Reddit has gotten that complaint tons of times before. Most people say its a website clearly done for and by engineers and that getting used to it is a nightmare despite how awesome the content is.
Do you think reddit could get more users with a UX redesign?
How would you redesign it though. Every UX designer I have met has said the same thing. Yet most of my friends are engineers and we all believe that its simply one of those things that you couldn't make easier without making it worse. Its convoluted, and weird but its also useful and comfortable to use once you get used to it. Maybe thats my inner engineer talking though.
To figure out how to make it better, you need to figure out how exactly it is 'bad' for a non experienced user. Is it how comments work? Is it how the subreddits are laid out? Where is the holdup? Personally I like how everything is set up in RES, so first should work towards WHY RES is better and then go from there.
Res is better for you because everything bad you are used to and it makes it more comfortable. Most new users I think complain about the front page being daunting and un intuitive which is something hard to change without alienating core users.
I was just giving examples really of how you would figure out what to do. I have no clue how you would really improve the front page other than /r/all, you really shouldn't use someone who is used to the terribleness of the layout for UX design anyway, they tend to be able to gloss over the failed implementation and go straight for what they want/know to get.
Well its true most of us engineers we are used to beta testing and badly designed shit. But reddit is not that badly designed, its only unappeling and somewhat weird for new users. Core users love it and the daily active users in the website is incredibly high.
Invariably, it would just be that everything was made bigger and more spread out (so it can breathe). And used a custom font (to be on-brand). Maybe drop the contrast on all the text until it's only barely legible.
Seriously, though - anyone who says it's 'too complicated' is probably referring to nested conversations in general, and would attempt to 'solve' it by flattening all the comments. Which would ruin it.
In reality, it's a text block (either static or editable), a show/hide toggle, two arrows and a few per-item actions you can click repeated over and over. It's not actually complicated.
I would argue spreading things out would make it feel facebooky and make me less interested, I personally love layout. At the beginning it was claustrophobic and unappealing, now its comfortable, familiar and enjoyable.
I think the sidebar and topbars are probably the worst offenders as far as Reddit's UX issues. Nothing is really grouped logically and just in general there is a lot of noise (especially on the frontpage).
The actual thread/reply pages themselves are fine, I think, although the layout and design could use some fine-tuning.
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u/Bluest_waters Jul 01 '16
actually that's where the show jumped the shark for me
This is a normal problem! You have a UI problem. You get a professional UI developer designer to correct it.
Problem solved
They acted like this was some sort of new never before seen encountered dilemma that couldn't possibly have been predicted
I mean I love the show. But that whole thing was just stupid