But contract designs often miss the mark — most commonly discovered when engineers start to build. For a successful contract design project, it’s important to follow these three steps:

1. Set the project context

2. Set the designer’s expectations

3. Set the designer up for success

Case Study: New NFT Marketplace

As an example, let’s assume you are building a new marketplace, similar to Magic Eden’s Bitcoin Ordinals product. How should you manage a contract designer to create v1?

1. Set the project context

Do the foundational product work before starting to work with a contract designer. Document your target users, the value proposition, key use cases, and how you’ll evaluate the product’s success. It is also good to give designers context beyond the formal scope of the project to help them reference previous versions or understand future features they may need to hold space for. Write down answers to the following:

What are you building?
✏️ e.g., Marketplace for Ordinals

Who are you building for?
✏️ e.g., Ordinals collectors and Ordinal creators

Why are you building this?
✏️ e.g., Grow a larger market for tokenized assets on Bitcoin

What are the key tasks for users?
1️⃣ Connect Ordinal wallet/s
2️⃣ Buy/sell Ordinals
3️⃣ Inscribe Ordinals

What are the success metrics for this product?
✏️ e.g., Number of Ordinals inscribed, number inscriptions traded, Number of Bitcoin wallets connected

What type of project is this?
[ ] New product
[ X ] Improvement/evolution to an existing product

Will this project be phased? If so, how?
✏️ e.g., Yes. Phase 1: Marketplace for buying/selling Ordinals; Phase 2: Launchpad for inscribing Ordinals

Tips
• Give the designer time to get context and ask questions
• Make sure you ask questions to confirm the designer understands your vision + needs

2. Set the designer’s expectations

Make sure the designer understands the end goal, requested features and flows, and final deliverables. Make them aware of any parts that are still ambiguous or any technical pieces that being developed in parallel. Write down answers to:

What is the end goal?
✏️ e.g., Designs for full product flows that give engineers enough context to build from.

What features need to be included?
1️⃣ Wallet connection
2️⃣ Purchase flow
3️⃣ Launchpad for inscribing Ordinals

What flows must be accounted for?
✏️ Gallery view > detail view > purchase Inscribe > confirming showing up in marketplace > tracking activity Connect wallet > purchase

Are there any big unknown areas or technical pieces in development that may impact the designs?
✏️ e.g., No attributes, no need for cart/bulk buy (buy direct from details), meme pool delays

What final deliverables do you expect (and what level of fidelity do you need in the designs)?
✏️ e.g., Complete, but low fidelity, mocks and flows that cover all basics interactions + error and null states. These don’t need to be pixel perfect, because engineers will pull from existing visual components.

What milestones do you want to review, when? Example below.

3. Set the designer up for success

The first two things are important for communicating context and aligning on scope, deliverables, and timing. It is equally important to frame what you expect for communication, who their point of contact will be, and who will be assessing and giving feedback on the designs over the course of the project. Write down your answers to the following:

**Who will be the primary POC and the in-house decision maker?**This person should be the one to share all context with the contractor, handle feedback, and decide what changes should be made to the designs. This is usually a founder or product person.
✏️ e.g., Founder

Which engineer will be on point to give feedback on technical feasibility?
✏️ e.g., Engineer Lead

What channels do you want to use to communicate?
✏️ e.g., Slack, Notion doc, Zoom

How frequently do you expect updates, questions, responses, etc?
✏️ e.g., Slack as needed for realtime questions + quick feedback, Zoom check-ins 2x/week

Who should be in those communications?
✏️ e.g., Contract designer, founder, engineer

**Are there recurring meetings that you want the designer to participate in?**If so, when are these and how do you want the designer to participate?
✏️ e.g., Daily stand ups, weekly team reviews

Sharing context up front, setting clear expectations, and resolving how/when and with whom communication will happen are really important steps to a successful project with a contract designer.

Regular check-ins with product and engineering and making micro corrections along the way should net you with designs that meet the needs of the product, are in scope, and are buildable.

Here is a worksheet for kicking off a project with a contract designer.