Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.
The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.
It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.
Maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but I actually like that registering for federated sites requires a bit work.
IMO, the internet was more enjoyable when it was just full of us nerds
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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?
Maybe it’s personal bias but I’d put a lot more weight into the comments about
- too few members
- wtf is multiple servers?
While I understand the power, the ideal of multiple federated servers, I still see it as an impediment for use. I know there’s online descriptions but I fail to see why I need to research and choose a server, especially when none really have the membership to support smaller communities yet
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Who cares? If someone can't figure out how to join a server, then I don't want them here. If people think that reddit has some amazing UX, then I don't want them here.
The post about Lemmy has 500 upvotes while the crybaby replies only have like 100.
The question is: do we want people to leave corporate services, and join the fediverse, or not? By showing such hostility towards such "crybabies" we will never get any traction.
We are facing a problem. "Crybabies" are arguing about lack of content and/or difficulty on signing up. People on Lemmy are arguing that they don't want such users in their communities. Other people, thinking of onboarding, may not join after seeing hostile users like you.
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When it comes to software things, I do tend to err on the side of supporting new users - I'll be the first to argue that a person should not have to learn how to use the terminal in order to use Linux.
That said, this situation is honestly bewildering to me. I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great.
You're all seriously overthinking this. Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice because on most instances you're going to see all the same content as soon as you press the All button anyway.
One thing I can imagine that would make the experience better, is maybe if there was a one-click way to join or migrate to another lemmy instance, using an existing login. Personally I don't think it's a big deal to just quickly sign up for a new instance if I want to. But I did see that Pixelfed has the option of signing on by using a Mastodon account. So maybe something like that can help?
"I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great."
Because for every choice presented, people want to know the consequences of each one before proceeding. It's a well understood problem in sales and marketing. People do not want to put themselves in a position where they have to undo. Companies like Apple do this very well. In computer shops, the reason staff are hired is to help get the customer from "wanting a laptop" to "choosing one laptop", rather than walk away feeling that they need to think about it more.
"Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice".
Maybe if they said that on the signup page it would help. I think it would have helped me. But just because you have a sense of what "looks good" doesn't mean the average person does. It's the average person that I want to interact with on the internet.
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Could there be an option for a sorting hat that could either: look at the redditor's post history and determine a good server for them or simply spin the wheel. Either way would get the lazies shit posting without them having to learn anything about fediverse. I know I would have just spun the wheel.
simply spin the wheel
That’s how the Lemmy info page (what comes up when you search for “Lemmy”) does it, and the experience isn’t great.
Before I knew how Lemmy worked I just clicked the first option it showed, which (for me) was a non-English instance. The second option was that LGBT-focused instance that defederated with lemmy.world a few months ago. Of course I didn’t know anything about either community so I just picked randomly. I went right back to Reddit until they pulled the next anti-user thing.
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Maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but I actually like that registering for federated sites requires a bit work.
IMO, the internet was more enjoyable when it was just full of us nerds
That does come with the unavoidable side effect that the majority of the people will simply not participate. It then follows that sites like Reddit will continue to be the place where the majority of the people will go.
If your goal is to participate in small communities and you are okay with the slow pace of those communities, then that's fine. If your goal is to move people away from corporate-sponsored media for whatever reason, then this won't work.
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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?
donald glover saying good dot gif
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"I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great."
Because for every choice presented, people want to know the consequences of each one before proceeding. It's a well understood problem in sales and marketing. People do not want to put themselves in a position where they have to undo. Companies like Apple do this very well. In computer shops, the reason staff are hired is to help get the customer from "wanting a laptop" to "choosing one laptop", rather than walk away feeling that they need to think about it more.
"Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice".
Maybe if they said that on the signup page it would help. I think it would have helped me. But just because you have a sense of what "looks good" doesn't mean the average person does. It's the average person that I want to interact with on the internet.
When I recommend federated sites to people, I literally just pick the ones I'm already on and send the link. Problem solved. They can learn more and try new things in their own time. It's also not hard to just tell them, "It's like email, but for the whole internet."
"Of Earth’s estimated 400,000 plant species, we could eat some 300,000, armed with the right imagination, boldness and preparation. Yet humans, possibly the supreme generalist, eat a mere 200 species globally, and half our plant-sourced protein and calories come from just three: maize, rice and wheat."
Would you consider biodiversity to also be bad ux? Maybe consider that the benefits of decentralization far outweigh the cons of your marketing programming, and that the issue is more one of education. Dumbing down and patronizing people like we need somebody to make our choices for us sounds like a solution that's worse than the problem.
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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?
Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.
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Right, but that's the issue. It can give them an extremist instance
Yeah but that's just join-lemmy, someone could make their own website that doesn't have this issue, even without overloading the user with info. It should only show instances that are middle of the road general instances.
Yes, that would be a good addition to the Lemmy ecosystem.
What I'm saying is, you can't agree that we should help them avoid extremist instances AND say that the instance doesn't matter.
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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...
Is it really a "bad" experience?
A "bad" experience is something like applying for a job online, submitting your resume, then manually entering all the information that's already on your resume into a thousand little boxes. A "bad" experience is trying to unsubscribe from a service that relies on the pain of that unsubscribe process keeping people paying every month.
Having to choose a server is at most a speed bump. Is it a "bad" experience to choose an email provider?
If that mild speed bump is keeping people from joining, that's fine. If someone cared enough to make some kind of a GUI that hand-held people through the process of choosing a server, that's fine too.
IMO, if we're talking bad experiences, ads on Reddit that are designed to look like posts, that's a bad experience. Ads that are designed to look like comments, that's a bad experience. And, the feature coming soon of communities locked behind a paywall, that's a really bad experience.
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Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.
UI =/= UX, and UX is what the comment on the post was about
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Picking a starter is easy. Everyone knows that pokémon is a game about collecting creatures, and everyone knows what fire/ water/ grass is, so no one's gonna be stumped. Not everyone is gonna immediately know what an instance is, or what it does, or what it's there for
Everyone has heard of fire, water and grass, sure. Do they have any idea what that means in the Pokemon universe? I certainly hadn't.
Not everyone is gonna immediately know what an instance is, or what it does, or what it's there for
You know how you might use gmail and your friend might use outlook and you can just email no problem? Like that.
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I think a big problem is a lot of the explainers for new users, at least the ones that were around back when I first joined Mastodon, were or are absolute dog shit. They were all existential explanations rather than practical ones. I was trying to figure out which instance to join, and why one might be better for me than another, and every explainer I saw was basically a variation on, "iT's JuSt LikE EmAiL. wHy Is tHaT hArD? sToP bEiNg So sTuPid, DuMmY." None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those. It was like asking someone how to use chopsticks and them telling you, "It's easy. Just put food in your mouth with them. Works just like a fork."
Technically true, but it omits some pretty crucial information.
Once you're into it and have the lay of the land, it seems really simple in retrospect. But if you're coming in cold with no idea how any of it works, and the only help you get is some dickhead shouting, "EmAiL! iT's LiKe EmAiL!" then the learning curve seems a lot steeper than it actually is.
None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those
I almost never use the local feeds. Technically my instance choice does affect them, but I could switch to any other random Lemmy instance and the experience would be 99.99% the same for me.
To me it's not forks vs. chopsticks, it's someone looking at a fork with 3 tines instead of 4 and getting paralyzed not being able to decide between the two.
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Reddit ux is also ass. Only difference between reddit and lemmy is that the federation bit is extremely confusing and not intuitive.
"Extremely" confusing?
Maybe to someone who has never once used email. But, even then, you could say "It's like choosing a car, some look different, but they can all use the same roads." If someone has never used a car, you could say "It's like choosing a brand of underwear". If they don't use underwear, do we really want them here?
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So you, a normal person, join and instantly when a meme or comment allude to being altruistic, you leave? It's so unfathomable to me how this is probably true. So many people need the world to be egomaniac or they get uncomfortable. Maybe they're the problem though
So you, a normal person, join and instantly when a meme or comment allude to being altruistic, you leave?
Lol, the lack of self-awareness in your comment is astounding. You immediately jumped to interpreting them in the least charitable way possible, instead of just asking them to clarify like a normal person. You are exactly the type of leftist that pushes a lot of people away from using Lemmy.
Who needs conservative saboteurs when you have leftists to do their work for them?
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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?
Who volunteers to fix it?
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When it comes to software things, I do tend to err on the side of supporting new users - I'll be the first to argue that a person should not have to learn how to use the terminal in order to use Linux.
That said, this situation is honestly bewildering to me. I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great.
You're all seriously overthinking this. Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice because on most instances you're going to see all the same content as soon as you press the All button anyway.
One thing I can imagine that would make the experience better, is maybe if there was a one-click way to join or migrate to another lemmy instance, using an existing login. Personally I don't think it's a big deal to just quickly sign up for a new instance if I want to. But I did see that Pixelfed has the option of signing on by using a Mastodon account. So maybe something like that can help?
Too many choices = analysis paralysis
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That does come with the unavoidable side effect that the majority of the people will simply not participate. It then follows that sites like Reddit will continue to be the place where the majority of the people will go.
If your goal is to participate in small communities and you are okay with the slow pace of those communities, then that's fine. If your goal is to move people away from corporate-sponsored media for whatever reason, then this won't work.
Bad UX made it hard for me to even make an account here lol, and I’m someone that has been promoting Lemmy for weeks. I think making the sign up process as easy as possible is how to do it. I’m still annoyed at how dumb it was trying to get on this site even.
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Maybe it’s personal bias but I’d put a lot more weight into the comments about
- too few members
- wtf is multiple servers?
While I understand the power, the ideal of multiple federated servers, I still see it as an impediment for use. I know there’s online descriptions but I fail to see why I need to research and choose a server, especially when none really have the membership to support smaller communities yet
The average person is going to have no idea what "federated" means. They'll probably assume it has something to do with the federal gov.
