Getting Started

What is User Experience (UX)? If you’re the International Standards Organization, you might respond with something boring like “well, it’s a user’s perceptions and responses that result from the use and/or anticipated use of a system, product or service”.

If you’re running a business, however, you might say that it’s what sets a great product apart from a “just OK” product. For a digital product, bad UX means people only use your product when they have to.

Great UX, on the other hand, means people think of your product positively. Maybe even enthusiastically. Perhaps they become cheerful adovcates for your product, telling all their friends about your product without even being asked to.

Can you think of an app or a website that you love to tell your friends about? Well, that’s how you want your customers to feel about your product.

What does UX have to do with Bitcoin?

Whether it’s an exchange, fintech app, wallet, or whatever else, if you’re building a company that helps people access Bitcoin, you should be proud of yourself. We believe that bitcoin is the best money on Earth and it’s meant to be used by everyone.

Let’s face it, though: Bitcoin and Lightning can sometimes feel super technical to use. However, with an obsessive focus on the user, you can give your customer’s a great experience and grow your revenue, all while helping to make bitcoin a truly global money.

Enter The Voltage Design Guide

The Voltage Design Guide is a collection of UX best practices for Bitcoin and Lightning applications. This guide is focused primarily on exchanges and fintech services, but any company integrating Lightning will likely find value in this guide! This Guide is the accumulated knowledge of years helping our customers become succesful with their Bitcoin and Lightning integrations. In addition to UX best practices, our Conduit Design System is also open-sourced here for your use.

What this Guide is

This guide includes explanations of some of the most common user flows for a Lightning app. It provides examples of ways you can make these flows excellent within your own product. It also includes common issues or problems your customers may face, and how you can fix those.

What this Guide is not

This guide is not a mandate that you must build your product in a certain way. You may be deailing with a use-case not depicted here or targeting a customer with very different expectations. Perhaps you simply think you have found a better way to do things. If you have found a better way, that’s great. (TLDR - YMMV, we’d love to hear your feedback.)

This is also not a comprehensive guide to all technologies and use-cases in the Bitcoin ecosystem. This guide is short and focused to give our customers a jump-start with their Lightning UX. We recommend you look at the open-source Bitcoin Design Guide for a broader look at the role of design within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Let’s Get Started!

Let’s get started exploring the UX of Lightning applications. We’ll begin with an overview of sending bitcoin over Lightning.