Anyone! Innovation is created by exploring creativity and this was exactly your place to do that. You could feel free to stretch your creative side or explore a design concept that you’ve had.

We loved to involve anyone that wanted to take part, from designers and developers, PM’s and consultants, to total noobs. Everyone was welcome!

The bitcoin designathon took place online between October 12 to 23 (Wed-Sun).

All communications, project setup, news, updates, schedules, mentorship, and everything else happened in the Bitcoin Design Slack channel, for anyone to hop in and say hi 👋 to other makers, start forming project teams, and discuss ideas. This website was updated as the event progressed.

Workshops and talks were streamed on the Bitcoin Design Youtube Channel, so you could join us live or catch up in your own time!

Our first few days were dedicated to ensuring all makers were matched up with projects. You could also choose to work on your project alone, totally up to you! The remainder of the event was free and open for you to explore your design creativity.

Next to that, there were live workshops you could join, such as how to do remote design sprints, an intro to Figma and the Bitcoin UI Kit, research, as well as some technical topics. If you wanted to host a call or workshop, you could reach out in the #designathon Slack channel.

On the final day makers submitted their projects for review and had a chance to present them live to the community.

Our first few days of the designathon were dedicated to providing makers with some amazing workshops. We also provided guidance in terms of online tutorials and resources you could use to enjoy your design journey. We had also put together a brief how-to document with tips for participation.

This provided some good tools and resources for you to start designing and most importantly having fun! Next to that, our Slack channel was always open for you to post your question and we gladly directed you to any additional help you may have needed.

Looking for a project to join? You could jump into our Slack and introduce yourself in our #designathon channel. You could let other makers know who you are, where you were from, what skills, resources, and time you could offer, plus what you were excited to design!

Teams organised amongst themselves. We suggested including a variety of backgrounds and skill sets, which typically creates better results. Some participants could have been more design focused, others more technical, or artists, it totally depended on what you were working on.

Design projects were evaluated on the following criteria:

• 🌈 Innovation
  The design should be something new and interesting. This can be a brand new concept, or a fresh take on something we already know.

• ⚡ Bitcoin Integration
  The design should make intelligent use of bitcoin (and/or surrounding technologies like lightning).

• 👀 Open design
  The design community is all about working and collaborating in public. Has the project been transparent throughout the design journey?

• ✅ Execution
  Designers should focus on attention to detail. How well has the project executed? How strong was the design process?

• 🍒 UX/UI Design
  The design is user-centered, follows good design principles and is well-crafted.

• 🔥 Je ne sais quoi
  The design should have an extra level of pizazz, personality, creativity, or coolness.

The bitcoin designation was open to anything your mind could imagine. If you had an idea in mind and were wondering if it would be a great fit for the designathon. Below you’ll find a list of idea categories which might have helped!

• Education - how can we make bitcoin easier to understand and start using for more people around the world?

• Games - what are some unique playful experiences that can only be built on bitcoin?

• Future tech - how will we use bitcoin a few years from now when Taro, Fedimint, Taproot and other advancements are broadly adopted?

• Adoption - how can we as a community get the current tech to more people in new, interesting, and useful ways?

• Inclusion - explore how bitcoin reach more people by improving aspects like accessibility and localization

• Finance - how can bitcoin be used in finance beyond payments and savings (RoboSats, LN Markets, Stable coins on Taro, etc)?

• How can bitcoin wallets enable decentralised identities (see Sign in with bitcoin)

• Solve design problems or think of new experiences around Lightning

• Explore designs and interaction models around hardware wallets

• Use cases in your personal context (for your kids, people in your community, inheritance)

• Art - this one is up to you to define

If your idea didn’t fit in these categories, no worries, you could just go for it. As long as it was related to bitcoin in some way, it was all in good order.