This is my partial* application for @ned's inaugural bounty, for design and implementation of a Steemit bounty system.

*It's a partial application because designing a bounty system for Steemit is very complex (at least for a blockchain n00b like me). There are many different ways to implement this system. I feel like I need more collaboration with developers and the business to fully understand the technical constraints and business objectives. As @jesta said in his post yesterday:

TLDR: This project, done right, really isn't as simple as it sounds.

Anyway, for now, the most valuable thing I can do to contribute is to post some lower fidelity (not polished) mobile web designs that outline my proposed Information Architecture (IA) and User Experience (UX). Once we can agree on the right content and feature set for the MVP version of Bounties, I'd like to polish the visual design and create desktop designs.

Assumptions and mechanics

I agree with most of the mechanics outlined by @jesta in his Steemit Bounty System proposal. If you haven't read it, please check it out. There are a few things that I want to challenge though:

1. I think that the Bounty system should live within steemit.com (and not on a separate domain). There are pros and cons of this approach but I think keeping bounties native to the steemit.com ecosystem will create the most long term value due to it's ease of use for most non-advanced users.
   – I propose that it lives at: http://steemit.com/bounties
   – In case bounties are required to live on a separate domain for technical or legal reasons, perhaps it could live on the http://bounties.steemit.com subdomain.

2. I'm leaning towards requiring bounty creators to be registered and logged into Steemit.com to post a new bounty.
   – This would make posting a new bounty very similar to posting a new blog post.
   – It would also enable people to fund bounties using a similar mechanism to 'Promote a post' (instead of transferring funds to @bounty via steempay.io/shapeshift/cli_wallet commands as proposed by @jesta.
   – Requiring registration for bounty creators should increase the overall quality and reduce the potential for bounty abuse and misuse by increasing accountability and Steemit reputation transparency (like that outlined by @mrosenquist here)

Design ethos

Since these designs are intended to live on Steemit.com, I've tried to adhere to Steemit's visual styles and retain it's interaction patterns for similar tasks. For example:
– Creating a bounty should be as easy and as similar as posting a blog post.
– Funding a bounty should be as easy and as similar as promoting a blog post.

Competitor analysis

To kick off the design process, I reviewed several comparable website earlier this week. Check it out here:

https://steemit.com/bounties/@pkattera/competitor-analysis-for-ned-s-proposed-bounty-management-system

Information Architecture

Here's my proposed structure for the Bounties website:

Although I'd love to include a Bounty Hunter leaderboard and user profiles, I think we should keep the MVP as simple as possible for now and include it in a future version.

Content and features

Now that I've outline the page templates and structure above, the Content Hierarchy diagram below shows a high level view of content and features to be included on each page.

Mobile UX designs

Below are the mobile designs. Note: All copy, images and icons are placeholder for now.

Bounties home / landing page

Post a bounty (excluding milestones)

As per my previous post, adding milestones to bounties increases the complexity of the whole bounty system.

My gut feeling is to keep it super simple for version 1 and exclude milestones. People could still create individual bounties for separate tasks and link related bounties within the description.

This design excludes the concept of milestones.

Post a bounty (including milestones)

But if people feel strongly about keeping milestones, here is a design.

Bounty template

Submission template

Submit work

My bounties

A place to keep track of all the bounties that you've posted, entered, or watched.

Filters on the bounty home / landing page

Questions or concerns?

Message me on steemit.chat (pkattera)

Thank you

A few people to thank for inspiring me to design the Bounty System:

– @ned for kicking off this initiative
– @jesta for this post
– @steve-walschot for this post
– @blueorgy for image hosting (SteemIMG gets better and better!)

Acknowledgements

I used a few icons from The Noun Project. Credit to:
– Ryo Sato (filter icon)
– Kid A (calendar icon)

Some photos are from unsplash.com – a free image site.