Noticed a couple designers asking how they can contribute to Blockstack. We aren’t really setup as a team to successfully manage open-source design contributions the way we are with engineering. UI engineering works, but UX, UI, and branded communications are a bit tricker. This could change in the future as we add more team members. In the meantime, some thoughts on contributing:
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Help with hiring: Product managers, product designers, and UI engineers, and marketing-communications designers. We’re looking for the best designers on earth, plus those who understand blockchain and dapp space—the venn diagram of relevant designers is very small. If you can help find the right people that would be incredibly helpful to the Blockstack ecosystem. We have a $5K finders fee and anyone who makes the introduction can claim it.
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Help improve Blockstack apps: We currently have 17 apps in App Mining and I assume they are highly motivated to improve their design. Most of the apps could use help on app icon, landing pages, onboarding and UI. Just look through the list, find some apps that interest you and raise your hand in Slack. You don’t have to work directly on Blockstack to help the ecosystem—if these pioneer apps win, we all win.
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Marketing and communications help: Our growth, events, and App Mining team is constantly publishing content and need straightforward design assistance. If you would like to help here, please reach reach out to @patrick @cuevasm or @shannon or raise your hand in Slack.
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Help on tricky UX problems: It is pretty challenging to work on these problems while not on our core team, and have full context for goals, metrics, user testing, tech constraints, and reviews. Feel free to work on these if you like, but our team can’t make any promises around reviewing or utilizing the work. Checkout our roadmap for projects on the horizon. Also a few items come to mind:
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Stacks and BTC wallets in the browser, and using Stacks to purchase IDs.
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Improving the App.co app registration process, integrating Blockstack ID, an app dashboard for updating your app, and integrating the App Mining ready requirements and education into this flow.
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Browser: Non-onboarding ID creation, management, settings, storage and name purchase.
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Blockstack ID: end users mostly interact with Blockstack apps, which means the Blockstack “product” that has the most surface area and utility for them is Blockstack ID. But we don’t do a great job communicating what Blockstack ID is and how end users should think about it and take advantage of it.
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Specific apps that manage shared collections of data resources that many apps could take advantage of. The easiest analog here is the core apps on iOS: Photos, Address Book… There could even be an App Store app that ingests data from the App.co API. Or an ID app that subsumes all the profile management stuff from the browser.