Lemmy

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Lemmy UX and usability. Where can I read up? (aussie.zone)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by sarahsquirrel@aussie.zone to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml

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Hi, can anyone point me to discussions or e.g. working groups focusing on user experience aspects of Lemmy?

I'm new to Lemmy but have been working in non-profit tech for many years.

Currently, my day job is in UX, broadly speaking. As a volunteer gig I'm looking to help a local group that's investigating the pros and cons of spinning up Fediverse instance(s). My focus is on the question of how we could help people in our town get signed up and using these services fluently.

Lemmy seems like a good candidate platform (to me) for meeting some of our group's needs. So I'm keen to get up to speed with the state of play (current priorties, known issues, plans and work in progress) in terms of making it as user-friendly as possible. I may have also capacity to contribute skills and time to these aspects of the larger Lemmy project. Where can I read about the current goals and plans? Who are the people bringing UX tools and human-centred design to Lemmy and how can I reach them?

Thanks!

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The sources are up on Github and accept pull requests and bugreports. That would be the first place I'd look.

[–] sarahsquirrel@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Thanks! It is useful for me to have more of a poke around there, for sure!

Of course, human-centred design and UX is more than just bug reports (sorry I'm probably telling you stuff you already know).

I am also interested to connect with other people thinking about the UX (end to end user experience) of Lemmy: find out what's already been done in terms of speaking with diverse potential users, finding out how people want to use it, thinking about mental models and user stories, etc.

[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 1 points 1 day ago

For long-term changes, you'll probably want: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui-leptos

@dessalines@lemmy.ml and @sleeplessone@lemmy.ml are the driving forces

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 1 day ago

@sarahsquirrel DM me..

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

@sarahsquirrel #UX is an interesting thing with ActivityFed since choice or service, server and UI are all kind of independent. e.g. I use #Lemmy communities alot via a #Friendica server that I sometimes access via web UI and othertimes via #Fedilab as such you could actually help with UX of lemmy by contributing to #Friendica or #Fedilab as well.

Regards your local group perhaps #friendica might provide a fuller set of features or indeed you could spin up something like #Yunohost and run a Friendica and #lemmy service for them (and throw in some #Nextcloud to)

[–] sarahsquirrel@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago

Thanks! Yes Friendica is interesting, too! I took it for a quick spin and and yes, I think there are some opportunities to improve things for new and non-technical users that could be tackled with some user research and user-centred design! Are there places i should look if I want to contribute to Friendica or Fedilab? If you have suggestions for an active Friendica server I could try out as a newbie that'd be great.

Indeed, there are some UI differences between servers. But I think several of the Fedi services share difficulties related to high priority user tasks (sign up, logon, find posts / threads of interest, reply, post). I'm thinking some attention to users' mental models and development design patterns might benefit several projects and many servers all at once, perhaps. Just a thought.

Thank you again.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not sure how easy it is to get to contribute to Lemmy, they are very big and have to move slow not to break things fo very many users.

I'm part of PieFed https://join.piefed.social/ which is still very small and fast to implement changes. The developers meet in a matrix chat and we know we have a lot to fix when it comes to UX and are eager to work with people knowledgable in this field.

If you're interested and have some time over I would introduce you to the other guys.

[–] sarahsquirrel@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago

I agree with your caution against moving fast and breaking things!

I think that user-centred design tools can be very useful for big projects and existing services as well as small projects in development :)