Yes there’s been enshitification, but not everything has gotten worse. UI’s are much better than the past.
Why is infinite scrolling a bad UX? It saves the user from clicking next-page
You could argue that it’s dark-ux, but it’s not bad-ux
Review of the two experiences:
With PieFed I can just keep scrolling without needing to click. Things just work and are where I expect them to be (based on pas UX experiences (reddit)) I can see way more content without ever getting confused or needing to click or make decisions, making me stay curious and engaged. Where as with Lemmy I very quickly got frustrated and confused, making me want to abandon ship and do something else, and I’m way way way more resilient than the vast majority of users
– open https://piefed.social/
– met with some interesting image from c/selfhosted
–keep scrolling
– some news articles, not really my vibe
– keep scrolling – cut cat picture from c/cat – keep scrolling
– some meme about cars and fuck Trump, cool – keep scrolling – more memes and cats, keep scrolling – this keeps happening, doezens of more memes and cats – repeat
– bunch of posts I don’t have to click to open, I can see the image clearly and what’s happening
– interesting but I can just keep scrolling
– bottom of the pace, have to click next
– more semi interseting things
– keep scrolling, click next again
– eventually find something interesting enough to interact with and leave a comment, of move on.
– open https://lemmy.ml/
– met with a list of posts, most images too small for me to see or read.
– click on first post so that I can see the image - https://lemmy.ml/post/42503928
– taken to a page where I still can’t see the image I clicked to see
– Click on the image, now I can see it.
– See some comments
– now I need to click back to continue
– see another interesting post, image to small, can’t see so I have to click – https://lemmy.ml/post/42501566
– Still can’t see image so I click on the image
– now I’m taken to https://mecha.so/comet#overview
– WTF, why am I on a different site? Why am I here,where are the comments
– Realisze I can’t distinguish between Image posts and Links to a different site.
– Why is this so confusing to browse?
Good UX is all about removing friction and making users have to click less and think less.
Users these days are expect their hands to be held and things to just work, that sadly is just the reality.
Let me start off with saying, I started on Lemmy and even donated to Lemmy, PieFed can only grow because it’s standing on the shoulders of giants (lemmy)
My alt is AnonomousWolf, you can look it up, since I joined I complained about bat UX, but people told me to GTFO. PieFed fixes many of those issues I complained about.
Let me do a quick test and walk you through my thought possesses and UX. I’ll make 2 comments in this post, one for lemmy.ml one for piefed.social
Any actions you need to take that could have been avoided = bad UX.
Any time you need to think and not immediately know what to do next = bad UX.
Sadly we’re in a time where users expect their hand to be held the whole time and where they expect zero effort to be put in and everything to just work.
For me the biggest issue with default Lemmy is, why do I have to click on a image post to view the image, when it could just have defaulted to a bigger size?
Most users that have joines in the last week has been because I recommend a specific.
To me. It’s the same thing but PieFed has better UX and more featues.
Which one you pick is for the most part irrelevant.
People are very sensitive and suspect of dodgy links.
If you tell someone ‘hey checkout lemmy, PS the default UI sucks so actually go to phtn.app’
they simply don’t click and think you’re trying to scam them
UX is everything.
Because I don’t want to give people more descion fatigue I picked the one I felt had the best UX
Fair point,
I omitted Facebook in my image because fuck that kind of social media (my opinion)
I picked PieFed over Lemmy because UX is everything and currently PieFed has much better UX.
I’m sorry but the default Lemmy UI is objectively bad, it breaks so many UX principles.
Photon is good, but go to Lemmy.world and it looks like a website built in the early 90’s
That person was me.
I’ve promoted Lemmy in the past only to be met with comments complaining about the ‘dogshit UX’ and tankeis.
So I switched to promoting PieFed instead, and have had no such complaints.
This is why I stopped promoting Lemmy and switched to PieFed.
UX is everything, and Lemmy UX sucked. The default UX (for your average user) is dog shit.
People want ‘it just works’ and PieFed offers that more than Lemmy does.
To users they’re both mostly the same but PieFed has more features and a much better UX, so it’s the one I choose to promote.
Voyager works great on PieFed, it doesn’t yet have all the new PieFed features, but it works great.
Not all instances have Photon UI, and that just adds more friction and confusion.
Now I have to explain to users why the default FE is garbage and why they should use Photon. And when I’ve promoted https://p.lemmy.world/ in the past I get people telling me to fuck off because I’m sharing dodgy virus links.
Too much friction, and that’s really bad UX.
And now you have to explain to people why the default UI sucks. I tried to promote https://p.lemmy.world/ to people, and they tell me to get lost with that dodgy virus link.
Sure but PieFed doesn’t seem to have a tankie problem. They’re blocked from what I’ve seen.
Even if that wasn’t the case, PieFed doesn’t have a reputation for having a tankie problem.
The bottom line is when I promote PieFed I don’t get people on reddit telling me the UI sucked and that it’s flooded with pro-russia propaganda.
So I find it more efficient to promote PieFed
You’re describing Dark-UI
Dark-UI isn’t Bad-UX
Good UX = Easier to use, Easier to navigate, etc. Good UX makes people use your platform more because there is less friction.