When you hide your balance in Arké, you see a nice scenic view of a Tuscan landscape instead. I find it feels quite nice. A masked balance ("*****") still makes you think about the balance. A nice landscape is more relaxing.
Christoph Ono
gbks@nosta.me
npub1kuc7...0eyw
Designer & developer. Helping improve bitcoin design with many others at https://bitcoin.design . I write a weekly update at https://gbks.substack.com . ✌️
Arké is coming along nicely. I like this phase where you do a ton of small iteration and tweaking and you can feel the overall experience becoming more polished and smooth.
And I am sure a whole bunch of my decisions will prove to be wrong in user testing. But that’s no reason not go out with opinionated UX.
Have a good weekend. And let’s be kind to one another.
Took a brief look at QR code styling (difference in density comes from different error correction settings).
Ah, time to unfollow some people spreading replacement theory conspiracy theories. Astounding that anyone actually believes this stuff.
Super messy Arké update, but here we go. Unilateral exit, fee summary, activity & console. Like insurance, unilateral exit is one of those things that you really never want to use, but still want to have just in case. So if the Ark server goes away, you can still recover your funds. Still need to wrangle a lot of tech into submissions and polish the UI to glory.
I always take a ton of screenshots when I build something, and annotate them thoroughly. That, and tons of testing, is pretty much the only way to be sure it's all smooth and polished.
Working through the unilateral exit in Arké. I think it can be pretty simple in the end, but there's a lot of complexity under the hood to work through. It's an essential part, as this is what lets you recover your bitcoin even if the server that facilitates your payments goes away (or turns into a diamond-covered skull, I heard that could happen).
Wrote something about the goals for Arké. Feedback appreciated. 
Arké
Ark, eh?
Nice to get an update from our electric utility provider that electricity prices will be 8.8% lower next year. More of that, please.
And one more Arké update, all about the mobile UI. Take a peek. Would you use this?
Sharing some super half-baked screenshots of the Arké iOS app. I am porting the desktop screens to work across both MacOS and iOS, with almost all logic and components being shared. Just piecing things together roughly with lots of visual and interactive tweaks and polish to come. That's going to be fun and it's where the real UX finessing is. 
AI sucks at time estimation, maybe in an opposite way that people do. Says 11-14 hours, and is done in 10 minutes 🤷.
Arké now has a (very rough) mobile app that is best friends forever with its desktop companion. Thanks to new @Second Bark FFI Swift bindings. Here's a shaky setup-and-link demo:
What do you think?
Another Arké update? How will we pick servers during wallet setup? That, and fees, is what I am investigating here. Curious to hear any thoughts, as always.
Second Community
Arké MacOS prototype
Neil, I am so appreciative that you approach things that way. This week I realized that Bark supports BOLT-12 offers and Lightning Addresses out of...
This is an example with a rich BIP-21 URI (like what you might get from clicking a link at a checkout)). Instantly parsed and evaluated. Payment meta data is easy to see. Payment options (addresses) are matched against existing contacts, networks verified, balances checked, fees evaluated, and the best option highlighted. Just hit send and done. What do you make of that?
Latest Arké update about building a rich send experience that is simple and convenient no matter what you throw at it (known contacts, ark/bitcoin addresses, lightning invoices/offer/addresses, BIP-21, BIP-353, whatever...). A work-in-progress. What do you make of the direction?
Second Community
Arké MacOS prototype
Ideally Bark is so easy to work with that you can spend a lot more time working on changes unrelated to Ark/Bark! Looking great!
I recorded a hands-on 30-minute demo on how I use AI for coding for Arké (MacOS app, XCode). Curious to learn from others, if you have any tips.
Arké update 4, about native contacts, contact auto-assignment, a new console, and lots of little layout and convenience things. Still a major construction site, still progress.
I saw some people comment on the BIP-177 by default thing. Something I plan to get around to at some point and add options to choose from. Just not priority right now.
Second Community
Arké MacOS prototype
Thanks for the update. All good, I’m sure you’re all super busy. Here’s another update with the latest refinements: What’s...
Arké now also has a consolé. Very handy for doing some manual operations during development. Took 3 chats to build this with Claude in Xcode, mostly because I knew exactly what parts needed to be touched and also set up just a little bit of the skeleton to give Claude a more narrow scope. Such a breeze to build with.
Another update on Arké. Started to add tags, contacts and lightning functionality. It's a mess, but it's progress.
Second Community
Arké MacOS prototype
Hello again with another update. I spent the last few days with the basic integration of tags and contacts and better address handling all around, ...