I’ve started to document thoughts that come to me about what could be useful to consider including in future development of the wallet client. Nothing that you will see here is a formal requirement (though there are certain things that will appear that just make plain sense to include… like the ability to send and receive peecoins :)), but for the most part, this is stream-of-consciousness sketching and notes.
These notes and sketches are not intended to describe the future design of the PeerUnity wallet, but rather, should be viewed as lots of potential variations of design and features.
I debated whether or not these would be useful to post, because they are very crude and haven’t had been validated for the most part, but because PeerUnity is open-source and ultimately, it will be designed to meet the needs of the entire Peercoin community. I figured that the benefits of exposing these (and collecting feedback) on the ideas would enable lots of iterations, early. I’m also hoping that something that I’ve shared here will encourage lines of discussion or development that come about because some partial idea (good or bad) that I included triggers someone else to come up with some killer feature or design element.
If the community finds this to be a useful exercise, as time progresses and as I sketch more, I’ll update this topic with pictures of my sketchbook pages (and, eventually, wireframes and mockups as we move farther along). Feel free to add comments to this topic if you have a positive or negative reaction to anything that you see. As needed, we can branch off a conversation to it’s own topic.
So, without further adieu, here’s what’s going on inside my brain…
I like the brainstorming you’ve been doing. It would be nice for you to prioritize some of those in a sequential order on what needs to be done first in your opinion.
There reason why, is when a lead programmer is going to work on some thing, he needs to know what to start on next. At the same time, we don’t want to work on some thing with lower priority first. I’m overstating the obvious. I apologize.
I’m assuming you’re not there yet. You’re still jotting ideas down at this stage, correct?
I'm assuming you're not there yet. You're still jotting ideas down at this stage, correct?
Nope, not even close to being there, yet When I posted these, no one else had seen them, so consider them just jumbled thoughts that came to me in whatever order they were written down, while I was sitting on a plane the other day. I expect that as we start to identify areas that the client needs to address, that I’ll have notes and sketches that are focused, rather than scattershot.
I needed to start somewhere, and the three pages you see above is that start. I encourage others who design the same way to post their sketchbook pages, too (you’re welcome to use this topic, if you would like). I’m just one person, with my own ideas about what would work or not work, but PeerUnity is for everyone, so the more participation in the early stages of requirements gathering, design, and prototyping, the better the developed version will meet our needs.
Edit: It’s worth linking Cybnate’s “2014 Dream Wallet” thread here, because it’s another great resource that I’m going to turn to for my sketching and ideation.
Just to respond to your previous post. The 2014 dream wallet is just a cummulation of ideas from all other threads related to this topic. It is a bit of a community wish list without any filtering or priorities.
Regarding paper A:
I think there are a few projects in the pipe line for the open source web wallet. We have the Omniwallet fork, this will have the exchange etc. in it, but needs to be converted for use with Peercoin. The project has been focussing on getting nthat exchange functionality out and our devs have been waiting for that to happen as it would be a major code change/addition. The last news is that this will happen in the next weeks. From there on we need developers who work with the lead developer to Peercoinify Omniwallet. If this succeeds it will be another major advancement in decentralisation (taking the exchanges out). The hosting is still a trust issue, but I understand that there are possibilities to self host or ask trusted third parties to host. This is getting a bit tricky as it would open up the way to centralising the minting. Need further thoughts in this space. Your notes say could be mitigated, I’m all ears.
Not sure if you want the Unity client to compete with Omniwallet. Leveraging on the efforts made by them might be worth it instead of developing this in the Unity wallet. I like the multi-coin idea from Omniwallet. As a backbone currency you need seamless exchange to other currencies. We might still use some functionality of the Omniwallet in Unity though. As this is more in our control. I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. Overlap will exist and that is fine.
Regarding Paper B:
Some overlap here with wallet functionality. I think the next step here is prioritising the items here and whatever is in the 2014 Dreamwallet. Some good other ideas in your notes though.
Regarding Paper C:
Like the visualisation and audio effect of the network beat. Same as I like to have some confirming sound effects for activities in the wallet (which you can turn on and off). That would also be great for the visually impaired.
And all the other visualisation and monitoring of things happening is great to have. Most people like to look under the hood in the early stages as we are in now. But I suggest to keep them behind a tab or menu item as over time most people will lose interest in this when it goes mainstream. I have yet to find a bank giving me an indicator how many days it is till my interest is paid and whether their system are still working. You just assume it all happens.
Something else which might be useful is trends in e.g. network strength or health. Assuming that this will grow that will be feel good items. E.g. increasing number of nodes, increasing number of stakes etc.
Items to actually add nodes etc. is too steep or confusing for most users and should be behind an advanced tab in my opinion.
May I add something like themes as new functionality. Even if it was only about colors. Many people (mostly male) like black backgrounds with white or green letters. Would be great to also have some more colorful themes e.g. green background with golden/yellow letters (peercoin colours), some girlie colourful theme and a classic theme (current wallet).
I’m focusing on the “functionality” part of your sketches.
I think I’d like to have those features as early as possible:
[ul][li]Minting (one click minting? -> easy usage; more network security)[/li]
[li]Multi signature addressing (greatly enhancing individual security if properly used! -> more willingness to mint)[/li]
[li]2FA (more individual security, more willingness to mint if 2FA is as well as a password required -> more network security[/li]
[li]QR codes (easy use, more dependable when sharing information between different devices[/li][/ul]
Great feedback, everyone! I’ll start to incorporate the suggestions into new notes and sketches. Some of the ideas that I’ve floated, like 2FA, we’ll want to really discuss how it would be tied in, before we became too wed to the idea. I know that Coinbase uses Authy, and other sides use Google Authenticator, but I’ve not yet seen a wallet application that has it tied one of them (or another variation like SecureID) in. I expect it’s certainly possible, but I don’t want to pretend that I understand the level of effort required to do it.
It’s something that I do believe in very strongly, so I’m hoping that we could figure out the most straight-forward way to integrate one option, initially, and the work on enhancing it to support other 2FA methods, or custom ones if people would rather plug/play with something under their control.
Here’s the next two pages of my notes from yesterday. I’ve started to try to take the minimum viable functionality and to identify ways that the information architecture could be adapted from the current “standard” cryptowallet model and customized for the needs of the user and for the merger of Peercoin (assets) and Peershares (investments). You’ll find those notes on page “D”.
Additionally, I’m a big proponent of the school of UI design that tries to reduce “cognitive overload,” by minimizing the amount of information presented in any one section, but then allowing the user to progressively dig into that content in useful ways (expanding panels, hover text, content that slides in on click, etc.), so page “E” is where I started to identify an example of this that I could then use as a guideline for other sections.
Notes, Page “D”
Notes, Page “E”
Sorry that they are turned, I’m not sure why they came out that way when I posted them (they look ok in Dropbox). I’ll check the photo metadata in the future to see if anything is amiss.
When I posted these, no one else had seen them, so consider them just jumbled thoughts that came to me in whatever order they were written down, while I was sitting on a plane the other day. I expect that as we start to identify areas that the client needs to address, that I’ll have notes and sketches that are focused, rather than scattershot.
