Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?
Not necessarily, but we don't want a accidental filter that filters out non tech savvy people. We want all kinds of people on Lemmy
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I think we should have a Lemmy landing page, that should help you choose a instance.
Ask you to select a few topics you're interested in, if you want to see political content and/or NSFW content.
And then make a suggestion (randomly from one of a few fitting instances)
Once a user gets used to the platform they can always switch
Easily switching is the real hurdle, because there are a massive number of reasons that someone would want to switch. For example I started on kbin and switched when the instance died.
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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.
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.
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The idea that one must commit, is the problem. At first, I signed up for 3 or 4 servers. It needs to be pointed out that no commitment is necessary.
People like to commit, though. They want to commit. They want to make an account and be done. The ability for established users and communities to move around is a great feature that makes Lemmy superior to other sites, but it really needs to work on making new users feel comfortable enough to stay put when they're first figuring things out, because if a new user decides to leave, they're probably not switching instances, they're switching platforms.
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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?
Love old.lemmy.world
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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.
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.
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The UX once you figure out what works for you in Lemmy is nice, the UX getting to that point is terrible, as many have said.
Most will quit before getting to the good part.99% of gamblers quit right before they win big /j
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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?
Couldn't we design an "onboarder" where when you get started on lemmy, a "let's get you started" wizard asks you 2 or 3 questions and based on your answers, it proposes 2 or 3 servers (or directly assigns you to one)?
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The apps are kinda meh. I haven't found one that doesn't come with significant disadvantages yet, and I've tried FIVE.
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There's no recommendations feed. You see what you're subscribed to, or everything. No in-between. You can't see what you've subscribed to, and a few posts that the algorithm thinks you might like. People like to complain about the algorithm, but one reason it's so addictive is that it's useful.
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Notifications don't work in every app
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Just having a feed that behaves normally seems to be really hard to do for apps. Stop slowing me posts I've already scrolled past, and when I click home/pull down to refresh, I want new posts, not the same thing again that I've already scrolled past and ignored. Some apps have settings (that are somehow not on by default) to hide read posts and mark posts read on scroll, but I haven't tried an app where that works every time.
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There's no "main" app. Think about Reddit before the API fees. There used to be a default app. It had its issues, but most features worked out of the box, and most things were intuitive and normie-friendly. You could use that to get comfortable with the social network itself, and then eventually try other apps when something got too annoying.
Compare that with Lemmy. You want to try it, and you already have to deal with choice paralysis. A ton of apps on the website, with utterly unhelpful descriptions ("an open-source Lemmy client developed by so-and-so"; wow, exactly zero of those words help me pick) and a random order that doesn't even let me default to one most popular one.
Quite a few apps focus on niche UI features like swipe-based navigation while still not having the basics down right. I'm several months into having joined Lemmy and I still haven't found an app that feels somewhat right. That is a challenge not one of the other social networks has managed. Congrats, Lemmy. Impressive.
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Picking a server and signing up in general is complicated. And it's an impactful decision that you have NO tools to make so early, unless you start researching like it's school homework.
.world? That's popular but you'll be judged for having joined it, plus you lose access to the piracy community. .ml? Hope you like communists and DRAMA. And if you get it wrong, there's no intuitive and easy way to migrate. You clunkily export your settings and re-import them; the servers will NOT talk to each other. And even then you lose some stuff.
This UX issue is tough. I don't have an easy solution. But I'm sure a UX expert could find one.
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Manual validation of your sign-up by a human. What is this, a Facebook group? If you introduce a 24-hour delay so early in the process, of course people are going to fall off.
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The mouse logo is kinda ugly, won't lie. I'm sure it's a more potent people repellent than you think.
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There is a LOT of tribalism. On Reddit, there's r/Canada, that's full of convinced conservatives that won't hesitate to artificially skew the discourse. And there's r/OnGuardForThee, basically the same but with progressives angry at the conservatives.
On Lemmy, that feels like the rule, not the exception. I just joined communities based on my interests, and my feed is full of communist vs communist vs non-communist drama. Can we frickin' chill?
If I need to start filtering out whole fields of interest that were taken over, joining less popular community clones or literally defederating instances to get a good experience, we've got it wrong. Normal people don't wanna do that when they literally just got here. They'll just leave.
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Somehow even more US-centric than Reddit. So... Much... American politics.
Addition to 10. And if a thread is not about america or politics, someone in the comments will still twist the subject to rant about it.
And 11. Lemmy has a disproportionate cynical middle aged nerd population. Like the people on this post thinking 'old reddit-like ui' was a compliment. Seeing the 'I only use vim' guy once is amusing. Scrolling down and seeing a dozen more sends a distinct 'this place is not for you' vibe.
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The reddit concept of subreddits also doesn't work well with federation IMO (at least no Lemmy's implementation).
Want to talk about video games? Well, there's no /r/games, instead there are bunch of different /c/games on different servers with varying amounts of activity. You basically gotta make the "pick a server" decision again whenever you post something. If you make the wrong choice, your post might not get seen by anyone, and even if you post to the biggest sub, you'll be missing out on eyeballs from people on other servers who aren't subscribed to that instance for whatever reason.
For example, lemmy.ml/c/linux_gaming and lemmy.world/c/linux_gaming have around the same number of subscribers. Should I post to both? Maybe the same people subscribe to both, so that's pointless? Or maybe I'll miss out on a lot of discussion if I post only to one? There's no way for me to know.
For me, it makes Lemmy less useful than reddit for asking really niche questions and getting useful answers. For posting comments on whatever pops up in my feed though, it works great.
I don't have any good solutions to this, and I'm sure it has been considered already. When I first joined, I remembered seeing people bring this same issue up, but it doesn't seem like it went anywhere? (Or maybe it did?)
Man. You just gave me an idea (which would matter if I wasn’t a complete idiot).
Instead of servers that all attempt to be a sort of clone of Reddit, servers could focus on content similar to the way subreddits work.
So you’d join any one of these servers and federate with other servers just like now, only content would be focused between servers.
Example:
This server is a games server. It has /c/games, /c/fallout, /c/vintagegaming, etc.
This server will focus on news and politics. It has /c/worldnews, /c/marketnews, etc.
Sure, it would still have the issue of being fractured, but it would narrow it down so much that it would be more appealing and easier to navigate.
It’s probably too late for that.
Ultimately, I’m happy with the fediverse. Algorithms aren’t dictating what I see. There’s no profit incentive that will lead to bad decisions, so when bad decisions are made, folks will talk about it and come to a solution.
I miss old Reddit, but it’s gone.
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Couldn't we design an "onboarder" where when you get started on lemmy, a "let's get you started" wizard asks you 2 or 3 questions and based on your answers, it proposes 2 or 3 servers (or directly assigns you to one)?
Something like this sounds great
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You can either face reality or not, literally nobody cares about your opinion on the matter. Many people who don't join lemmy say this, that is simple fact.
okay, bye!
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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?
Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It's literally like picking an email host.
That's the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? "Pick what you like" leads to people going "OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions
" No wonder people love AI, because they can't think for themselves.The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.
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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.
I don't have any data to back it up
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.
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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?
So they want to replace a social media site ran by rich fucks with a social media site run by rich fucks?
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Joining is a bad experience. "Please commit now to a server on this service you know nothing about... Then you can try it out!" I understand the concept of decentralization, but it's ass-backwards...
I originally joined KBin because I liked the interface better than lemmy.
When I joined lemmy.world I just picked it because it was the most populous.
I haven’t even given it a second thought about changing because I don’t know why I would. It seems pretty arbitrary which instance you join.
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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?
Something else to keep in mind is that most Redditors nowadays (like Twitter and Bluesky users) are mobile users. I think a lot of Lemmy mobile apps have a good UI and solve that problem. However, it's hard to point new users at a single website/app/etc to join. Bluesky does that. Obviously, that's bad for decentralization, but Bluesky is also still a beta protocol that's headed toward decentralization at some point. Their single instance was necessary for them at the start.
When a new/small social media platform that acts as an alternative of a bigger platform pops up, one of the common topics on the alternative are people talking about how it's better than the old place and/or just trashing the old place. Eventually, they outgrow that (assuming that platform survives). I feel like that's happened with Bluesky. Browsing it, everyone seems to be talking about their own usual topics now, and I see very few posts calling out Twitter or comparing Bluesky to Twitter nowadays.
Lemmy still feels like it's in that "bash the old place" stage to me. Maybe ~20% or posts I see are talking about Reddit or talking about Lemmy in relation to Reddit. It's annoying.
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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.
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The idea that one must commit, is the problem. At first, I signed up for 3 or 4 servers. It needs to be pointed out that no commitment is necessary.
Was your experience different between those 3-4 servers or was it pretty much universally consistent?
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How old are those friends of yours?
I mean... old (it's in the name). Does it matter? What's your point?
