The HN UI is terrible | Hacker News Reader

The HN UI is terrible

15 pointsrobomartin18 comments

I thought I'd take the opposite side of this thread and see what happens:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36180051

I've been thinking about how there are sites, like HN and Craig's List, that seem to completely ignore everything out there about good UI/UX design. Mantras like "mobile first" don't seem to be applied at all here. For example, when I read HN on my phone I have to zoom to be able to reliably click a link.

Not being critical, BTW, just puzzled because most YC companies are web/mobile product companies that absolutely live by these rules, yet HN visibly ignores them.

There are other things I would do differently. For example, I would not have the thread title go to the article/site being linked, I would have it go straight to the discussion. Or, at least provide this as an option?

Why?

I always, always, always, browse through the discussion before deciding to check out the link being discussed. If the discussion seems to indicate it isn't worth my while, I pass. Being able to go to the discussion first by default would be very convenient, particularly on a phone, where the discussion link is microscopic.

It would also be a very simple matter to, at the very least, increase the font size based on screen resolution. It's 2023. We have the technology. Again, having to hit a 1 mm tall link on mobile isn't ideal. Having to zoom every time you want to accurately interact with a link isn't supposed to be good UI/UX.

Yes, sure, alternative interfaces exist from third parties. I am not talking about someone else having a bad UI/UX, I am talking about the company that founds thousands of web/mobile startups per year seemingly not being able to lead by example, not caring at all or communicating that this isn't really important. Not sure which.

OK, well, let's see where this goes.

Again, not being critical. Just wondering if we should all be doing this with our sites. Forget things like mobile first and biometrics-based button sizing and layout. I am wondering if YC would be happy if all of their startups produced sites that took this approach.

Intentionally limiting or ignoring the mobile design by making it inconvenient to use can be feature, not a bug. It's a natural filter against drive-by comments and passive participation.

A case study: The story goes that Snapchat intentionally made their UI hard to use as a way of filtering out adults. An influx of adults would’ve made their app a lot less “cool” in the eyes of their target audience (teens)

HN’s UI definitely feels to me like it serves a similar purpose, whether intentional or not :)

I like the HN UI. I like its minimalistic no-clutter fast-loading timeless design.

The only thing that irritates me on HN sometimes, are duplicate posts/topics. That is essentially the fault of impulsive users who post without checking out if something has already been posted. A duplicate detection algorithm with minimal interference on the UI could be a solution.

A dupe software already exists. Stories would be marked as dupe and dead, if you have showdead on.

Yes, I've seen stories marked as dupe. But aren't they posts pointing to exactly the same URL or with exactly the same title? That isn't sufficient IMHO. It has to detect posts about the same news subject. It's not a trivial problem, as follow-up stories in the media could be detected as dupes, rightly or wrongly, depending on the criteria of what exactly is a dupe.

There are tons of dupes that don't get killed.

May I see an example of this? If it's a dupe, but not killed, there is a likely chance someone vouched for it.

> I read HN on my phone I have to zoom to be able to reliably click a link.

Overall I like the HN UI and wouldn't want it changed, but I do largely agree with this particular criticism; a lot of the click targets are too small IMO. (In particular, the upvote/downvote buttons' 13x13px targets stand out as way too tiny on mobile.)

However, saying that the click targets are too small means the whole UI is terrible seems a bit on the hyperbolic side. You could maintain pretty much the exact same UI with slightly larger click targets and it would fix your issue.

I’ve worked on UI/UX projects for both household names and fledgling startups[1]. There’s something that is often misunderstood: Redesigns rarely cater to the current users.

I used to not understand why people wouldn’t change such obvious UX things in their products. But as the years rolled on, it dawned on me: it's not about the users you have, but the ones you want to acquire.

Existing users? They've already invested time. They've built their shortcuts, their habits. They might grumble about quirks, but they've adapted. Change the core experience and you're bound to hit resistance.

But fresh users? They come without baggage. They're the ones who gain from revamps.

Imagine spending years in a house, only to return one day to find everything's shifted. It might look modern, but it's disorienting.

For example, Dropbox, post its rebranding, faced flak, especially on HN. What many didn’t understand though is the business rationale that went on behind the scenes: their growth had flatlined.

They'd maxed out their initial audience. The rebrand, and the subsequent UI/UX changes, were about courting a different crowd, not placating the old guard.

Startups often relegate design to the back burner until they scale. But to avoid your users creating threads like this one in the future try this: integrate design early, evolve it steadily, and everyone—both old-timers and newcomers—benefits. Do it as an afterthought, and you might just find yourself catering only to the next wave, leaving your loyal base behind.

[1] https://fairpixels.pro

> Existing users? They've already invested time. They've built their shortcuts, their habits. They might grumble about quirks, but they've adapted. Change the core experience and you're bound to hit resistance.

> But fresh users? They come without baggage. They're the ones who gain from revamps.

Exactly. And I suspect the reason for the disparity is because the existing layout of any site or app or program has a filtering effect. The people who could potentially use the tool who don't like it won't have stuck around, they'll have gone to a competitor or not used it to begin with. The folks who do stick around are those are either tolerate the existing design or outright like it/think it's good.

Hence the resistance, ridiculous claims about how a new feature would destroy the site/community/program for good (see Twitter die hards on the idea of an edit button), etc.

> I am wondering if YC would be happy if all of their startups produced sites that took this approach.

IMO, I think they wouldn't mind. It is the startup's decision on what their websites would look like.

> I am talking about the company that funds thousands of web/mobile startups per year seemingly not being able to lead by example

I have no idea what YC's website looks today, but HN was meant as a small project by Paul Graham (founder of YC) as a way to "sharpen the Arc programming language."

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Yes, HN's UI doesn't work well with phones, but hey, that's better than nothing!

It's fine. I have zero problems using the site in mobile. You need a user agent that lets you adapt to your clunkyo-fi self; stop imposing a belief that mobile websites need to be clunky huge & massive in everyone else.

You say you aren't being critical but you are assertiny a number of cynical perspectives you have strongly made without making even the most basic rudimentary steps to respect that, like, that's just your opinion dude.

I'd like to reverse the whole question: why do mobile browsers force every website change their layout/fonts/etc instead of just rendering sites so that they would be readable by default?

(also I don't understand why people read webpages with their mobile phones... if you're in your home/office you have a computer, if you're outside how about you enjoy looking at something else than the internet?)

HN doesn't have the prettiest UI, that's for certain. In fact, it goes for more of a Craigslist aesthetic. Is that a bad thing? Depends on who you are, I guess. I have a feeling (which could be wrong) that Y Combinator doesn't put a ton of resources into the HN. It works, and I'm sure more than a few users like (or, at the very least, tolerate) the site as it is.

You have been on HN 11 years. Since this comes up about once a week that's over 500 times you have seen it put down. I have never seen anyone say it doesn't work, because it does. Fixing what isn't broken is the curse of our age.

Please show me a news website whose UI in your opinion is better.

>I am wondering if YC would be happy if all of their startups produced sites that took this approach

I don't think YC would give a flyin' whatever ...

Be a hacker and write a userscript to reformat the UI as you choose.

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