AnonomousWolf

You're taking zero choice away from people, All I'm asking for is better defaults and guidance

My opinion as a IT professional who's been involved with UX & UI for 12 years. Just google 'Good UX principles' and you'll see Lemmy breaks so many of them.

I'm sorry but you're wrong, Lemmy breaks basic UX principles the UX is bad on multiple levels, that's just the reality, all I'm saying is we should do something about it.

I don't have the answer to a perfect solution, but something needs to be done to smooth out the process of joining and getting used to the platform.

Edit: Adding Data why the UX here is bad

Lemmy breaks the six of the 7 UX principles

User-Centricity – Lemmy often prioritizes federation and technical features over intuitive user experience. The interface can feel clunky, and onboarding isn't always smooth for new users unfamiliar with the federated model.

Consistency – The UI varies significantly across different Lemmy instances, which can create an inconsistent experience. Some instances modify themes or layouts, making navigation different depending on where you are.

Hierarchy – Unlike Reddit, Lemmy’s ranking algorithms sometimes don’t surface the most relevant or popular posts effectively. Sorting by hot, top, or new doesn’t always work intuitively, leading to lower-quality content appearing before high-quality discussions.

Context – Lemmy’s UI sometimes fails to provide clear context, If a post originates from another instance, clicking on it might not always take you where you expect. Sometimes, users have to manually navigate to the original instance to see all interactions, which breaks contextual continuity.

User Control – Here it's great, users have a lot of control, it might just cost effort to figure out

Accessibility – Lemmy’s UI and design choices can be less accessible, with contrast issues, and mobile usability problems compared to mainstream platforms. Many non tech savvy people are overwhelmed and won't stay.

Usability – Lemmy can be confusing for new users, especially those unfamiliar with federated platforms. The sign-up process, navigation, and feature discoverability could be much smoother.

Something like this sounds great

I think this is the current best solution, Voyager does the same but defaults to lemm.ee, I point people there.

Look I don't have any data to back it up, only my experience and many others (eg. https://lemmy.ca/comment/14524858)

I'm also not going to go try and dig up all the evidence to try and prove this to you. I am a IT professional and have been part of developing many web apps that see tens of thousands of users per day. We would do AB testing to see what works for users and what gets a better click through rate etc.

As soon as a user needs to think, they drop off like crazy, that's just a fact you can look up good UX design. It's also a fact that joining lemmy requires a lot of thinking and tweaking etc. to get to a good place.

I've been using lemmy for months now, and I'm still not happy with the UI even after tweaking and trying many different things.

Not necessarily, but we don't want a accidental filter that filters out non tech savvy people. We want all kinds of people on Lemmy

This comment better explains the issues we have: https://lemmy.ca/comment/14524858

I think we should have a Lemmy landing page, that should help you choose a instance.

Ask you to select a few topics you're interested in, if you want to see political content and/or NSFW content.

And then make a suggestion (randomly from one of a few fitting instances)

Once a user gets used to the platform they can always switch

To my knowledge we don't want to filter out non tech savvy people. If that's what we want then cool, leave it as is.

But I don't think that's true, especially not for all instances.

I'm 32 and work in tech, The reality is the vast majority of people won't want to use old.reddit style UI

I'm comfortable powering through shitty UI/UX etc. I've even built them myself, but others won't settle for shitty UI

You and your friends are old I assume, and got used to the old.reddit UI, and didn't want to change.

Most people are used to modern UI, and won't want to change to old UI, just like you don't want to change either. We should better cater for average people.

I wish just like NSFW filter, posts can be marked as Political, and users have the option to block all of that.

Here's a great explanation: https://lemmy.ca/comment/14524858