- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.
Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.
What can we do?
https://old.lemmy.world/ looks just like reddit. It’s not the UI. It’s network effect and there’s not a lot to be done.
People are still on Twitter while the owner makes Nazi salutes and Bluesky is a 1:1 replacement feature-wise with a modern interface. People just don’t like to move.
The fact that Bluesky is almost a 1:1 copy (which includes the dumb stuff like post character limit) is precisely why I don’t like it.
UX means “user experience”. It is distinct from the UI. OP is basically saying the process of signing up to federated social media is too complicated for the average user, not because of the way it looks and how you interact with it (the UI) but because of it’s not as easy to understand the concepts behind how Lemmy works.
The vast majority of users don’t like the old.reddit view, else reddit would have that as default.
It was the default for a very long time. Reddit changed that because it prevented them from monetizing the site that easily. And the admins seemed to dislike what RES could do with the old Reddit look.
Are you suggesting that businesses only change things based on what their users want? Because that’s obviously nonsense. Enshitification finds a way regardless of what the consumer wants.
Two things can be true at the same time.
Yes reddit doesn’t care about their users.
But also the old reddit is worse for the vast majority of people
I have friends who still only use old.reddit and refuse to switch to new UI.
This is me. Frankly, I’m surprised people are choosing to use the new UI, but I guess maybe they only discovered reddit when it had the new UI.
Would they be interested in Lemmy? Them using old.reddit shows that they would probably like it here
I already tried getting them on. Maybe https://old.lemmy.world/ can help.
How old are those friends of yours?
How old are you, out of interest? Your posts in your similar thread about default viewing experience makes it seem like you want an Instagram-style image browser rather than the link aggregator which Reddit and Lemmy actually are.
Isn’t the “tiling” view on PieFed like that? Link
I guess so. Every Lemmy app I’ve used also offers similar views.
I’m 32 and work in tech, The reality is the vast majority of people won’t want to use old.reddit style UI
I’m comfortable powering through shitty UI/UX etc. I’ve even built them myself, but others won’t settle for shitty UI
You and your friends are old I assume, and got used to the old.reddit UI, and didn’t want to change.
Most people are used to modern UI, and won’t want to change to old UI, just like you don’t want to change either. We should better cater for average people.
Thats funny, Im also 32 and completely happy with the default Lemmy UI. Definitely wouldnt use something like new Reddit. But the good thing is that there are so many different choices, and its possible to create instances with a different default UI.
We could do AB testing and see what users prefer.
Or at least change the Default Ui to adhere to good UX design principles
You seem to be conflating “the vast majority” and “people my age”. They are not the same.
You’re also making a lot of global UX preference claims in this thread without sources or data to back them up.
You seem to be doing the same? Majority of reddit users are younger than op. People who use old reddit are objectively the minority
Thank you for including sources, this was my point to AnonymousWolf.
I should have said “they may not be the same” as I didn’t check either. I stand corrected.
Look I don’t have any data to back it up, only my experience and many others (eg. https://lemmy.ca/comment/14524858)
I’m also not going to go try and dig up all the evidence to try and prove this to you. I am a IT professional and have been part of developing many web apps that see tens of thousands of users per day. We would do AB testing to see what works for users and what gets a better click through rate etc.
As soon as a user needs to think, they drop off like crazy, that’s just a fact you can look up good UX design. It’s also a fact that joining lemmy requires a lot of thinking and tweaking etc. to get to a good place.
I’ve been using lemmy for months now, and I’m still not happy with the UI even after tweaking and trying many different things.
That was my point. A number of times in this thread, you’ve stated your opinion as “a fact” or expressed it as obviously correct. It’s possible to get your point across without the condescension and acknowledging it’s your opinion.
I agree that the nature of federation on Lemmy and other federated social networks is complicated. Resolving that is no easy task. However, your stance in this post seems to be the burden of choosing your instance should be removed or streamlined by randomization. I personally disagree - while there is a hurdle to having to choose an instance and that is a barrier to entry, it’s also valuable in them learning that this isn’t just another platform under a single umbrella.
A/B testing is not really possible in a decentralized system like this, it would require all instance admins to collaborate for collecting results, and would make deployment much more complicated. Not to forget that there simply arent enough development resources to implement it. That said if you see anything that can be improved, you’re welcome to make a pull request. Its standard Typescript wit TailwindCSS and Inferno, nothing complicated.
You’re thinking like a designer for a slick, centralised, profit-and-growth-seeking company (no shade, I’m guessing that thinking literally makes you good at your job). The fediverse is entirely about choice; if different instances want to have a different default look and feel then that’s great and new users can pick one they like the look of, but insisting that everyone should have the one that you think is best isn’t a meaningful or helpful change.
I’m not saying everyone should have the one I think is best.
I’ve said many times I don’t have the solution, it’s just painfully obvious that what we have now sucks. (goes against basic UX principles)
I’m saying the instances that care about not filtering out non tech savvy people, and that want to attract more users, should care and put some effort into this.
You’re taking zero choice away from people, All I’m asking for is better defaults and guidance
I mean… old (it’s in the name). Does it matter? What’s your point?