What is "Good" Bitcoin Design? with Erik (Lead Designer - Hoseki) and Skyler (Founder - Finite Supply)

Jacob Brown (00:04.998)
synchronous thing, so you guys won't have to, I won't have you guys introduce yourself, we'll just kind of jump right in to the meat and potatoes of Bitcoin design stuff.

Erik (00:13.861)
Sweet.

Jacob Brown (00:15.286)
Alright, so... Boom. We're in. Eric, Skyler, how you guys doing today?

Erik (00:22.021)
Doing well, man, all is well.

Skyler (00:22.105)
Doing well. Thanks for having us.

Jacob Brown (00:25.243)
Glad to have you guys. This one's gonna be fun, because I talked to a lot of founders, and everyone kind of has their passions. Building cool product is one of them, mainly in the tech side, like solving tricky problems. Go to market, not that sexy. Bitcoin design, I don't hear about it enough, so I think this is gonna be a learning experience for not just me, but people listening to this podcast. So I wanna just jump straight in with a seemingly simple question.

which is what is design? Not good or bad, but just as a broad concept, what is design? And whoever wants to go first, just jump

Erik (01:05.061)
Yeah, I don't know. That's a fun one. I sure. Yeah, yeah. It's, it really depends who you ask. It's like, it depends is the classic key cliche. so I guess like to start like a common misconception, sometimes people think that design is, how something looks. Oftentimes that's their first touch point is, visually how does something look and they think that's design. I think that that's, that's part of it. And that's certainly a large part of it, but that's, that's not all of it. I would say that,

Skyler (01:05.611)
Eric, you go. I want to nominate Eric for this because this is a hard one.

Erik (01:34.509)
Design to me, it's not pure art. It's not pure aesthetics because it's at its core is utilitarian. It's about how something works or trying to create something that works. Its primary goal should be useful rather than beautiful. That's not to say it can't be both, but design is ultimately about, you know, using certain things to solve a problem. And then in that ways, I think that design kind of has a lot in common with development in that its purpose is to solve a problem.

And in the context of kind of UX design, user experience design, we base a lot of what we do on these things called like Gasalt principles. And for the people that may be unfamiliar, like Gasalt refers to a field of psychology that studies human perception and recognition and kind of why people make the connections that they do. How, you know, certain things influence their perception.

and in design, we refer to these cause all principles like contrast, repetition, symmetry, senses of closure, of proximity, order, the, these kinds of elements play a role and we kind of apply these things in order to solve a problem, and in order to make it easier to solve a problem. So when I think of design, it's often about, how can we kind of apply these principles, these techniques, these tools in order to solve a

And obviously, you know, aesthetics matter and that's a part of it. But like I said earlier, that's not that's not

Skyler (03:02.691)
Yeah, that's good. That was a great, great summary. I would, yeah, I'd echo a lot of that. One thing I kind of go back to a lot when people talk about this is just the dictionary definition, which I like, which is a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of something like something that's being built or a garment or

And I kind of like this because it's like a lot of what we do as designers is document or describe how something is supposed to work. It's not the actual building. It's like the plan for the building. And I like going back to this definition too because it helps engineers realize

that designers should be a partner in the building of the thing, not something you do at the end or you have them do something at the end, like make it pretty or whatever. It's like, can work that way obviously sometimes, but this is like teeing up the problem of like the Bitcoin space, but it's like.

The plan happens before the building, typically. that's how, like, buildings were built. It's how, you know, it's like how the process is always kind of gone. So I like going back to the dictionary definition because it just kind of puts the designer. First, and I think that's the proper.

Is one it's it's a really good way to do it because if you have a good designer working with good engineers, you can plan before you build instead of build and then plan and then make it look pretty as they like to say. So that's the only thing I would really add. I think it complements a lot of what Eric said. But another thing is like.

Skyler (05:08.07)
There is this aesthetic element in one of the definitions of design, which is like an arrangement of lines or shapes created to form a decoration. So there is space for this concept of like, a design can just be something that is pretty itself. Like it doesn't necessarily need to be utilitarian, but if you look at the primary definition, it is a very utilitarian thing. It's like a plan to build something. So.

I like those two definitions, they are not like perfectly...

compatible, but they kind of sit next to each other and compliment each other and they allow the designer to like have a toolbox of like, okay, I'm doing a very utilitarian thing or I'm doing something just for the sake of doing it because it's cool, because it's fun or beautiful. It's just an arrangement of complimentary shapes and like beauty. So yeah, I think that's, don't have much more to add, but those are the things I think about when it comes to design.

Jacob Brown (06:11.938)
This is fantastic. This is gonna be a banger episode. I'm like scribbling notes as fast as I can go. So just to recap some of that, the first thing we touched on was most people think of design as just like the way something looks, it's the aesthetics of it. And it goes much deeper than that. There's a utility aspect. There's a, we talk a lot about game theory and Bitcoin, and it seems like in design, there's like a psychology aspect of like trying to get into the mind of your user.

Erik (06:12.409)
Yeah, it's good framing.

Skyler (06:18.338)
Haha, it's awesome.

Jacob Brown (06:41.708)
And like, when they look at this page, how do I make them flow through this naturally so that they could just like, they think good design is like you think less about what to do next almost, is what comes to mind as you guys are talking. And then yeah, Skyla, you mentioned like there's like the utility aspect, which probably seems like that's more in the Bitcoin space because we're having them do an action. But you can also just have a beautiful website that for its own purposes is aesthetically pleasing.

So we opened up a whole can of worms. Let's double click on the psychology piece. I like that one a lot. like the getting in the mind of the user. And maybe this dovetails into now that we have a broad concept loosely of what design is, how do we start to go into what good design is in the context of Bitcoin?

Jacob Brown (07:34.391)
Broad question, it's gonna get very deep very fast, but yeah.

Erik (07:36.793)
Yeah. I mean, I want you want to kick it off, Skylar? I have some ideas, but.

Skyler (07:42.127)
Yeah, I mean.

Skyler (07:46.18)
Well, you go with your ideas because I think I need a little bit more time.

Erik (07:49.477)
Sure. Yeah, so good design. think one thing that you touched on, Jacob, was that it kind of, did you say that it preemptively solved something that you might not be aware of or hadn't thought about? I think that is a part of something. And the part of the something that I'm referring to is that's an example of a small moment of delight. And I think we've all used an application or even a tool.

It doesn't have to be software. like, like I was using a drill, for example, the other day and I, like, I, I drilled a little bit too deep and then I needed to like do the reverse setting and I didn't know immediately where the reverse setting was, but it was like toggled, like right underneath. Maybe this is common among all drills. I'm kind of showing how much I know, but it was like this little switch, like right, right underneath it. And I just intuitively kind of move my index finger. was like, I think this is it. Then push it to the left and then it reversed.

And like, that, that was a very pleasant thing. I kind of felt like, nice. Like that made sense. I was able to just like, kind of intuitively do this thing. And then like immediately, like it functioned in the way that I thought it would. And that was like a very like little pleasant interaction I had. And I think when you can put like good design is something that has these little like pleasant moments of interactions. It could be something like that example I gave you. It could also be like, if you're using,

an app to pick up your package. And then after you picked it up, when you like swiped, there was a nice little micro animation and like a haptic vibration and maybe the copy, it said something. It was written in a way that was very human and personable. And you like the way that it was written, like copy, like that could be like an example of good design. So when all these things kind of work together in order to make you feel like connected with like the tool that you were using and you felt very comfortable with it,

And I think most importantly, like it was kind of sticky. So you would also want to then use it again because you kind of had a nice little experience. So you want to come back and feel that again. Something that captures an experience like that, I would qualify as good. And it's very dependent on kind of what feature you're talking about or what type of tool you're talking about. But when I think of something that's good design, I would say it's something that kind

Erik (10:09.186)
had a little moment of delight when I used it and it didn't just just work kind of at the bare minimum. It had a little little bit of something

Skyler (10:18.552)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right.

Skyler (10:24.322)
One thing I thought of was, so there's like layers I think

you know, good, better, best, and then maybe even like higher spiritual layers of that. And I'll get into that. But like, basically, I think a basic good design is something that solves your problem effectively. And that's it. It just solves the problem for you effectively. And.

Humans have like millions of different types of problems, right? The world is not perfect, it's broken, and so there's infinite opportunities for things to be solved. And the human mind can like create more problems out of nothing. So there's even more things to solve because it's like they can multiply. That said, like,

Maybe not every problem should attempt to be solved. So like some...

And sometimes products don't actually solve the right problem. like like a lot of drugs, for example, I would say like that's a like well designed product because it like solves the problem of the human. But it actually is destroying the human. So and like certain levels of use destroy the human even more. And so it's like, is it good design? Yeah, it like solves the problem. But then that gets to like the spiritual thing I mentioned is like, is this actually like

Skyler (11:58.094)
good for humans to do. It's like, yeah, they maybe want to do it and maybe they're doing it. But then I think like the best designs are the designs that like solve a problem for the human. They're beneficial to the world and like they allow for human flourishing. So there's like, yeah, it's like a lot of alt coins.

are like technically like well designed for gambling or something, like, does it qualify these like higher levels of like good? No, a lot of the times they don't, you know, and a lot of like libertarians, I think kind of don't like this type of thinking because it sounds a little bit paternalistic or like, you know, maybe even totalitarian, but like,

The I just think I come from it from this perspective of like truth beauty and goodness are real Just like morale like there's like these like natural law like there's all these things that like govern the universe and the design it's the designers job to Ask the questions of like is this good is this beautiful is this true?

Should it be designed in this way or should it be created in this way? So, yeah, it's like probably not in the normal, like standard definitions of like what is good design, but like that's kind of like where I end up going to. It's hard to like live in that space when you're actually trying to work on design. But I think like ultimately we should really get to that point of like, should I actually be designing this? So, yeah, that's that's the end of my rant.

Erik (13:39.391)
That's that's good. That's spicy. I guess the first thing I think about is like what how our designers in what ways do you think that designers could be qualified to make that that judgment about like, you know, morality or whatever. Like if you look at like something like like the Catholic Church. Well, yeah, there's like ecclesiastical people who have that kind of training. They they've studied theology. They know about the ecumenical counselor or whatever, and they have the ability to make these judgments as to,

Skyler (13:59.98)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Erik (14:07.459)
what is moral or whatnot, but like maybe some people don't have that kind of training and they're not qualified to make those kinds of judgments, right?

Skyler (14:13.632)
Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think arguably most people are not qualified to do that anymore. I mean, I saw this tweet today that said it had all these dates like going back to like, I don't know, zero. And they were just like, education is the cultivation of virtue.

education is the cultivation of virtue like over and over and over again and then it was like 20 or like 2000 it's like education is preparation for college or something and I don't know maybe it was it was pretty earlier is like maybe 1960 or something or 1971 let's put in 1971 but like basically

there's this idea that people were being educated to be virtuous. virtuous people typically have the ability to make moral judgments well. So maybe this is the answer. It's like, I don't think anyone's really qualified to do this anymore, very few people. And so that's why maybe the world is like, why it's as broken as it is. But this is something I think Bitcoiners should get more serious on, is cultivate virtue.

so that you can make really good decisions when you have like all the money because that's what's going to happen. And the next like group of people that have all the money like should be good people, you know, and I'm not necessarily saying what's right and wrong, but I'm just saying like you should be trying to figure that out. You know, so yeah, I think it's a good question. Like who is who is capable of doing this? I don't know, but like we have to figure it out.

Erik (15:52.195)
Yeah. Or you have to draw your own, like, your own authority or your own resource for, for morality. Like libertarians default to like the non -aggression principle or whatever. a Christian might, might, might default to like what, you know, the, the, teach like in, your church or whatever. I don't know, some atheists might, read Dawkins or something. I don't know what they read, but they might derive it from like a Sam Harris podcast or something, just like maximum, like utilitarian ethics. like everyone has to kind of form their

Skyler (16:02.19)
Mm -hmm.

Skyler (16:08.909)
Yeah.

Skyler (16:12.589)
Yeah.

Yeah,

Erik (16:21.317)
their own moral framing because it sounds like you have a very strong like Belief in like you mentioned earlier like there is like objective truth objective morality So like that I assume that comes from somewhere you have some North Star or some principle I don't know if it's conclusions that you've come to or whatever the case to me But it sounds like you have a strong sense of that So for you, it may be it's easier to make those judgments because you have a point of reference

Skyler (16:47.254)
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I think like the North Star, but I wouldn't say it's like easy or that I'm like even good at it, but it's like, it's something I think about when I create stuff, you know, like it's, and it's like why some jobs I couldn't stay out for longer than like two years. Cause I'm like, dude, what am I even doing? Like, you know, and it just gets to a point. Yeah.

Erik (17:07.032)
Hahaha

Jacob Brown (17:08.446)
Okay, hold on Let me jump for just a sec because you guys are breaking my brain. It's super interesting and now we're getting like philosophy Which I could go down for like an hour 100 % But but you started with like good design is it achieves its end goal, but that's a lacking definition But what comes to mind to me is that we're in the Bitcoin space where we're like naturally somewhat ideological and see the world as somewhat broken

Skyler (17:14.966)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Erik (17:15.176)
yeah, yeah, I'm okay, yeah.

Jacob Brown (17:37.176)
It there's room for improvement but like you go to social media and you look you should use that same definition like the designer creates the doom scroll where it never quite ends and You just pull the lottery wheel one more time and it's like is that good for society? I would say no, especially the more I see social media decaying people's, know attention span and stuff and ability to connect but Would you guys put yourselves in and it's hard to be self -aware on this of

Erik (17:52.057)
Mm -hmm.

Jacob Brown (18:02.469)
Do you think that the way you guys view design is somewhat separate from the average designer that's at say a Web2 space?

Erik (18:14.809)
Well, I would say I hadn't really thought about design from the point of view that Skyler brought up about the role of the designer is to basically design responsibly or design in a way that is ethical or virtuous. So that's something kind of new that I've kind of been thinking about it as he brought that up. I've always kind of considered just design from a very utilitarian lens from the definition I gave earlier.

In terms of like as it relates to the Bitcoin space I think that that that Your question was like do we as designers in the Bitcoin space see our our role differently was it was that the question? Yeah I don't know. I don't my initial instinct is to say not necessarily Yeah, I That's kind of

Jacob Brown (18:55.494)
Something like that, yeah.

Skyler (19:10.848)
I would challenge that even looking at your work, Eric, is like, what you choose to work on is a judgment, right? Like the fact that you're not working on, well, I don't know if you're working on this, but like the fact that you're not working on like how to get boomers more addicted or how to get boomers to argue more on Facebook is...

Erik (19:10.872)
my my impression.

Skyler (19:33.992)
is like basically a judgment and saying, this is what I think the world needs, right? Like this is how I am going to contribute to the world. And the fact that you're focusing on like particularly Ecash is like, Ecash has like these principles around it, right? That are like, they're moral judgments about the world basically, some of them.

Actually a lot of them. mean, even coming, going back to Chow and like, you know, what he thought about the world is like, there's this heritage of concepts like crypto, anarchy, and all these things, privacy is paramount. Like all of these concepts that are, it's like this ideological baggage with eCash. So like focusing on that is like, I would say what differentiates you from,

You some web 3 designer that just floats around all these like trash projects and like We'll just do whatever you know like no principles Work on whatever casino whatever degenerate like thing is possible, but like I think there is a difference so like I would just like push on that and be like you have chosen to focus on something for a reason you know so

Erik (20:46.681)
Yeah, definitely. I would say like my initial reasoning was because I found it interesting. like, why did I find it interesting? Because it spoke to me, like in a way that like some of the other things didn't, right? Like the nature of Bitcoin and the nature of eCash specifically, the way Chom wrote about it and, know, privacy, these things. Yeah, they did speak to me. They were important. They were valuable. They were worth me spending my time thinking about and contributing to push these things a little bit forward a little bit

Skyler (20:52.0)
Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah.

Erik (21:14.543)
So yeah, I definitely hear where you're coming from. I think there's some overlap. I just don't know if I really put the two together. It was just interest.

Skyler (21:19.926)
Yeah, but I mean, as far as the job goes, there's a lot of similarities, right? We still have to look at the space, understand the problems, understand the users, produce products that like...

work and then see how they work and then like adjust them and then iterate and like go through that whole process. Like I think that process is just kind of like universal but why we're here and why we're working on what we're working on.

It's driven by like different things. And I would say that there is a difference between people that focus on Bitcoin building and everyone else. Like there's just something driving people to work on this. And it's like, I think that we should get more intentional and like understand that deeper because there's like something powerful about it. Right. Like, so yeah, I think there is a difference, but the

The work is similar,

Jacob Brown (22:25.948)
Yep, okay. I want to jump back into some tactical stuff and for these questions, let's assume the designer and the engineers are aligned and this is a problem that's worth solving. So it's a good problem. What as a founder or as from your view, where are the biggest gaps in most projects? Like who's doing think they think they're killing it and really not doing well. Like where's where's

Skyler (22:38.836)
Mm. Yeah.

Jacob Brown (22:55.742)
Where's the almost like what's the state of Bitcoin design your opinion like we use wallets. They just work I don't know if it's a good wall or not. I hate doing my seed phrase. I goes all kinds of questions here Like as a founder what's I kind of want to start from like the negative like what are most found is doing wrong in Design and then we can work our way towards the good and like how people can improve

Skyler (23:20.642)
I mean, something that immediately comes to mind is, and it's very common in this space, is like basically this idea that engineers have this idea and they want to build it. And then like, it doesn't really matter.

what other people, how other people think about it. It's just like, I just have this idea and I wanna build it and that's just the way it is. And it just stops there. And I'm like, dude, that is like, it's just a dead end. Like that's such a dead end. And it's like very self aggrandizing. It's like just, it just is like, I just selfish. I hate saying that word cause it's like a little too like moralistic, but I'm like.

you're only thinking about your interest and that's it. And in like not connecting it to like, okay, who has this problem? Like they just don't think about it in a bigger way. So that's just something I see that's very common. It's like, I think it should be this way. That's it. And there's no like conversation. Like there's no Socratic humility of like, you know, I know some things, but I also know nothing. And like, I want to learn. So that's like the main thing that I see is the problem is like, there's just

of engineers that think I'm super smart, I want to solve this problem, that's it. And like that's just not enough. That's not enough.

I don't know, Eric, what do you think?

Erik (24:49.37)
I would echo a lot of that. I would say that's been my experience. core of it is that people, a lot of the space is dominated by engineers and they have a tendency to put the technology or their own enthusiastic interest behind this specific application of a technology of Bitcoin first. And they put that before they put the people first.

Skyler (25:14.85)
Yeah.

Erik (25:15.617)
Ultimately, like these are tools for people to use and they can kind of over engineer or overthink trying to just make something work without actually taking a step back and thinking about the people that use it and I think that that kind of stems from some of the things that we're talking about about The ethos behind Bitcoin the kind of people that work on it and that are drawn to it. They tend to be

people that think very, very critically and deeply about not just Bitcoin on a technological level, but also at a social level. And I think that this was very, very common among projects kind of like Bitcoin, protocols that were bootstrapped very early on, things like kind of BitTorrent come to mind or cryptography, obviously. So when these protocols were being bootstrapped or started, it was very, important that you had this kind of enthusiast, this kind of like hardcore kind of engineer focus

on these things and you had people that had ethos and were applying this kind of thinking early on at the bootstrapping stage. But I think what founders need to realize that if they're building a Bitcoin product that is for the consumer at this stage, it's important to realize that once you cross a certain stage, it's no longer necessarily prudent to appeal to the enthusiast or putting the tech first. You have to put the people first.

And those people, shouldn't have to have a requirement to understand, in this case, Bitcoin, or understand the technology. There shouldn't be a requirement that they have to read like a book or understand cryptography or anything like that. They shouldn't have to be an expert in this in order to use it. It should just be something that they can just, in the case of Bitcoin, just download an application like Feddy or Enuts and then just use it and it should

Skyler (27:02.616)
Yeah.

Erik (27:04.991)
And when you don't put the people first and you put the technology first, think founders can kind of miss that step and focus too much on the enthusiastic nature of Bitcoin and also like the Bitcoin enthusiast community that will respond to you as opposed to the consumer, which just doesn't care about

Skyler (27:11.8)
Mm

Skyler (27:26.872)
Yeah, dang, that's exactly right. And another thing about the space that I've realized, just thinking about this problem is like, and talking to some developers, I'm like, why is this? know, because some of the developers I've been hanging out with, they understand this problem.

I asking him, I'm like, why is it like this? And he's like, well, one reason developers love working on Bitcoin is because it's super permissionless. So like, you don't really get that in fintech because it's like, dude, I have to get regulated. have to, you know, there's like three fintech companies, you know, and like they're, they're not, or like there's a bunch and then they're all just like, you know, using the same stack. And it's like, it's harder to just tinker with a fintech thing, way easier to tinker

Bitcoin and engineers love to tinker. So it attracts like a lot of people like that, which is good. Like there are benefits to that and it does keep the like sort of, I don't know, there's all these like pros and cons. Cause if you, if you change some of these things, you could drastically like ruin Bitcoin or like dramatically change it rather. And

So there's like, am very like conservative in that sense of like, you, if you make it harder to tinker with and you discourage engineers from coming, like that might be a worse situation than what we have now, you know? And also if you encourage way too many designers to come, that's actually disastrous too. Like I've been wanting to talk about this, but like I have seen places hire too many designers and like civil war broke out because the ideological,

Erik (29:07.073)
You

Skyler (29:09.5)
like makeup of this horde of designers is like, was drastically opposed to this company that they came into. like, I don't, it's pretty obvious for people that understand like designers, like what their ideological makeup is, but it was like incompatible. And so there's like these things that you gotta be careful is like, we can't really have too many designers in. So there's like this, there's something to think about there.

Jacob Brown (29:33.181)
Mm.

Now this is super interesting because the, yeah, the founder's job is trying to create something from nothing and there's kind of this balance between humility and like user feedback and conviction in the idea until it like finds product market fit. You gotta be a little crazy, that's definitely a, know, in Sandy Reign Dan is a powerful force, it's kind of like nuclear energy. But like in the engineer founder mind,

Skyler (29:45.447)
Yeah. Yeah. And insanity. Insanity. Yeah.

Skyler (29:56.017)
Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Brown (30:02.239)
Most of the good founders understand the idea of the MVP and then getting quick user feedback and then quickly iterating. But I haven't heard it talked about for sure, for sure. And you can see how fast they go to market and how fast it is like actually doing user interviews for sure. But I don't think people talk about it or think about it in the sense of design. And this might lead to something you mentioned recently, Skylar, of like human -centered design, which seems to me like a kind of like user feedback mechanism.

Skyler (30:07.293)
Yeah.

Erik (30:09.753)
We say they do.

Jacob Brown (30:32.446)
They understand the MVP feedback iterate, but what does that look like in a design mindset?

Skyler (30:42.974)
I mean, I just think designers are part of, they should just be part of that process. They can help clarify the scope. They can help remind people of why we're building what we're building. does this feature actually align with what the users said or what we thought the user said? To me, the designer is like,

Skyler (31:10.682)
well a good designer is well aware of this like iteration process as well and so like yeah i i really see them as being integral in that iteration process where they can like help like you know

Also, you don't have to develop an MVP. A designer can be there to actually help you build an MVP faster without hiring a developer, which is probably gonna be cheaper. It's like lot of founders don't really think about this because they just wanna build stuff, but it's like, dude, you can get an MVP and get information way faster and iterate three times before you actually build.

Erik (31:29.946)
Yes.

Skyler (31:52.486)
for less than actually building code, engineering a real thing. that's like one big aspect I think a lot of founders are missing out on is like, dude, you could iterate with design way faster and just purely design and then get your answers to that could potentially save your business way before you actually build things.

Erik (32:10.703)
Mm -hmm.

Jacob Brown (32:11.003)
And to be clear, you're talking about like, this is like, do a working mock -up in Figma, go out, get user feedback, iterate quickly before you start hiring some, you know, highly paid dev to put it into code, that kind of thing.

Skyler (32:16.201)
Yeah.

Skyler (32:23.4)
Yeah, I would love to see more of that, honestly.

Erik (32:27.597)
I find that when, you show like a founder who maybe doesn't have experience with that, and then you actually show them like the user feedback or they actually watch the recordings of someone interacting with the product and they just realize how much they either assumed or they were just straight up wrong about how they thought people would react or think to their design.

Skyler (32:40.985)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Erik (32:45.923)
they immediately see the value of it. Because it's almost like they had that moment of, I could have just like foot gunned myself and gone full speed ahead with this flow that I was thinking was so clear. But four people had totally different interpretation of it. And they really kind of see the value of that very, very quickly once they actually experience it in real time and once they're deeply connected to it.

Skyler (33:08.924)
and like watching those people, dude.

that like I've seen that happen so many times where they're just like, cannot believe people think this about what we made. Like, I love that. Like that is like one of the most fun parts about design is when you're surprised, like when users surprise you. Because what's cool about that is then that's like new opportunities that you can dig into. You're like, I didn't realize they think that way. I can sell them another thing right there. Like there's like all it just opens up like all these new opportunities every time you learn more about how people are interacting with the thing you made.

Erik (33:17.908)
Yeah.

Skyler (33:42.623)
So yeah, like having people focused on that is like super valuable. But yeah, that dude, that is such a good point about the user feedback. Like even myself, when I watch it, I'm like constantly just shocked of like, dude, I even what I thought would be understandable to them is not understandable to them. And there's like always this, I like calling it Socratic. It's like a Socratic design process where you're like, when you push out a design,

Erik (34:07.757)
I love

Skyler (34:10.129)
It's like you're asking a question to the world and you're saying, does this make sense to you? And then you will listen for their answer. And then you just ask them another question with a new design. And it's like this like process of like discovering reality through this like interrogation of the users through the product. So yeah, I think that's a good point about.

the realization of how users actually use your thing versus how you think they should use your thing. It's just always different.

Erik (34:40.569)
And there's just also so much that I uncovered, like when I open it up to, when I open up a design to people to actually, there's so much feedback that I get that is after they say it and tell it to me, it was so simple. It was right in my face the whole time, but I didn't make that connection. And this happens all the time. Like I'll be hammering away at this design. I'll think I'll have like come up with this flow that very cleverly executes this thing. Someone would just look at it be like,

Skyler (34:54.399)
Dude, it's so true. Yeah, yeah.

Erik (35:07.433)
Why don't you just have toggles in a slider there? And you're just like, fuck, that's so much, that's it. And then this happens all the time. I think even to the best designers, it should be happening because there's no way, if that's not happening to you, then you're not, there's something wrong with your process. Yeah.

Skyler (35:09.299)
Yeah.

Skyler (35:13.749)
Yeah.

Skyler (35:20.562)
yeah.

Skyler (35:26.46)
or you're omniscient, right? And you know everything and you're just like, yeah, I'm the best. You know, it's like, that's rare, right? But yeah, like that, that concept of,

Skyler (35:39.363)
You're iterating with them, you're seeing what they do. It's just like, it's magic, man. One thing I've noticed too though is like, I've observed this happening in the Bitcoin space too where it's like, someone has a product, right? And it's new. And they're watching, they go to Kenya or something and they're showing it to someone. And...

There's this tendency to want to explain the product to people and be like, no, put your finger there and do this and do that. But I watch that and I'm like, no, you should not have to explain it to them. You should stop trying to explain, stop trying to help them. When people, orange pill people with wallets, it's like, I watch them and they're like, yeah, press that, press that, press that, and I'm like.

If you have to tell them to do that, it's a problem. Instead, a designer should stand back and watch and be like, okay, what are you thinking right now? What are you looking for and what are you trying to do? And the more you can do that, you can uncover. It's like, they didn't see that scanner. Or they didn't know that they had to scan something next. Or uncovering these problems is like...

To me, a lot of the products in the space just have never done this. They've always just told people how to use the product rather than discovered what is the easiest way to use this product and then how do we build that. So yeah, I would encourage a lot of people to figure out how to pause themself and just be like, figure out why people are struggling and then write it down and then you can help them. So it's, I don't know if you've seen that Eric, but I see that a lot, yeah.

Erik (37:20.485)
100%. And it's also like, have that moment of humility or like to check your ego where like, they're not wrong for like going into the settings to try to find what it is that you were going to do it, regardless of you put it right there at the bottom and you're they should, why are they in there? Well, you know, like have that humility to be like, okay, let me, let me understand this. Like maybe we were, there's something wrong about, you know, the way that we have this organized or the steps that we have this in that causes them to go in here and try to find this here.

Skyler (37:27.38)
Exactly.

Skyler (37:35.234)
Yeah.

Skyler (37:48.097)
Yes.

Jacob Brown (37:48.596)
Yep. Yep. Super good point. I see this a lot as an investor where like if they have a working, even just a Figma that can click through and it's good at like 10 X better than just a pitch deck. It just, shows some, it shows so much more of the time they've put in and how deep they're thinking about the problem and the ability to like, you know, do that first before you start writing code. It goes to what you guys are talking about of like first, make sure you're solving the right problem. Go into users.

Skyler (38:01.185)
yeah.

Erik (38:02.699)
Mm.

Jacob Brown (38:17.426)
And it's super common to jump into a user interview and be like, so why do you like Bitcoin? And it's like, wait, that's a bad question. Are you sure they like Bitcoin? You gotta go earlier and ask the right question, which is actually pretty effing hard. Or just not moving their finger, like the X is on the top. It's like you're trying to talk to your mom, but had to your iPhone. It's like, mom, come on, you understand this. No, no, just let them do their thing. So.

Skyler (38:24.929)
Yeah. Yeah.

Erik (38:25.593)
Yeah.

Skyler (38:28.841)
Mm -hmm. It's so hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Brown (38:44.559)
Assuming someone wants to get better at this stuff, what are, going back to like the tactics or the tools, like what's the best tools for people on engineering teams that want to play with this? Is Figma still like the GOAT or like what's the stuff out there people could use?

Skyler (39:01.901)
I mean, I think they need to read a couple books. Like, you know, like this

Skyler (39:10.757)
They need to just understand that you For yeah, I think they need to read a couple books like it and I would have some recommendations about like there's like Steve Krug has like this these role like don't make me think is just a classic

And it just gets you to the, it just breaks some of these like habits of like, it's like, yeah, like it doesn't matter how many clicks they have to do, as long as the clicks are mindless clicks and they're very easy and obvious. you know, there's like rules like that that are just like, geez, that is like good, you know? But Don Norman too, I'd recommend Don Norman, like the father of the term UX, like.

I think just like starting in those, like they might have heard these things before, but like kind of just trying to understand the basics is like where I would recommend people start.

Also the mom test, there's this, it's like, think it was an indie hacker or something, but something called the mom test where it's like, the premise is your mom will always lie to you and tell you that your product idea is good. And so the whole thing about the book is like, how do you figure out if your product idea is good? and it teaches you like how to ask questions better, to figure out like, what do people actually need and what are they actually willing to pay for? Cause people always lie about what they're willing to pay for too.

say they will pay for something, but like when the rubber meets the road, they don't do it. So those three books, like the Mom Test, Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things, and then Krug, would recommend K -R -U -G. Like Krug's books are like classics in my opinion, but I don't know, Eric, what do you think?

Erik (40:57.093)
I mean, I've definitely read Krug's book. I haven't read Norman's book. It's it collects dust on a shelf. I just haven't read it. I'll be honest. And but none. My experience with Norman is actually more on his website. I think it's NM group, NNM group, Nielsen Norman group. But I would actually send developers there because I don't think I've ever seen a resource where like you can watch a three minute YouTube video on a design concept. And in those three minutes, it will just hit

Skyler (41:01.663)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Skyler (41:09.621)
Yeah. Yeah.

Skyler (41:19.108)
Yeah, that's true.

Skyler (41:23.897)
You get it. Yeah.

Erik (41:25.485)
Like, and this is something you could just send someone like a designer, you're trying to explain to a designer to Lolli like whatever, why this, how this, this thing should work or why this is important. You could just hit them with like Nielsen Norman group videos. or even, even their website, I'm sure it's probably a lot of the same information in the book, but it's just super skimmable and a lot easier to digest. So I would say like developers should probably start there. The Nielsen Norman group. I also recommend, Mobin O B B I N.

Skyler (41:36.953)
That's true. Yeah.

Skyler (41:44.281)
That's true.

Erik (41:53.485)
which is like examples of real products, which I think is really, really useful because it's very, I mean, I think it's more common in Bitcoin where we actually are solving novel problems for the first time, but there's a lot of conventions actually out there. Like for example, the other day I was working on like an app, a design in order to split balances across mints and that probably doesn't exist yet. Let's just be honest. I'm, know, Skylar and I are pretty familiar with the Ecash wallets. I don't think that there's a UI for that that exists.

Skyler (42:06.671)
Sure.

Erik (42:22.181)
But there is something comparable. There's probably a lot of like apps that let you split bills across people at a restaurant. So like you can go to Mobin and you can find something kind of related and think, okay, this is how like real products and real design teams have spent a lot of resources to tackling this problem in an actual product that is shipped. So you can reference that and kind of refer to that. More Bitcoin specific. I think Sahil's started a new newsletter. Is it Studio 21?

Skyler (42:26.583)
Mm -hmm.

Skyler (42:50.849)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Erik (42:51.119)
Is that the name of his newsletter? It's really good. I think he's only had like two instances so far, but it's like once a month and it's just like really well written. It's written really well and it's like good examples. It's not just a very lazy example like, this wallet launched a new feature and it looks really beautiful. Like, no, he'll actually take time to like highlight something that's really, really important and useful at a bit of a deeper design level. So his newsletter is good.

and then I got to show like, the Bitcoin dot design community. think that's, that's really useful for developers and engineers to reference because there's a lot of like best practices and conventions there that they can reference, for various things. Like maybe a lot of it is maybe for smaller UI things, like how to display like, an address and, know, the most effectively. it's skimable or like best practices for like displaying like a 24, you know, seed word,

screen and having the user confirm it. These things that wallets do, a lot of different wallets do, there's already people that have spent time looking at them and kind of compiled the best practices in the easy reference. So yeah, those are like some things that come to mind that like founders and developers can refer to to step up their design game.

Jacob Brown (44:07.467)
That's excellent. Yeah, the Bitcoin .design thing is what kind of put all of this on my radar because I was like, this is dope. I'm not even a designer and I'm like just scrolling stuff, you fascinated. But also there's just so much siloing in Bitcoin, especially amongst ecosystems. So where like there's so much knowledge just kind of like locked in your guys' heads and you guys don't have time to share it because you're just busy building shit that works. So glad people are doing that stuff.

Skyler (44:30.287)
Mm -hmm.

Jacob Brown (44:34.043)
Also love I ask a question of like what's the tools we should use and you guys are like first go to mindset first go to like principles You're gonna fuck up the tools and build something stupid. So I love that Yeah, they'll be they'll be they'll be there'll be many links below that you guys should first go read Cool we've been going for 45. I think we've got like 10 ish moments if you want to roll I got no more real questions I mean I could ask a couple more that they're on my docket, but actually won't leave it open like

Skyler (44:42.507)
Yeah. Read the manual. Read the manual first.

Erik (44:47.535)
Yeah,

Jacob Brown (45:03.387)
Do you guys have anything super interesting that you just want to go off your chest? Things that I didn't ask? What do people know?

Skyler (45:13.401)
I mean, one thing I've been thinking about recently is like how there's not that many use cases in Bitcoin to build real businesses around. it's kind of like, it might sound like a downer topic, but I think it's just like a good red pill for a lot of people to take, is like, understand, like seeing what types of businesses work and what types of businesses don't.

is just helpful for people to understand because like, I'm sure you see this as an investor, it's like there's things that just aren't gonna work until hyper Bitcoinization, right? I think there's, for now, there's like a couple things that work and they work really well. And anything else is like worth pursuing possibly, but it probably can't build a business around. So like, I think there's like a lot of Bitcoiners like,

that want to work on Bitcoin, like I think they should like try to get this wake up call as early as possible because

Yeah, it's just very tough to do things in Bitcoin. Like it grinds out the grifters basically, which is actually a feature, but it also makes it harder to make money. And so it's harder to survive. And you see these people that are just like, they come up against this like truth machine and the truth machine is like, no, you can't build that and it just won't work. And then they get humbled. So I love Bitcoin for that reason, but it's also like very difficult, you know, to work on. So I think that's something that like a

Erik (46:21.785)
Yeah.

Skyler (46:48.216)
people should more people should talk about and think about more seriously it's something I've been thinking about a lot.

Erik (46:56.281)
Yeah. mean, something that comes to mind is like, there's like the saying, like, if you build it, they will come. Well, that's not necessarily true for Bitcoin because we might have a bias to think like, like we can, you know, increase Bitcoin usage. People can start using Bitcoin every day or more often if we just build the right wallet or if we just build the right UX or UI behind something like a, like a hardware wallet, like, like, like this one, if we just make it super sexy and easy to use and sleek, we'll use it. But in reality, like

the United States government says that it's a taxable event every time you spend Bitcoin. You have to think about that. Like, what does that mean for adoption? And like, no amount of design or great product that you have is gonna change that reality. Or I could say the United States changing that and making it so that every time you spend Bitcoin, it is not a taxable event can be something that is huge for...

Bitcoin usage, Bitcoin adoption, that didn't require anyone designing a UI. It was a cultural thing. It was a social thing outside of the control of an engineer, of a business person, of a product person. So I think when we think about like, what does Bitcoin look like when, you know, millions of people are using it or as a lot more people are using it, it's important to not think only in terms of products, solutions, things that are built, but it's important to think in terms of like, okay, what things have changed culturally.

politically, like in terms of people's consciousness that allows them or encourages them or makes them want to use it. And I suspect some of those things will actually not be products or businesses. It'll be other factors in society.

Skyler (48:31.812)
Yeah. Well, even your point about the US taxable event thing, Don Norman talks about this concept of UX being like, the UX is not just the screen, it's like the whole journey before you got to the screen too. like the state that you live in, the country that you live in, the government that you live under is part of the UX of Bitcoin, whether people realize it or not is like...

their decisions like change your user experience because like the laws affect there's this trickle down effect all the way down to your hand. So.

Erik (49:09.764)
Mm -hmm.

Skyler (49:12.908)
It could be a design problem for a very ambitious designer that's saying, I want to solve the most fundamental problem, is like, I'm going to go to the government and like effectively change their minds. Like maybe, you know, maybe Cynthia Lummis is a designer, you know, like maybe Donald Trump is the ultimate designer here when he is, is, you know, normalize Bitcoin. But like, there's like this, yeah. So like there's different problems to solve at different levels. Some are solved by

UIs some are solved by like politicking summer, you know, there's like different things art can probably solve like the consciousness problem to like really good art but yeah, I think I think that's a good point that There are a lot of different things contributing to the adoption and usability But like fundamentally like ngu is the most

Skyler (50:10.863)
I would say NGU has product market fit for Bitcoin. whether people, like I don't know if people like to admit this or not, but it's like stacking Sats and holding them for a long time and having the purchasing power go up is like the number one benefit to Bitcoin.

Spending it like in a censorship resistant way is another use case, like, NGU is just like the top, right? And it's just something to grapple with because it's like, that's just.

when you like having humility to admit that like, okay, hoarding this asset is probably the best use case or the has best product market fit. It's kind of grinds the gears of a lot of people that want to impose their will on the world, which is no, this is a spending thing. That's it. And it's like, well, dude, look at what's happening. Like you have to be honest about the reality and humble to admit like what is actually happening with this asset. I know you wanted it to be this like weird definition of cash.

like, you know, Roger Ver, but like, it's not in some ways. And there's reasons why, but like, so that's something too, is like, are we humble enough to admit like what this asset is in the reality versus what we want it to be? And how do we like navigate between these two, sometimes paradoxical visions is like a difficult thing, but it's important to constantly be figuring this out, I think.

Erik (51:23.641)
Yeah.

Jacob Brown (51:45.504)
Yeah, no, it's a sobering thought because like innovation typically comes from three areas. It's either technological, which Bitcoin already is. It's regulatory. So it's like, you know, not getting taxed or it's consumer sentiment or like market behavior. And like those latter two are hopefully coming to Bitcoin. But like I'm skeptical on the last one because most of the world is just poor like the bitch to paycheck. So it's like they don't have the abundance to think about their money. They just want to know, do they have enough in their account?

Skyler (52:00.155)
Yeah.

Skyler (52:11.782)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Brown (52:15.734)
Like that's gonna be a longer tail thing for hyper bitcoinization But it's good and it's tricky too with investing because what's useful and what's investable can be very disconnected especially like I would love to fund more open source stuff, but I have no concept of return there So I just can't do it like thankful for Jack and what he's doing but like he's a he's a one -of -one one of a few and Investors will invest in all kinds of crazy stuff for like trying to get the hundred thousand X

Skyler (52:32.614)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Brown (52:44.608)
Potentially if that does click so it's yeah, it's definitely hard for a founder to sit in that thought of like Should I build this is this worthy and kind of like red pill themselves? So yeah, but okay hard left turn last question of the day though And this end on a slightly higher note. What do you guys most? What are you guys most excited about right now? It could be any topic and you know regular life or Bitcoin or design

Skyler (52:57.638)
Mm -hmm.

Skyler (53:02.844)
Yeah.

Skyler (53:06.257)
Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Brown (53:13.474)
What are you guys most hyped about right now?

Erik (53:17.404)
that's a tough one to answer on the spot.

Jacob Brown (53:19.372)
Hahaha

Skyler (53:20.912)
I mean the first thing that comes to my mind is

Skyler (53:27.775)
I hate saying this, it just sounds like a cough out, but AI is very interesting to me. watching normies adopt this thing is like, just fascinating, you know, cause I'm like...

A lot of techie people have adopted, right? Like they use it to write code. I've been using it to like do front end code and it's unbelievable. Like cursor, the text editor cursor, it's unbelievable, dude. I'm like, make this look like this and it just does it and it writes the code and I'm like, do it in Tailwind. And it's like, yeah, it's like use this color in Tailwind. And it's like, I just use normal language and it's writing like good front end code. That is great.

Erik (54:07.367)
dude, you just curtsy repelled me. Yeah.

Skyler (54:09.957)
Dude, you gotta try it. I mean, it is like unbelievable. Because like if you have a deep, like somewhat of knowledge of like how HTML and CSS work and just basic front end stuff, or even React, that AI will bridge all the gaps, you know? yeah.

Erik (54:24.399)
Perfect, because I can recognize what the component looks like, like a React component, but I can't actually. But yeah, that's all I need to know. I can just recognize the pattern.

Skyler (54:32.549)
Yeah, yeah, and like, you might not even need to do that. You can be that like, you I just don't, you can be very broad and it will sometimes give you good stuff. it's a very, I don't know, AI is very interesting. I think it's gonna unlock so many different use cases. Like, Bitcoin has very few use cases, which is why it's good. But AI also like unlocks all these different use cases for a lot of people. And that's just like interesting to me. So.

Erik (54:42.212)
Yeah.

Skyler (55:00.111)
I'm not pivoting, but you know, think there's like, I am interested in it.

Jacob Brown (55:06.328)
Dope. also, I'm gonna cut this out, but I actually have a call after jump two. I'll be a couple minutes late, so that's my bad. But I wanna get your quick take, Eric, on what are you most excited about, and then we'll close this down.

Skyler (55:10.509)
shoot. Okay. No, yeah.

Erik (55:19.233)
geez, what am I most excited about? God, I don't know.

Erik (55:27.981)
I mean, what have I been doing? Well, I'm excited about the stuff that I work on. I'm excited about the protocols that I work on. That's why I work on them all day. Well, I could say that I'm excited to see the very like organic growth of Cashew, of the eCash protocol. I'm excited to see the people that are willing to devote their time and energy to this open source eCash project that has absolutely no business model.

Jacob Brown (55:33.208)
You're doing it right now.

Erik (55:56.837)
and is purely based on, there's potentially some really cool things that you can do with this protocol and this technology. And people are motivated by that alone enough to spend a lot of time building really innovative things. And that to me is exciting. It feels like, I just feel really excited every day that I get to work on it. It's like when I was a kid and I got the Nintendo 64 for the first time.

You know, like you just wake up the next day, you wake up super early and you're just like, have, you know, an N64 with like Mario 64 and Zelda and you can't wait. Yeah. It's like, I feel like that again. And there, and I feel very lucky to feel that way because as I've gotten older, I realized that people like in my thirties as old as I am, some people don't have something like that in their life. They don't have something that they can just jump into that puts them in this state of flow and focus. And they're excited about.

Skyler (56:29.059)
Yeah, that smell, that plastic smell, so good.

Erik (56:51.437)
So I'm very excited to have that. And I also kind of understand that it might go away one day. So I cherish it very much because if that fails, if Bitcoin fails or if this thing goes away, I'll be pivoting to AI. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know what I do. I probably do like piracy stuff, peer to peer, like file transfer.

Jacob Brown (57:06.318)
I love

Jacob Brown (57:11.312)
That's that's fucking awesome. Man, this has been a fantastic episode I'm gonna have so many so much work clipping out all the bangers that you guys dropped. So thank you Thank you to you guys. I'm sure the founders are gonna enjoy this one So appreciate what you guys do what you guys are working on. Thanks for thanks for coming

Skyler (57:19.759)
Nice.

Skyler (57:29.061)
Thanks for having us, it was awesome.

Erik (57:29.551)
Sweet man. Yeah. Thanks for having us. It was a lot of fun.