Hacker News Reader

> But it's nothing, nothing compared to the crime against humanity that is the Snapchat UX.

Every time Snapchat's UI/UX is brought up on Hacker News it's praised as "it facilitates the joy of feature discovery!" (example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859860)

It's a post-hoc rationalization that I am still not happy with. (even moreso 2 years later with more apps like Facebook/Skype copying Snapchat verbatim)

That sounds suspiciously like the addiction specialists got bored with the real games they were tweaking, and decided to move on the the UI instead, and gamify that. "Hmm, my friends are all using this weird effect, I wonder how they are doing that? I guess I'll have to spend some time and figure it out so I'm one of the elite users too..."

Mix one part neglect and abuse with one part intense pleasure from finally getting what you were looking for. Enjoy your Stockholm Syndrome cocktail, rinse and repeat.

Once you know the Snap UI it works very well. Kind of like a DSLR camera, it takes forever to learn all those buttons and functions and become habitual with them, but once you know how to find all the functions and operate the camera properly it's apparent that everything has been beautifully placed and carefully thought about. An easy to learn UI isn't necessarily the most efficient or versatile to use.

Old people wonder 'WTF is this Snapchat?', they download the app, dick around with it for a few minutes and dismiss it as incomprehensible. It's a feature, not a bug.

No, digital cameras map an incredible amount of functionality onto a limited amount of user interface (there's only so many buttons you can physically put on a camera). Snapchat takes an incredibly simple single function of taking a picture and sending it to a friend and renders it horribly complicated for no good reason.

Add to this that modern digital cameras have fantastic defaults.

You can more or less click away like on a good old Kodak Instamatic while retaining full control of every aspect of your picture if you wish.

Turning users away is a feature? Genuine question -- I really don't understand your point.

The idea, I believe, is building camaraderie among your users as they teach each other how to use it.

IMO, Snapchat should be the easiest to decentralize and federate b/c the ephemeral nature allows expectations to be set for simple hosting like Digital Ocean. Who cares if data gets deleted?

Devil's advocate:

Instagram is not a "serious" photo app. It's strictly for fun. if you want to shoot serious pictures, you use a purpose built app, or heck, even the built-in app on your phone. Making the UI a hide-and-seek game, or at least abandoning traditional UI design for something that puts form over function makes sense in that context.

There's an actual game on Steam called "Please, don't touch anything" where this kind of random discovery is the whole point.

Not sure I'd prejudicially dismiss it as "millennial smugness" though.

Instagram is not just a camera app anymore. It’s strong point is distribution and discovery. There is a huge pro photography community on there. They all shoot with serious DSLR/Mirrorless setups, edit shots in Adobe Lightroom and then post the resulting photos on Instagram for their following to see and engage with. Do not dismiss the pro use case for Instagram because it is massive.

Yup, this is exactly what I do, though as a hobbyist. My instagram "feed" has very few pictures not taken on a DSLR and edited in lightroom. My stories, on the other hand...

Yep, this is me. 90% of my photos are shot with a sony a7 and zeiss lenses, then posted to Instagram for fun.

Link for the lazy:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/354240/Please_Dont_Touch_A...

It is a funny sort of opposite of games the "The Room" where you are indeed supposed to touch everything.

Would you agree that the Kodak Instamatic was a serious camera? That is, technology isn't serious, it's the use that it's put to that determines.

> There's an actual game on Steam called "Please, don't touch anything"

The original was a web game way back in the day called "Don't shoot the puppy". When I realised what was going on I nearly died laughing. My flat mates thought I was having a seizure.

Instagram is a serious photo app in the same sense that the Holga is a serious camera.

I think maybe you have to be 12 to actually even successfully use that UI.

15 yo here. The UI is obtuse, sure, but it is very nice when you get used to it. The learning curve is a valid argument, but I'm hesitant to say there should be change.

16 yo. I had to ask around friends how they did whatever they did and the learning process was kinda fun and sparked conversation. That might have helped spread the word of Snapchat.

Making Snapchat easy to use by parents would be a disaster for them, people are not engaging with content and posting to Facebook because their grandmother uses it and would see it.

I think that a lot of the weird design choices in Snapchat are intentional and very well thought out.

Thank you for sharing your perspective. A lot of Snapchat analyses are from people not in the biggest user demographic.

30 something yo here (but with the spirit of a 15yo)

I have no problem at all with Snapchat's UI and can't understand why "old" people complain about it so much. did I know how to do everything at first? no, but it was easy, just swipe left/right/up/down and tap a few places. just because it doesn't follow the conventional ui/ux paradigm doesn't make it confusing or hard, just different (and these days, not that different, since a lot of other apps are copying snap's gestures)

the issue I do have with snapchat is that I'd like to see more interesting snaps and people to follow (who are not my friends) and the app doesn't help me with that. I'm basically limited to a few people who don't snap that much and I hardly use the chat function. I think this is where instagram one ups snapchat (the fact that ig's main content isn't ephemeral kinda helps).

I'm waiting to see what Snap comes up with (they have to come up with something, otherwise they'll be doomed).

It's a selfie app. There is absolutely zero reason for there to be a learning curve. It shouldn't be hard for a company with almost 2000 employees to develop an actually functioning and accessible UX.

Dude, don't disagree with the 15 year old! /s

I agree completely, Snapchat is a horrendously designed app, especially when compared to an extremely intuitive one like Instagram. It's a miracle youngsters are fine with the learning curve since kids are getting less patient when it comes to learning nowadays. I guess the stories and filters were worth the trouble? Who knows.

In general, I think that Snap is one of the luckiest unicorns out there. Also, the fact that they have yet to come up with a new product -- other than those silly glasses -- does not help their case much.

What's so difficult about it?

You have swipable 3 tabs, messages, camera and stories. Is that so complicated?

When you get a snap, after watching it, you can click "reply." That opens a camera. You have to tap to the left of "reply" to actually open a chat. I find that to be unexpected behavior, given especially that I make the mistake literally every time.

How do you get to "settings?" I just opened the app. I see the snapchat logo in the top left, a... search bar? For searching what? Who knows. There's what's probably the flash icon, probably a switch camera icon. Then there's a messages bubble, and a... bubble with three dots... Also there's a bubble right underneath the biggest bubble (camera take picture button I assume) with what looks like... a picture? God knows what that does. I click it. It's memories. Great, not sure why i'd need to see that but fine.

Back, messages bubble. Messages, cool.

Back, three dot bubble. Stories. Riiiight. Still no settings. "My story" has a settings icon but that's something else.

Back, ghost button. Holy shit a settings icon. Got it!

They want you to reply with another photo.

If you're replying to photos with text messages then you're really not 'getting' Snapchat.

26 yo here. I can't figure out, nor do I enjoy Snapchat's UI, but then again there's a whole generation below me that does, so who cares what I or people like me think?

> I've even heard arguments that it's esoteric on purpose

An interesting article on Snapchat : How Snapchat Built a Business by Confusing Olds

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a...

Correct. Their UX is a barrier to entry to older folks to keep the user base young (<25).

Anecdotal evidence: I know numerous people over 25 who have installed snapchat once and even twice (at an attempt to use it again) only to uninstall it after being unable to figure out how to use it. But the recent college grads and younger all get it.

Sounds like an extremely valuable demographic.

Adults right before they start earning and kids who it's illegal to advertise to in many jurisdictions.

The UX is ridiculous but there're only so many 'operations' you can do on phones before you discover everything it does—swipe up/down/left/right, tap, double tap, long press, pinch, drag etc, so eventually you get all the gestures. Plus, Snapchat only has 3-4 'pages' (Activity in Android), so there is not much to discover.

I think the UX barrier is a post-hoc generalization. Of all places, people on HN would agree that we tolerate (and often even embrace) much worse UXs if we are sold on the functionality. The git CLI is a mess, but it's far too powerful and functional a VCS to just ignore, for example.

Sure, if the UX were nice, everyone would want to try Snapchat on their own, but there's a good chance you are not on the app because your friend group is not active on it, OR you don't care as much about the stuff they post on it. After all, it's social app.

I consider Snapchat's UX to be a sort of "command line mobile" interface. It's bad until you know it and once you do, it's very powerful.

It's a badly built selfie app, there's literally nothing powerful about it.

When I say badly built I refer to how slow it runs, how much battery it consumes (hint, a lot), the fact that until recently when Google literally forced them to do it properly, the app took pictures by saving a screenshot of the viewfinder.

Powerful for what exactly? Posting stupid selfies with a dog filter on top? Comparing Snapchat UX to the minimalist efficiency of a command line is weirdly triggering to me.

A CLI is the right way to interact with a keyboard in front of you at your desk.

I think the Snap interactions are at least freshly thought out for mobile. Vertical video because that's how you routinely hold a phone. Swiping from the edges of the screen as a primary interaction, etc

Powerful for doing all the things one does on Snapchat? The point is it's a UX for power users (limited discoverability, but faster than a traditional button/modal based UI once you know it). I think it's a fair comparison.

That's another thing, that fucking dog filter. Why are girls obsessed with it? Isn't the irony self-evident by now?

I haven't had good luck with it in a few minutes of tinkering. Could you point me to a tutorial / example of what you can do with it?

'Powerful' is a weird way to describe a selfie app.

What is a 'selfie app'? Is Facebook a 'selfie app'? What about Instagram?

Even more brutal, hey added stories to all four of their cornerstone mobile apps, right? There's:

- Instagram Stories

- WhatsApp Status

- Facebook Stories

- Messenger [My] Day.

Though anecdotally for myself and asking some people, it seems IG Stories is used more than all others combined (plus FB released the stats that it is more popular than Snapchat). After a huge drop off, it's either WhatsApp Statuses or Facebook Stories depending on who you are. I don't know if anyone uses Messenger Day.

I actually enjoy the snapchat UX, I'm not sure why exactly, but its the only app I actually enjoy using... I just realized all the other apps I use are facebook, so maybe i just dont like the way they do it.

I love the snapchat UX, and to me, the app is incredibly fast, much faster then Instagram and Facebook. That's why I still use it instead of Instagram. That's on android though.

on a same note: why does instagram hate on non-mobile UI?

on desktop the constant ping to install an ios app, but you're on x86 man. that constant prompt of the camera button when I'm on a x86. it may have worked when mobile was your roots, but you have to grow beyond mobile-only to at least allow other views.

granted somebody like Benedict Evans would say x86 is dead, but why kill the views, its cheap to produce ?