cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/55413416

This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.

Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.

What can we do?

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    6·
    8 hours ago

    It’s probably relatively easy to give them some of what they want: Stop the 3 or 4 drama communities, so the drama here doesn’t drag out that much. And design a proper onboarding workflow, like give us a few of your interests, here are 5 suggestions for instances, click continue to accept the default, put in a username and you’re done. Bonus for pre-made subscriptions for the topics of interest.

    • 97xBang@feddit.onlineEnglish
      7·
      7 hours ago

      PieFed was similar to what you’re suggesting, though only once I selected an instance. When I DDG piefed, the first link is the main piefed instance (piefed.social). The second offers piefed.social or other instances. If a person clicks other instances, it has the 3 available options described by the continent they’re on. Once I selected to join feddit.online, I went through an experience similar to your suggestion.

      Now that I’m here, the Fediverse system makes sense. But, I remember being confused and overwhelmed by it at first. It was the first website I remember using that wasn’t a website, but many independent websites that all look the same. Another thing was the term “instance”. I hadn’t heard that term until then, so I was confused thinking, “just let me sign on, and I’ll figure out which instance I want to join later.” Lastly, although I understand why it is necessary, the manual approval by administrators for many instances can take up to a day. In general, users considering to join will mentally allocate 5 mins tops (but really maybe 1-2 mins average) to seeing if they like the site or not. That long delay probably makes people lose interest because they feel like the site is going to be a pain in the ass.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        4·
        4 hours ago

        Agreed. I think it’s important to manage the learning curve somehow. One big barrier in front isn’t ideal, and I think (if possible) we should flatten out the curve and allow users to learn bit by bit, and later on, while actually using it. That’s also way more fun and hands-down.

        I like PieFed as well. I think it shows that PieFed often times wants to make an effort to do the right thing. Pay attention to what people need, try to remove obstacles, give moderators what they need, and generally foster good behaviour and bake that into the design if possible. It often feels (to me) like things aren’t just an afterthought, but laid out in a way that make sense.

        And yes, onboarding is a bit difficult. There are still some low-hanging fruits left, IMO it could be way easier, especially on Lemmy. And even with things like manual account approval, we still get spam on the platform. So I’m not even sure if that’s the correct tool. I don’t think it’s a big concern, though. People can usually wait for the amount of time it takes, if their motivation is genuine. We might want to re-evaluate this though, I’m not sure if anyone has done some statistics on whether it really adds to anything, because it certainly is a mild annoyance.