28Event JSON
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"content": "PART 2\n\nWell 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.\n\nI'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.\n\nBut 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.\n\nBut 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.\n\nIt just removes a ton of mechanical friction from the experience.\n\nAlby 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.\n\nTo 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.\n\nAnyhoo...\n\nIf 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.\n\nMake it a two-step process:\n1) create your account\n2) install the browser extension\n\nRight 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?\n\nAnyway, the dominant UX pattern for all SaaS products is the first thing you do is create an account. Everything else flows from there.\n\nThis 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.\n\n(Important caveat: it's possibly I am gravely misunderstanding Alby still)\n\nRight 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.\n\nI 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.\n\nNow 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.\n\nSo 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.\n\nOn 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.\n\nAnyway, 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.\n\nNow it's possible there's an excellent reason for doing this. And that ",
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