Flotilla

2026

A UI UX case study on redesigning the first five minutes of Flotilla, a Nostr community app, so first-time users can sign up and join their first community with confidence.

View full project

UI UX

UX Research

About

A UI UX case study on redesigning the first five minutes of Flotilla, a Nostr community app, so first-time users can sign up and join their first community with confidence.

What is Flotilla?

Flotilla is a community app like Discord, except the organizer owns the space, the data and the rules. It's built on Nostr, and that's exactly where new users get stuck. I redesigned the first-run experience, signing up and joining a first community, as a competency project for my Summer of Bitcoin 2026 proposal.

Research

Before redesigning anything, I studied Flotilla from public sources: its onboarding, its current users and how community organizers work. The brand promises simplicity and ownership, but the product asks for relay setup, key management and Nostr knowledge. That gap became the core finding.

I read Gitea issues, Stacker News threads, Nostr notes, podcasts and the founder's blog, then turned the patterns into personas. Most problems were about onboarding and navigation, not technical bugs.

I mapped six moments where new users lose confidence, built a user flow covering every decision point and failure case, explored layouts with paper wireframes and turned the refined flow into high-fidelity screens, from account creation to joining a space through an invite link.

Six moments where new users lose confidence

Solution

The redesign follows five rules: show the value before asking for commitment, translate technical terms into plain language, never leave a new user on an empty screen, give every error a next step and confirm that an action worked.

Edge cases such as invalid links, failed scans, incomplete setup and duplicate joins each get a clear message and a way to retry, edit or go back, so nobody gets stuck.

Result

A first-run experience that explains Nostr in plain language and ends with the user inside their first community.

I checked the redesign against the 15 issues from my UX audit of the live app, screen by screen. Three moves made the biggest difference: showing benefits before decisions at sign-up, using topic tags instead of relay URLs and ending the join flow inside the community. The redesign hasn't been tested with real users yet, so the next step is the usability testing protocol I wrote for the project.

More Works

(GQ® — 02)

Coin Up

2026

UI UX

Bitcoin

Project drp

2024

Logo Design

Branding

FAQ

01

What does a project look like?

02

How is the pricing structure?

03

Are all projects fixed scope?

04

What is the ROI?

05

How do we measure success?

06

What do I need to get started?

2026

Flotilla

A UI UX case study on redesigning the first five minutes of Flotilla, a Nostr community app, so first-time users can sign up and join their first community with confidence.

View full project

UI UX

UX Research

About

A UI UX case study on redesigning the first five minutes of Flotilla, a Nostr community app, so first-time users can sign up and join their first community with confidence.

What is Flotilla?

Flotilla is a community app like Discord, except the organizer owns the space, the data and the rules. It's built on Nostr, and that's exactly where new users get stuck. I redesigned the first-run experience, signing up and joining a first community, as a competency project for my Summer of Bitcoin 2026 proposal.

Research

Before redesigning anything, I studied Flotilla from public sources: its onboarding, its current users and how community organizers work. The brand promises simplicity and ownership, but the product asks for relay setup, key management and Nostr knowledge. That gap became the core finding.

I read Gitea issues, Stacker News threads, Nostr notes, podcasts and the founder's blog, then turned the patterns into personas. Most problems were about onboarding and navigation, not technical bugs.

I mapped six moments where new users lose confidence, built a user flow covering every decision point and failure case, explored layouts with paper wireframes and turned the refined flow into high-fidelity screens, from account creation to joining a space through an invite link.

Solution

The redesign follows five rules: show the value before asking for commitment, translate technical terms into plain language, never leave a new user on an empty screen, give every error a next step and confirm that an action worked.

Edge cases such as invalid links, failed scans, incomplete setup and duplicate joins each get a clear message and a way to retry, edit or go back, so nobody gets stuck.

Result

A first-run experience that explains Nostr in plain language and ends with the user inside their first community.

I checked the redesign against the 15 issues from my UX audit of the live app, screen by screen. Three moves made the biggest difference: showing benefits before decisions at sign-up, using topic tags instead of relay URLs and ending the join flow inside the community. The redesign hasn't been tested with real users yet, so the next step is the usability testing protocol I wrote for the project.

More Works

(GQ® — 02)

Coin Up

2026

UI UX

Bitcoin

Project drp

2024

Logo Design

Branding

FAQ

01

What does a project look like?

02

How is the pricing structure?

03

Are all projects fixed scope?

04

What is the ROI?

05

How do we measure success?

06

What do I need to get started?

2026

Flotilla

A UI UX case study on redesigning the first five minutes of Flotilla, a Nostr community app, so first-time users can sign up and join their first community with confidence.

View full project

UI UX

UX Research

About

A UI UX case study on redesigning the first five minutes of Flotilla, a Nostr community app, so first-time users can sign up and join their first community with confidence.

What is Flotilla?

Flotilla is a community app like Discord, except the organizer owns the space, the data and the rules. It's built on Nostr, and that's exactly where new users get stuck. I redesigned the first-run experience, signing up and joining a first community, as a competency project for my Summer of Bitcoin 2026 proposal.

Research

Before redesigning anything, I studied Flotilla from public sources: its onboarding, its current users and how community organizers work. The brand promises simplicity and ownership, but the product asks for relay setup, key management and Nostr knowledge. That gap became the core finding.

I read Gitea issues, Stacker News threads, Nostr notes, podcasts and the founder's blog, then turned the patterns into personas. Most problems were about onboarding and navigation, not technical bugs.

I mapped six moments where new users lose confidence, built a user flow covering every decision point and failure case, explored layouts with paper wireframes and turned the refined flow into high-fidelity screens, from account creation to joining a space through an invite link.

Solution

The redesign follows five rules: show the value before asking for commitment, translate technical terms into plain language, never leave a new user on an empty screen, give every error a next step and confirm that an action worked.

Edge cases such as invalid links, failed scans, incomplete setup and duplicate joins each get a clear message and a way to retry, edit or go back, so nobody gets stuck.

Result

A first-run experience that explains Nostr in plain language and ends with the user inside their first community.

I checked the redesign against the 15 issues from my UX audit of the live app, screen by screen. Three moves made the biggest difference: showing benefits before decisions at sign-up, using topic tags instead of relay URLs and ending the join flow inside the community. The redesign hasn't been tested with real users yet, so the next step is the usability testing protocol I wrote for the project.

More Works

Coin Up

2026

UI UX

Project drp

2024

Logo Design

FAQ

What does a project look like?

How is the pricing structure?

Are all projects fixed scope?

What is the ROI?

How do we measure success?

What do I need to get started?