MetaMask / MetaMask/metamask-extension
UI/UX Terminology Review
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Description
### What is this about?
Hi sorry if this is in the wrong place, I'm not familiar with etiquette on GitHub, but need eyes on a proposed UI/UX change, premise:
Metamask has two major terminology issues that have caused damage over the years to noobs.
1. naming it 'import private key'. People not familiar with the fact nothing is on their wallet, its all on chain and what a seed actually is (all of their keypairs) assume this means the key has been 'imported' into their seed, and they no longer need to keep record of the seed we know that key will forever originate from, but 'import' misguides people away from assuming.
2. calling it "create account" when really it isn't creating anything, it is simply revealing the next (derivation) account from the index (always the same always in the same order).
If Metamask would have changed that to 1."reveal account" and 2."manage external key" for adding a private key, years back, it would have saved thousands of people from rugging themselves and aided people understanding seeds much more intuitively and easily without their first exposure to DEFI being misleading terminology.
Metamask isn't the standard that should be followed in this regard but every wallet does. Metamask changing its terminology could do alot of simple good, to simple folk.
Conclusion: change "create account" to "reveal account" and change "import private key/seed" to "manage external key/seed" (believe people looking to add another seed or key to Metamask will inherently know this means add, without stating "add" which can confuse those unfamiliar with how the wallet basically works as an interface not a storage facility).
To suit both camps, technical and simple, "derive account" would be better, but the weight of users at risk, is why i'd go that step further and have "reveal account".
Thanks for your time! Sorry i'm just an end-user, who has been watching Metamask Reddit in horror for years, and tried several times to get someone's attention there, watching hundreds of users asking "after I imported my seed, not all my accounts are there, my balances are gone!", and having to break it to them that they infact did need to backup any imported accounts and their origin seed. These two changes would cull Metamask support queries substantially.
### Scenario
_No response_
### Design
_No response_
### Technical Details
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### Threat Modeling Framework
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### Acceptance Criteria
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### Stakeholder review needed before the work gets merged
- [ ] Engineering (needed in most cases)
- [ ] Design
- [ ] Product
- [ ] QA (automation tests are required to pass before merging PRs but not all changes are covered by automation tests - please review if QA is needed beyond automation tests)
- [ ] Security
- [ ] Legal
- [ ] Marketing
- [ ] Management (please specify)
- [ ] Other (please specify)
### References
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Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by locating the extension UI strings for “create account” and “import private key/seed,” then review the surrounding account and key-management flows. The issue has no named files, scenario, design, technical details, or acceptance criteria, so done would require agreed terminology and stakeholder review before updating the affected UI.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- content, design
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100