Reddit’s Redesign
wired.com
wired.com
On mobile, if you visit the reddit site, they push a "use the app"-banner in your face. Every goddamn time.
When they redesigned the profiles recently there was a lot of pushback. I did not necessarily agree with that, I thought and think the new profile sites are fine in general. But what definitely was an issue was the performance. Again some javascript client rendering leading to loading indicators, even on the desktop. They improved loading times after that, but still.
So one big point of the new design is not actually "how will it look", but whether they will get the functionality/UX right. HN does, without client side rendering and redesigns...
There was massive amounts of pushback. Until the moderators started deleting posts, almost half the posts in the beta-subreddit was complaining about them, asking them to be rolled back.
But did they listen to their users? No. They actively censored and silenced people who were complaining.
That tells us that this new "redesign" is not for the users. It's for someone else.
https://twitter.com/m_eiman/status/913863382364770304
Which one is using text that is somewhat on the small side, and which one is a vast, empty vacuum of useless whitespace? :P
I rely on it heavily for moderation, since the mod toolbox extension has a search function over a user's history, but it only works from the old-style profile page (or at least, that was the case when I first had to turn on the redirect).
> View user profiles on desktop using legacy mode (by enabling this, you will view all user profiles in legacy mode)
Don't know how long it'll be there for, but it should save you a bit of time since there's no redirect that has to happen.
I’m honestly a bit in awe at this level of active UX hostility.
^1 … unless you enable the option causing all items to be opened in a new window. Obviously that’s also not what I want.
Isn't that the way everyone uses Reddit: open up link list, middle-click link, middle-click comments, middle-click link, middle-click comments, repeat ad infinitum, then read, comment, read, comment and so on?
Same same with HN.
Here on HN and most of the old reddit users certainly use that, but I doubt that the majority of reddit today (including the team of 20 designers making the new design) care about it "middle click to open in a new tab".
shift-click: open link in new window
Overriding the default browser behavior has no benefits.
There has been a similar situation with Ubuntu and Unity: A vocal minority kept on complaining that Unity be a step back from gnome. Now that Ubuntu has dropped it, many users state to actually have liked Unity and are sad about that change.
Still, though, for platforms that might lack a good reddit app, a good mobile site is kind of important.
The app and mobile site quickly run out of memory after a page or two of gifs.
The app does not allow you to open content in other tabs. This is problematic if I want to follow a trail of links and resume where I left off in the feed or comments; I have to mash the back button repeatedly. Additionally, I can't open a new tab to look into comments or a link later.
The mobile site and app have issues with sorting by top / newest every now and then, and often will fail to load content altogether - leaving the user with a white screen. (I've reproduced this in firefox & chrome on Android, and safari and firefox on iOS)
The mobile site and app take longer to load comments and additional content - and sometimes fail to load all together. Whereas the desktop version of the site loads almost instantaneously and almost never fails.
The app does funky things with copy pasting of text.
The mobile site sometimes crops half the images, making it a pain to click through.
Downloading images / saving getting an images source URL can be a pain on the mobile site / app.
And of course, the mobile site spams you constantly to download their app.
I can't use an adblocker, privacy related plugins or browse incognito in the app.
:posted happily from MATE desktop:
True, but it doesn’t mean that the majority does like it.
Complaints do not necessarily represent the majority. But they may. And during a beta, it’s more likely as people are encouraged to submit feedback. So if there are lots of “hate it” comments and few “love it” comments that is useful.
They could release before and after usage data (in whole) that may give a better picture. Comparing the same user’s historical activity on the old and new to see changes in time spent, number of taps, taps per article, etc.
A new UX should increase usability. There should be clear usability data. And a community driven site should share this data.
I suspect that the ad revenue from the redesign is higher. And that’s why they are not sharing real data, and are squashing feedback that doesn’t like the revenue driving changes.
There's no reason it can't just be 2 vocal minorities - 1 who liked Unity and 1 who didn't, while the majority of users was indifferent, or at least indifferent enough not to make a comment.
Maybe that is because the people who complained back then dropped Unity and/or dropped Ubuntu entirely. At least I did so and I would not have known that Ubuntu dropped Unity if I didn't read your comment.
Uneeded changes like this was how Digg failed.
Forget the issues with design. The active censorship by both Reddit admins and power-hungry moderators is the real issue that Reddit is facing. Reddit used to be a bastion of free-flowing ideas and discussion. Now it's a hive of groupthink and curated brand-friendly content.
I still frequent Reddit because it has enough network-effect to still be worthwhile to me. But that can change on a dime, often triggered by something unrelated, like a UI re-design (e.g. like what happened Digg).
I fear they will remove i.reddit.com in the future because it does not have ads. It also does not have their fake posts that are actually ads and mark promoted that
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/start...
If youre listening, Just leave it like this now please.
On the darker side, I dunno... technocracy?
Sites that have more static text with large text controls are fine in the browser, but that's usually the exception.
Google is working on "instant apps" that auto-install apps when you try to visit a website, so that should give you a vision into the future some want.
I thought that was because my old device and or reddit sync, its not.
Actually, i can get around that delay when minimizing the window and maximizing again. Wierd.
I’ve never once felt like I missed out on something by eschewing Reddit, and every time I check to see if it’s changed for the better it is markedly worse. Reddit, Imgur, Instagram, Facebook, are just bad places to be. There are a couple of good subreddits to read occasionally, like askhistorians, but you don’t need an account to read it. Actually participating gets old, fast.
> the content is better found elsewhere
I really haven't found this. Every other website is either bloated, editorialized, dumbed down or some mixture of all three. Reddit (and HN) seems to walk a tightrope that reminds me of the best parts of the old days of the internet.
On the other hand, I know their annoyances have slowly reduced my interest in even spending time on their site, which seems like a win.
I think its tough to run a social network today and not be tempted to milk your users for everything a la facebook. Reddit does a reasonable job imo (and is being rewarded with good communities building there) though you can see the app is a bit of a grab in that direction (otherwise theyd just make the mobile web experience better). Hopefully their trajectory will stay positive though as always people will move on if bad decisions are made (a la slashdot, kuro5hin, digg, etc)
One thing I wonder though is where Reddit users would go in the event of such a collapse. I'm not aware of an established site in this format that's available like Reddit was available when the Digg collapse happened.
Maybe it's so long ago that few of the people in charge at Reddit even remember this is what made their site.
It's not at all obvious, but if you go into the settings menu on the top right, you can tell it to not ask you this anymore. It seems to store it in a cookie, so you shouldn't be prompted if you don't use incognito or similar when checking it.
But regular users will have no idea what to do with that icon. Just a small example of the redesign I took away from it.
I think JS rendering can definitely be a major issue, too. Uber (I know Uber is bad, but m.uber.com is a great piece of engineering) and Netflix have taken big leaps in rendering performance, they'd be wise to take a page or two away from them.
I'm generally less negative than others about style changes, but i loathe how heavy the whole thing feels. The fact that it's not taking into account accessibility at all (so far) is also problematic.
For 'old' reddit I used RES and often disliked how clunky it made everything. But its features were generally worth it. I do not see what benefits the redesign offers that is worth the 'heaviness' of the whole thing.
How much is "good design" codeword for dumbing the site down as much as possible and making it shiny enough for people who get distracted by car keys? Reddit doesn't exactly have the learning curve of a command line tool or a rocket plane. Maybe I'm elitist, but if you can't understand reddit as it is maybe you're an idiot?
Call me an old man waving around my cane, but I say to hell with the redesign. Give me my plain old links in their plain old default blue underline and my mod-hacked-together css+bots. The internet need not anymore "progress for the sake of progress".
I know I disliked reddit's design when I saw it the first time, and I've spoken to several people who never got into reddit because they disliked the design.
This large group of people, probably the majority, does not want to give such platforms a chance, and they do not want to get under the covers and figure it out. They simply do not want anything to do with something that is tightly-packed or primarily text-based. Many of the people I tried to recruit to reddit in the early days (either reddit.com or sites running the reddit software) had this reaction.
This can be a feature when you're trying to target specific types of people (cf. HN). But if you're trying to sell ads, it's a bug, because ad sales are all about getting as many human eyeballs on your platform as possible. Perceived ugliness is a real barrier to mass adoption.
I would be more specific. Designing so things look good is over valued. Designing so things are simple to use the first time but don't restrict the user later on are under valued.
Which is exactly what I'd say they had and are now throwing away.
And then you look other mediums of design, and you realize its only the software UI weenies who pull this out and think its something to be proud of. There's a reason you can slap bootstrap onto any website and have a "good" design; the result has nothing to do with the website itself.
This isn't by chance... Reddit is actively pushing themselves towards being the next Facebook, down to the whole "deprioritize subreddits/emphasize profile pages and groups of friends" mechanic. They just hope by boiling the frog slowly enough, people won't realize what's happening around them.
It's about uniting forums without forums giving up their power.
Reddit value is so removed from the technicalities. Everybody even make jokes about its crippled search function. Yet nobody really cares.
And to an extent, the less designed a website the more willing I am to discover it. To me it means there's no love spent on css or trends, and much of it is spent communicating what the creator(s) wanted to communicate. Whereas most new websites have so much generic layers and presentation whooha, which is often just a revision of another website, I just can't care.
I don't think that's universally true, it's just a side-effect of marketing. Sometimes you redesign products to rekindle interest, but that rarely applies to other things (eg. public construction which is usually blunt but functional).
This results in the sort of dark patterns you see on Pintrest's signup and the overall dumbing down of everything into samey "friendly" interfaces that all feel like Facebook.
You manage to capture more of the casual users for the sort term by doing this, although they'll likely dropoff eventually. But this is done at the expense of your hardcore users who fell in love with your app/site/game despite the learning curve or dense interface.
Too much effort is placed on trying to capture a very low quality of user that likely wont engage anyway.
Why improve anything? Because by doing so, we find what really should be.
I will say Reddit is a bit of a different beast - there's too many hidden and confusing features, and it's probably fair to say that iterating on the design was necessary.
My biggest concern is that what I've seen from the redesign seems to be focused on making Reddit less ugly than making it more obvious and functional.
We're both posting on what might be one of the "ugliest" discussion forums on the internet - but I've rarely been confused as to how to do something on HN, which I can't say for many, many "modern", "pretty" websites.
I like to use the parent/old person test for ui usability(obviously not every old person will do, you know the type tho). I showed my parents reddit and they picked it up right away. Both failed to learn snapchat and struggle through most "modern" websites.
I blew their minds when I showed them if they click the three lines on lpta of websites, really a hamburger menu, they get options and stuff.
Often users are just expected to know these "design paradigms" like symbols(hamburger menu) or which direction to swipe(im still guessing half the time Snapchat). Whatever happened to using words like settings to open the settings menu. When did GUIs' forget to show available commands to users in an understandable format.
Everyone has a huge bias for what they already know. If you already understand and like Craigslist, I'm sure it's great. As a new user, it's awful.
Can you give some examples of the hours you’ve spent being confused?
It may just be a different way of thinking for different people situation. For me, I prefer simple and honest vs pretty wit targeted ads trying to divert.
But as someone making mobile apps for over decade, "being elitist about it" is not going to accomplish anything. You'd think any rational mind would have no trouble figuring it out, and compared to what you're dealing with on a day to day basis as a developer, it should be a piece of cake. But people are stupid and are not magically going to wise up, and you're not going to change that.
UIs for the masses need to be as simple and foolproof as humanly possible, that's just the reality of it. Apple and everything they do is the best example of this.
You're confusing user interface design and graphic design, which are two different disciplines with different goals, neither of which is to be merely distracting.
>Japanese websites are proof by example that this is strictly a cultural phenomena.
You're assuming that Japanese don't consider that "good design." It is a cultural phenomenon, but your assertion that it's strictly a Western phenomenon is incorrect.
It's also particularly odd to invoke Japan as an example of a culture that doesn't care at all about design or aesthetics.
>Maybe I'm elitist, but if you can't understand reddit as it is maybe you're an idiot?
I don't think there was ever an overabundance of users who didn't understand Reddit, given the site's popularity. Like a lot of programmers, you're assuming an inverse correlation exists between the quality of a site's design and the intellect of its users. So yes, you're an elitist.
>Give me my plain old links in their plain old default blue underline and my mod-hacked-together css+bots.
... and here you are arguing in favor of minimalism, which is a form of design.
Your entire comment is just a rant about how other people's design preferences are less valid than your own.
The belief that Japanese people all deeply care about such artistic things is largely a Western romanticization of Japanese culture, the sort that Roy Andrew Miller criticized in Japan's Modern Myth over three decades ago already. Yes, Japan is home to some interesting traditions, but that doesn't mean that broad society cares. And as Japanese websites show, Japanese mass society is quite comfortable with cluttered websites that one would be hard-pressed to call "elegant".
>And as Japanese websites show, Japanese mass society is quite comfortable with cluttered websites that one would be hard-pressed to call "elegant".
Do they look cluttered to Japanese people, though? Or do they only look cluttered to Westerners because Japanese text looks like noise rather than language? Admittedly, it doesn't look elegant, but that doesn't mean it isn't an example of design.
"Dumbing it down" = designing for user's mental models = ux design
Riiight... when Reddit designs their UI around the mental model of mainstream users, they're dumbing it down, but when Hacker News designs their UI around pg's mental model of "good hackers", they're being elegant and minimalist.
There is no upside to using this new mobile site. It loads more slowly, has obtrusive banner every time, has fewer features, is more confusing to use, and well, just sucks.
Let’s say that you are at the grocery store and there are two cashier lines. One cashier is beautiful, one hideous. On which do you queue up?
I would expect that the answer depends on other factors- line length, speed of bagger, speed of scanner, type of candy bar in aisle, etc.
But those may be harder to measure and beauty is really easy.
There’s some research to show that attractive people make more than unattractive when controlling for other factors- https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~scholz/Research/Beauty.pdf
I think this is part of a bias being transferred to products. Pretty people are favored more, so pretty web sites are desired. Although data can show this doesn’t matter (Craigslist, old-good-Reddit vs new-shitty-Reddit) very much.
I'm going to pick the one that scans items faster, accurately displays receipt information on a screen before paying, accepts chip, automatically prints relevant coupons, automatically adds product recalls on the receipt, and doesn't nag me to sign up for a custom credit card.
None of these (maybe save for the last if you have a cashier that isn't doing their job) is going to differ between the two cashiers as they'd be store-level policies.
Because it's the lowest common denominator. Because everybody can have some input there. Because somebody in the org needed an "initiative" and the design is the easiest to explain.
This is not a fair conclusion to draw. All that tells us is that design isn't the _only_ factor in success. There is nothing to suggest that Reddit would not be more popular were it better designed.
I'm not really sure what the cultural roots are, but the fact that visual appeal is valued by consumers makes it important to developers. I would also push back heavily on using Japanese web design as a counterexample. Their popular sites generally share an aesthetic, it's just a little different than what ours have. It's also worth mentioning that western designed sites dominate the Japanese market as well.
At most software companies, if you want to add a feature, the burden is on you to estimate the value the feature will provide, and demonstrate how you will measure the value post release. How you draw the line from the feature to the value will be scrutinized. If the idea doesn’t stand up to it, it’s questionable why we need to invest in the feature.
This same scrutiny often doesn’t apply to redesigns. We are redesigning because it needs to look “fresh” or “modern”. It needs to “pop”. The old design looks old. So how do you measure “pop” in a way that’s not explainable by other product changes? (??) If it doesn’t quantitatively pop, do we go back to the old design? (the answer is always no) And the designers always get all bummed when you ask for this data. Look at all the criticism of Marissa Meyer having the gall to AB test 30 shades of blue. Why isn’t it ok to measure art?
I don’t think you’re an old man waving around your cane. This is an important question to ask because the effort blown on redesigns often could have otherwise been invested in things that would bring more value.
Well, in the article they specifically say the site is confusing to newcomers, and they're trying to fix that problem. So that's why.
It seems most sites like Reddit have run out of ideas and instead of leaving things alone they just shuffle things around and sell it as innovation. Same thing for Windows 10 and office 365. Lots of visual changes but under the hood it's same old.
Craigslist is more of a, 'Go there to accomplish specific task' end point.
Reddit is more of a, 'hang out here when your bored!' type of thing.
The former just has to work and work cleanly. The latter needs to hold it's users interest over time while staying 'hip' enough to gain users from potential competitors to stay relevant overtime.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites
I'm not sure Fark is the best example, given that their demographic seems to be middle-aged folks (or at least older than the Millennial age range). You can't really (or simply shouldn't) do sweeping design changes if your demographic is aging. Every time I wander over to that site, it becomes very clear that a lot of the users are at least a decade older than me (likely in their 40s and 50s).
If it were a tech site, that's one thing, but Fark is more of a site for just anyone. Targeting that wider demo is going to attract less tech-minded and likely less-adaptable users compared to, say, a similar site where the userbase throws around a lot of lingo.
reddit on the other hand can more or less assume that the users that stick around will figure out the new site. They're probably right, or at least not horribly wrong, and are instead banking on retaining just a majority of users, not all of them.
Visual appeal is extremely powerful, and it's valuable to virtually any product.
ex: When searching for an apartment, I always have to put a price floor in place because everything more than ~25% below market is pure spam and there's a ton of it. It wouldn't occur to the average person that they could filter a bunch of spam out by putting a lower limit on the price of the thing they're looking for, for example. So they get an even worse experience than me, and it's pretty painful to sort through even with various tricks like that in the filtering.
Once the idea of leading people down a path happens, then you've got a curated directed experience that conflicts with why you came there in the first place. That's what people have a problem with.
The whole thing is presumptuous, as if they know better than you why you're there.
They don't. Let's be honest about that.
Reddit doesn't need a sales funnel. It's owner Conde Nast does that's one problem.
The users have a very different set of expectations set long before the new owner walked in.
Prior to the big sale, which raised a lot of expectations, which may not actually be met very well at all given how users actually use Reddit,the site was self-sustaining based on gold and intra Reddit ads.
The idea of billions of page views, based on largely organic online discussion, equaling massive dollars, isn't one proven valid.
That's a problem too.
The reason it's a problem, is curating a very compelling discussion site for advertisers runs in conflict with what makes for a very compelling discussion site.
I agree with your argument that redesigns should have a purpose, but I disagree that the argument can be applied here.
From what I understand, Craigslist has been losing popularity recently, and I have no doubt that the 90s feel of the site is a big contributor.
Existing users of sites may be temporarily irked by a redesign, but they can be huge for keeping the site attractive to new users. They should happen infrequently, but they have a purpose. IMO Craigslist has made a huge mistake by leaving the site unchanged for so long.
I know for a fact that Reddit suffers from this as well. They have mentioned it in lots of places, and I'm confident that's backed up by their user studies. Visual appeal has a huge effect on new users, and I'm sure that's why Reddit is doing what they are doing.
I don't care about the looks, but there are two changes that are egregious for me regarding UX:
1) They took out the subreddit ribbon at the top where you can quickly switch between the communities you subscribe to. It's been replaced by a hamburger menu that takes ages to show up, and then you have to scroll (and they are sorted alphabetically, not by popularity).
2) In the main subreddit view, the titles now link to the comments rather than the articles, you have to pixel-hunt the actual link, which is much smaller. I suppose they do this to keep users on site, but I dislike the change.
Edit: also, infinite scroll! As if Reddit wasn't sufficiently addictive as it is :-(
The removal of the quick link bar is an egregious sin though.
They also banned me from reddit gifts for pointing out their first sponsored exchange (before they said it was sponsored, they tried acting like it was "fan service").
(I say this as a person who has never been a member of any of the banned subreddits)
I believe that subs are isolated enough that if you don't want to engage with any particular sub's content you wouldn't have to. Otherwise the whole thing becomes somewhat skewed towards a certain set of opinions and could even be deemed to be totalitarian.
But that's the thing, they are in theory, but in practice, you see subreddits leaking into others. Even with strict no-brigading rules, it's too easy to click on a link from /r/subredditdrama, for instance, and then start participating. And sometimes people with the same opinion just go to other subreddits to antagonize/troll people; you see this more with the more extremely-sided subreddits.
Do you know what someone following a link on Reddit and clicking around and participating where they end up is? Normal usage of Reddit! The idea that you're not allowed to participate just because you came through an on-site link reflects a kind of isolationism that has nothing in common with Reddit's philosophy, nor how real people ever used the site.
Okay, so I used the link aggregation and discussion site as designed? Cool, I'll take that ban.
They’re not about targeting a particular demographic, but they prowl reddit to find comments - some appropriately quoted, some taken entirely out of context - with the express purpose of producing something that will get the mob howling and spitting in fury. Bonus points if they’re angry enough to go to the source post and rain vitriol on the original commenter.
It’s a sub dedicated to chasing people with torches and pitchforks, protected from their garbage behavior because, if you take them at face value, they’re chasing bigots of various types.
They literally ban you if you post on the source post or even downvote it.
1. Reddit is a site where you can create endless alt accounts without any verification. That type of "ban" threat is meaningless.
2. Targets of SRS have been posting doxx and violence threats from its members for years.
last time I was reading about an interesting machine painting manual signatures: excited commenters started talking how much they where expecting such machine painting penises... I mean, I feel so out from those communities and they leave me such depressing feelings.
Reddit is a community of communities. You can be part of more than one or just one, you can post in all of them, you're not forced to look at any of them, and each of them has different rules, culture and enforcement policies. They're on a pretty even playing field as far as site rules and moderation tools go too. It's crazy, chaotic and lends itself well to surprise.
The primary interface lends itself well to lurking, but what it is really meant for is talking to people. You can post a new top-level comment on any post, but the real discussion happens in the threads in-between. The top level discussions are also ranked, democratically, but if the discussion looks skewed you can even easily change how you look at a thread to see what you're missing.
All in all, it's a real gem, the way it is now.
Looking at this design, all I see is a Facebook. A different kind of Facebook to be sure, but it doesn't look like a real improvement on what I have now, just different. A change for the sake of making a change because otherwise all of those engineers in their office downtown would be bored or working elsewhere if they didn't have a project like this to keep them interested/entertained. Fine I suppose, and for now I can still use the classic interface, but for how long? How long till some bored engineer or annoyed project manager with a vision/dream/overwhelming urge to kick a puppy manages to convince the rest that they should drop the classic interface in favor of putting more wood behind their Facebook-shaped arrow.
Are you saying the visual design is similar?
IMO this is a clear improvement to the site's dated UX that held them back from going mainstream w/ many demographics.
Which is a shame, given that there's a decade of ideas here, from third-party add-ons like RES to all of the custom CSS from subreddits and everything. They could have taken the best parts and just improved Reddit, going in a unique direction regardless of what the rest of the Web currently happens to look like.
Can you even call it "design" if the end result makes it look more like everybody else?
Facebook for introverts.
Prediction: The redesign is the straw that will break the Snoo's back.
Their 'HOT' ordering makes the site look dead where they should probably take into account newer stories as everything in the 'HOT' ranking is years old (except for heavier trafficked subverses)
Totally out of context, I mean.
You might expect hate speech on political subreddits/subverses, but on Voat these were just out of the blue, and numerous.
Effectively, Voat is Reddit's "recycle bin." Judging from its content, I think the admins made the right call..
I definitely agree, but I also remember how Reddit was considered the dumping ground for users banned on Digg and content that wasn't good enough for Digg.
Today unpleasant content probably makes up a large percentage of Voat traffic. But if a few big subreddits moved over that percentage would be dwarfed and suddenly it's no longer a Recycle Bin.
- When reddit cracked down on the paedophilia subreddits
- When reddit banned fatpeoplehate
- When reddit banned and/or hid some of the more egregiously Nazi-ish subreddits.
So yeah, this is pretty much what you'd expect.
I don't see the "next one" that is already starting to steal some Reddit traffic that could possibly take over even if Reddit's design is similarly badly recieved.
Isn't it pretty well known that at that point a lot of the user activity was being faked by the Reddit team?
Reddit seems to be focusing mostly on the visual. While this may regress the site in some ways it shouldn't have the same relationship killing power.
- Infinite scroll without numbers to give you an idea of how far you've dug in.
- The titles now point to the comments rather than the articles.
- They took out the subreddit bar at the top of the page.
The general idea is that they want to control how you use the site.
And that's just for the desktop experience, and I didn't dig too far (a couple of hours). There may be other neat surprises lurking in there.
It looks like the muffins[0] grew shark teeth.
Edit: that snark may not be warranted... But at least, they grew too hungry for me as a user.
———
0. as Jessica Livingston used to call them when they were doing YC
The new UI makes it more complex to make that choice though, because the position of the actual link isn't fixed, it is placed inline after the title.
Currently, you can browse the home page without moving the cursor horizontally (by keeping the cursor in place and scrolling, mostly).
Not anymore with the redesign.
As a user, I am more than happy with this change.
http://reddithistory.wikia.com/wiki/Digg_exodus
One place that I have gone to instead of Reddit lately is Hacker News... I have started using Reddit more as only a source for current events because it's easier to sift through (with categorized subreddits and all) than a Twitter stream of breaking news. But for science and tech talk, this place seems to have a higher quality discussion in the majority of the cases.
But here it stands.
I wonder who will be the last person to claim it, and in turn, claim to be the Nostradamus. I suppose if you claim something often enough, you'll be right eventually.
It was more focused on discussion (there are self-posts, r/AskReddit, etc.) and less on pure link sharing.
Digg v4 just gave many Digg users a reason to give reddit a chance (and maybe push through being initially put off by its design), and they never looked back, even after Digg resolved the initial issues.
I know I avoided Reddit for the longest time simply due to the fact that there was a learning curve at all...and I know many, many people that would adore Reddit actively avoid it because it's a little overwhelming and hard to use at first. People seem to really underestimate just how important that first couple of seconds on a new website are.
Granted, a lot of people pushed passed the quirks and the learning curve and grew to love the site we all know today - that's evident by the massive user base - but I just don't understand why everyone is so vehemently against a redesign effort when the site was clearly a hodgepodge.
Now, I'm not arguing that the current redesign is great and a smashing success, I think they're missing the mark on what made Reddit great in the first place...but to sit here and yell "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is laughable. The performance might be superb but the UX is atrocious, everyone has just learned to get over it.
I guess I'm one of those. I've been using reddit since before they enabled comments. I love that it's remained simple and it works really well for me.
The only items I'd imagine improving on would be remembering collapsed threads (like HN does) and preserving a deeper history of threads I've seen (maybe opt-in if it bugs people).
What's the "learning curve" that you refer to? Voting and comments are pretty simple, right?
Neither is the concept of subreddits, the difference between text and link posts, subreddit discovery, the community and culture... These were all hurdles that she needed to get through and at the end she gave it up. Too complicated.
The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined to get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.
The difference between her and most non-Reddit users is that she's quite tech-savvy. She worked in tech for 20 years. She fixes her friends' computer problems.
> The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined to get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.
I don't understand -- she persisted and others who use reddit don't/didn't? Meaning they don't need to apply significant effort and she did? Does that mean that it's somehow intuitive to them and not her? I feel like I am missing the point you're making.
A new interface could fix a lot of the issues, but I think the jury is still out on whether or not the current redesign is fixing those issues.
In my opinion, the higher level concepts of subreddits and subreddit discoverability are one of the main hurdles that brand new users have to understand and overcome. Most people that don't know anything about Reddit just assume it's a massive forum of people posting random shit - and don't bother going much further than that.
I think the new sidebar and the overhauled search are a great start at making the browsing experience much more intuitive - but the new profiles and messenger are all questionable design decisions that feel a lot less "Reddit" and a lot more "Facebook".
https://i.redditmedia.com/gbs_FDZ89LIg_RfJjYoIcD5c7X13DN32gy... https://i.redditmedia.com/W93a53ceOYUq3f28nx0mSPdmmj3FMkshDU... https://i.redd.it/ej52w79m4jp01.png
Right off the bat it appears that user account info lives outside the custom styling of each subreddit, this is a good thing and creates consistency for access to my stuff.
Secondly it looks like each subreddit gets to decide which view works best for the content of that subreddit. /r/askscience will benefit from a compact view, while /r/pics would benefit from a card view. As long as I'm able to change the default and have it stick next time i access that subreddit, I'm all for this.
Cue the bereavement model and the diffusion of innovation. Successful advocates of change account for the time and effort it takes to drag people along.
* Nothing about the design was broken before and users don't really complain about it.
* Having used it, the site is noticeably slower. Turns out that shiny is expensive. And I'm on a powerful machine too.
* The UI is now more cluttered and less information dense taking a page straight from FB's playbook. They might be successful but hackers have constantly shit on the design.
* Nobody said that managing a site that large was easy, but doing nothing was always an option for them.
There is a theoretical design that would make the community salivate but this wasn't it.
I think web design has the same problems as web development in regards to rewrite but the design community has yet to internalize that you should never remake something from scratch.
That's not to say that you should keep an old design forever - instead make changes incrementally and gradually. Putting 12 designers to work for a year with zero feedback and trying not to hurt whatever magic made reddit popular in the first place is bound to be a disastrous affair.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned it, but really the make or break of this new reddit will be speed. The one thing that I remember noticing about the site is how much faster it was than the comparable time wasting sites (Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc). More speed, more addictiveness.
The internet is a huge pile of garbage.
It caused a ton of drama last year when they said they are deprecating custom CSS just to push through this new look. (see https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_red... and /r/ProCSS for details).
Super glad they have a feature to disable this.
The theme used by /r/geopolitics is genius for its vertical thread collapse controls. That would be the Minimaluminiumalism Theme.
https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/897qfo/saudi_c...
Perhaps I would have continued to use reddit if more sub used it.
You can achieve a similar result via a browser CSS manager, say, Stylus.
Reddit wants to limit CSS to appease people like you who want a functional but bland site. But reddit is just a place for memes. Letting users creatively break the site is a feature, not a bug.
There are so many jokes that can only be implemented by purposefully ruining UX. Subs like /r/CrappyDesign/ will lose their personality. Fancy upvote animations like in /r/Megumin/ can't be done. Surreal subs like /r/ooer and /r/infiniteworldproblems can't exist entirely. Any unanticipated but functional features like comment faces, flairs, multiline block spoiler tags, hiding downvotes, link filters, dropdown/slideout menus, etc, will never arise organically.
Some custom CSS (including some of the ones mentioned above) annoys me too. But I see it as a unique part of reddit culture and it won't be the same without it.
I've always had trouble putting individual items in context in river of news designs and prefer to switch from one topic (subreddit in this case) to another and scan each one. The hamburger menu makes this a lot more awkward.
I also really dislike mobile-driven UI designs on a desktop. I know why they're done. I've implemented them myself. They annoy me.
And it made me feel really nostalgic. I actually wanted to, just for one day, switch my laptop over to it. I bet it would have been blazingly fast.
But alas, Ubuntu (and nobody else) seems to ship it any more. Seeing how building and running it from source required me to put some system-services into a insecure configuration, I reluctantly put the project away.
I guess it comes off as no surprise that I on overall hate the reddit redesign and consider it a net negative change w.r.t. usability. I generally dislike how "modern" design things they make things better by taking away options and removing features.
The "old" reddit gave you full overview of what was going on with all your activity in exactly 2 clicks. Super neat. Super efficient.
The new ... I don't even know. I'm guessing much more than 10. And it involves scrolling and modal dialogues too. Fuck it.
May the old layout remain an option for as long as I keep bother using the site.
[0] https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/cdesktopenv/screenshots/CDE-... [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Although sometimes, just sometimes... Having manually tweakable windows and a more complete "desktop environment" makes sense and is just what I need.
For those needs, right now I use Gnome 3. It would be fun trying to replace that with CDE though :)
[1] http://swaywm.org/ [1]
(Judging by the fact that mobile isn't mentioned anywhere in the article, I'd say yes)
Because the third party apps are much better that the official one, in all metrics. If you have a specific grievance against the official app, there are overwhelming chances that you won't face the same issue in a 3rd party app.
There's exactly zero reason for a text-and-images-and-comments site to have an "official app", or a plethora of "third-party apps that are better than the original". A mobile site would be perfectly fine.
However, since there's zero incentive for anyone to use those apps, instead of improving (or at least keeping) the mobile experience Reddit actively degrades it. Hence the entirely unnecessary apps.
I currently have next-to-zero incentive to even click on links to Reddit, and the requirement to have an app just for that will bring that incentive to exactly zero.
And it looks like their redesign had zero intention to improve mobile experience.
This is basic stuff. A single website can never provide all the flexibility of use that an app based on the api can.
Reddit is not my go to website. Neither is Hacker news. Or Twitter. Or... Or...
I browse the web. I may come across links that I click. I really really really don't appreciate the experience of getting yanked out of my flow into some app.
Even Facebook has a very decent mobile web experience. However for some reason Reddit actively degrades its mobile site and tries to make it as unusable as possible.
Which is fine, it helps with addiction and most things can be accessed through a web browser anyway.
> For people who have been on Reddit for years, the obtuseness is part of the appeal.
What maze? What obtuseness? Reddit is a plain, usable site (esp. if you turn off the image previews they added a few years back). There's simply nothing wrong with it the way it is.
I suspect that this is a submarine article, paid for by Reddit itself.
I also suspect that the new interface will be yet another JS-laden, SPA atrocity — but perhaps I'm wrong, and I'll be pleasantly surprised by nice, static, server-rendered HTML instead.
Ah, that's reassuring to see. So many sites have gone all-in on Markdown in the last few years, which seems to me to be resurrecting early 80s Wordstar-style formatting codes and rejecting the UI advances of Xerox Parc and the Mac.
Markdown has its place - essentially, something that's readable in both raw and rendered form - but it's not a consumer-friendly way of editing rich text, and I'm pleased to see Reddit recognise that.
Atlassian's Confluence wiki was one of the most painful tools I've ever had to use in a professional capacity, largely because their editor several years ago was so atrocious. I was forced off of it from a nice, Markdown-based wiki our team had been running.
So I would miss Markdown. BTW, having live preview/having a WYSIWYG toolbar with Markdown editing is a happy meeting of both worlds; I don't see the issue with it.
Things I'd like to see here:
- TLRD; article summary for each post
- markdown support
- image support
- user profile page enhancements: avatars, pretty URLs, more links to user's other sites/profiles, etc.
- user karma listed next to username in comments
- social logins (1 less password to manage)
- TLRD; article summary for each post
- markdown support
- image support
- user profile page enhancements: avatars, pretty URLs, more links to user's other sites/profiles, etc.
- user karma listed next to username in comments
- social logins (1 less password to manage)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...
The site IMO does what it needs to very well and I value the minimalism a lot. Would hate to see it cluttered with extra chrome, images, karma, summaries. And instead of social login try using a password manager.
Edit: Actually the new new profile is better now. That intermediate version was terrible.
The official Reddit mobile website is totally unusable on mobile.
I've been really happy with Shine (now with twice the unofficial goodness), and Apollo.
* SHINE for reddit (unofficial) - Chrome Web Store || https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shine-for-reddit-u...
* Apollo | A beautiful reddit app built for power and speed || https://apolloapp.io/
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/start...
Importantly, for those in here who don't like change, you can still visit https://old.reddit.com and get the old site.
I feel like this will be about as successful as slashdots redesign attempts over the years.
I imagine they feel they can do this kind of thing since new users now overwhelming outnumber old users and they've pushed most of the original users off the site. Facebook 2: This time it's Reddit is coming along nicely.
[ ] I would like to beta test features for reddit (by enabling you'll be subscribed to /r/beta automatically. details on the /r/beta wiki)
Wait for page to reload, scroll down, then click the new option you'll see:
[ ] Use the redesign as my default experience (by enabling this, you will be redirected to the new site when you go to any supported https://reddit.com page)