Aurora
My Role
Ux Designer
Timeline
Jan - Sept 2025
Team Members
2 members
Skill
Product Designer, Product Stratergy, Prototyping
Designing the Future of Bitcoin Payment Distribution, Building for real-world trust and effortless tipping.
INTRODUCTION
What if payments weren’t just sent but fairly distributed, instantly, and without friction?
For the last six months, I’ve been working on Aurora, a Bitcoin-based payment distribution app that aims to make multi-party payouts effortless and transparent.
At first glance, it sounds like just another “wallet.”
But Aurora was built around a different question:
What if payments weren’t just sent but fairly distributed, instantly, and without friction?
This wasn’t just a design exercise; it was a product challenge. Every decision centered on one goal: making Bitcoin more usable for people, not just protocols.
THE PROBLEM
Bitcoin solved peer-to-peer transfers elegantly. But once you add more than one recipient, things break apart
Bitcoin solved peer-to-peer transfers elegantly. But once you add more than one recipient, things break apart.
Think of:
A podcast team is splitting ad revenue.
YouTube creators are sharing sponsorship tips with editors.
Streamers or musicians reward guest collaborators.
A conference stall collecting shared revenue between partners.
A creator collective managing sponsorship payouts.
Today, those splits are handled through manual payouts, screenshots, and trust. It’s inefficient, opaque, and unsustainable. Founders often focus on transaction speed or wallet security. We saw something else missing, meaning. Adoption doesn’t grow from faster transactions, but from more meaningful ones.
USER RESEARCH
Understanding the Users - Indirect Research
Since Aurora was still early, I relied on indirect research to understand our audience.
I studied tipping and payout models from platforms like Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi, YouTube SuperChat, and Spotify for Podcasters. Patreon made recurring support easy but heavy to set up. Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee felt spontaneous but lacked transparent splits. SuperChat gamified tipping but kept creators locked in one ecosystem.
To dig deeper, I explored Reddit threads, creator economy reports, and UX patterns from apps like PayPal, Splitwise, and Wallet of Satoshi analyzing how trust and transparency were communicated visually. Instead of formal interviews, I built a quick comparison matrix mapping setup effort, transparency, emotional reward, and collaboration support. These insights helped shape Aurora’s MVP into something human yet efficient not just another crypto wallet, but a bridge between appreciation and fairness.
What drives them:
Validation: each tip is social proof of impact.
Simplicity: they want to set up once and focus on their craft.
Transparency: audiences trust creators who show where money goes.
Spontaneity: tips happen impulsively, right after a moment of value.
Aurora’s design psychology was built around these behaviors. We didn’t just design an interface; we designed reassurance.
PRODUCT APPROACH
Product Approach, Clarity Over Complexity
1. Lean MVP Scope
We chose a single segment, online creators, instead of building for everyone. Features like multi-currency and detailed analytics will come later. This allowed faster feedback cycles and reduced tech debt.
2. Design for Trust
Bitcoin can feel abstract. We added confirmations, transparent receipts, and split visibility so both creators and tippers feel secure.
3. Human-First Language
We replaced crypto jargon with clarity: Tip, Share, Split, Confirm.
MAJOR UX FLOWS
Major UX Flows
Create Split Flow
“Defines how split payments should be created and distributed.”
Manage Split Flow
“A simple public page where the user can manage and the system automatically distributes funds to multiple Bitcoin addresses in real-time.
Activity Logs / Payment History (per split + per member)
“Every split and every contributor has full visibility into all payments, distribution events, and Bitcoin transaction IDs.”
DESIGN PARAMETERS
Key Design Decisions
One-Screen Setup -
Creators define splits once (e.g., 70/30) and reuse them anytime. → Faster setup, lower dropout.
Real-Time Split Receipts
Recipients see their share instantly. → Builds trust and accountability.
Minimalist UI, Maximum Confidence
Recipients see their share instantly. → Builds trust and accountability.
PRODUCT CONSTRAINTS
Challenges and Trade-offs
Designing for Instant Gratification on a Delayed Network
Bitcoin transactions aren’t always instant. But tipping is purely emotional and moment-driven. Waiting kills the momentum.
We solved this by introducing “soft confirmations” visual feedback that instantly acknowledges the action while the network confirms in the background. This required careful messaging and iconography to maintain honesty without killing enthusiasm.
Balancing Transparency with Privacy
Creators loved transparent split receipts; audiences could see everyone getting their share. But that same visibility risked oversharing sensitive income data.
Our solution: layered transparency.
Receipts are public for the payer, but private in detailed amounts for collaborators.
This built trust without compromising safety.
REAL LIFE IMPLICATIONS
Building Podcaster
To see how Aurora could work in the real world, we joined a hackathon and built a prototype podcast app, something like a mini Spotify for indie creators. Each episode had a built-in tipping link powered by Aurora’s split-payment tech.
When a listener tipped an episode, the payment automatically distributed between the host, guest, and editor based on preset splits. It was a small experiment, but it validated our concept instantly.Creators loved that the “thank you” moment could now directly reward everyone behind the work.
That prototype helped us refine Aurora’s role not as another wallet, but as the invisible layer powering fair payouts behind creator platforms.
CONCLUSION
Takeaways & Learnings
Visual Design vs. Technical Constraints
Bitcoin confirmations don’t allow us to show the elegant “one tap = done” animation users expect from modern fintech apps. So we focused on micro-animations that communicate intent, subtle vibrations, fading progress states, and positive reinforcement. These cues maintained perceived smoothness even when the backend wasn’t real-time
Designing for a Market Without UX Precedents
Bitcoin distribution tools are mostly CLI or developer-oriented. There was no UX benchmark for this. We borrowed cues from mainstream tools like Splitwise and PayPal, but reinterpreted them for a trust-minimized world. It was a constant back-and-forth between familiarity and decentralization.
Takeaways for Founders & PMs
Find your emotional wedge - The creator tipping economy is emotional design around that, not around crypto hype.
Design trade-offs are business decisions - Each simplification you make changes your go-to-market speed.
Clarity outperforms complexity - Every pixel that reduces doubt improves conversion.
Closing Thoughts
Aurora isn’t just about splitting Bitcoin payments; it’s about simplifying how digital appreciation flows between humans. If a creator can receive a tip from anywhere, share it instantly, and show transparency to their audience, we’ve done more than build an app.