The Reddit redesign must be the worst redesign in the history of redesigns.
It's super slow to load.
It's slow to use (Scroll is sluggish. It loads giant images and puts huge autoplaying videos in your face. Comment function now starts an ugly html wysiwyg editor).
It misses features (outgoing links in the sidebars are gone).
It takes away screen estate by having a fixed element on top of the screen that stays there when you scroll down.
It's buggy (often weird overlaps between elements happen when you resize the screen).
It's confusing. When I click on a post I get a view that shows the post in an overlay of the page I was looking at. When I reload the page I suddenly get a completely different view with only the post.
It's almost unusable on my iPad (where I have to beg for the desktop version every time I open it because the mobile version is even worse).
It seems like they are still A/B testing it. Because sometimes I get the redesign and sometimes the original design.
Funny enough, I can see how the redesign might increase user engagement. The endless scroll with content right in your face is kind of addicting. It pulls you in a state of "I hate this. And I hate myself for using it. But I can't stop. I will just scroll down one post further.". So the experience is worse but the KPIs might be better. I bet this is how booking.com became the hell that it is.
I would love to see how the numbers of those tests look like.
That's the problem with the vast majority of modern social networks, they're effectively designed from the ground up as a huge bait and switch: be user friendly to attract a community then become advertiser friendly when the community is well established and the network effects mean that most of it is captive. Even if 90% of reddit users are unhappy with the way the platform is run most of them probably won't consider giving up on their favorite subreddits. It's the same situation with Youtube, Facebook and others, and I'm sure it'll eventually be that way with Discord and whatever other flavor-of-the-year social network is popular these days.
As far as I can tell the only way around that is distributed and/or not-for-profit social networks where the users are actually in charge. MWWA: Make the Web a Web Again.
I don't think being self sustaining is sufficient if you're a web company these days. Shareholders want growth. Execs whose bonuses are indexed on growth want growth. It's always more, more users, more ads, more engagement... Why earn one million when you can earn two? Who cares if you're the new Digg if you could be the new Facebook instead?
It's easy enough to be a 100% private social media company that isn't solely driven by maximizing profit. Some things are worth more, and these companeis are free to pursue them without the hassle of shareholders. Of course, these companies are typically bootstrapped, but still.
Agreed. And I wouldn't consider myself to be nit-picky regarding design, as I mostly read Reddit for the content in specific subs.
Despite some questionable design decisions my main grip with the new design is that it often just does not work at all. I rarely alter default options in software but I had to use old.reddit.com quite often to even use the site:
- sometimes the whole page does not work because of cookie issues
- sometimes posts don't load (I have to manually refresh)
- sub's sidebars missing: there was often useful information (might be the job of the moderators though)
- unable to do local search (CTRL-F) due to endless scroll
Regarding my last point, Reddit is not the only culprit and many websites unfortunately switch to this style - hopefully at least Google keep their pagination - but I find it terrible.
With traditional pagination you can CTRL-F for keywords, go to the next page, and repeat the process, but with endless-scroll content is usually loaded dynamically depending on your viewport, so it's nearly impossible to search in a reliable way.
I'm a mod for a few subs and for that reason was forced to start using the new UI. Most of the sidebar can be developed to look and work similar to the old markdown sidebar, but without all the custom css styling.
I see the new UI as the a less dramatic version of myspace as the old, and facebook as new.* This includes but not limited to stripping out custom CSS. (You don't have to be a front end developer to style your sub anymore.) The reddit ecosystem as a whole will now look and function much the same everywhere. Some sub designs were getting out of hand. This gives Reddit execs and admins much more control and the lowly mod a lot less.
Alas the reddit mod is further relegated the jerk the community maligns for setting arbitrary rules and unfairly limiting free speech. Also a lot of the mod tools are streamlined, link/user flair, user access/banning, etc. I really don't like the look and feel of the new UI and after a month of constant use still prefer the old UI.
Exactly. There are often times where I get a blank page and have to refresh. Combine that with the fact that CPU usage is way higher on the redesign for me, and after about a month or so of testing it I reverted to the old design.
The fact that Reddit even considered making this the default design for logged out users is laughable.
There are ways to have fast scrolling while maintaining ctrl-f compatibility by rendering a lightweight text-only copy of the content outside the viewport. It's unfortunate most websites don't bother doing that.
It actually takes so much space away with "get app" nagging that I've got about 2 lines of text for actually editing a post. Which is then not properly scrolled into view so you're basically editing blindly.
What's also confusing is that when you're pressing the "send" button, it doesn't give feedback until after about a couple seconds or so. Meanwhile, thinking it didn't "take", you're frantically pressing "send" again a couple of times, which results in as many posts because reddit also doesn't have double-post suppression. Makes you really look like an idiot.
Hint: aggressive "get app" placing actually signals to never, ever load the app. I can't believe reddit's strategy of making the mobile web experience so annoying that folks are giving in to install the app is a winning one.
I'm a mod of a small subreddit and during the last 3 months around 10-15% of our visitors used the redesign, 20% browse on mobile, 30% use an App, and the rest use the old design. Engagement is highest in the Apps.
Thanks for sharing this. I use Reddit primarily on an iPhone using the app. I find it enjoyable. Kudos! I like the new React web site as well visually but agree with the usability issues noted here. I have to manually clear all my cookies to be able to login.
It's not just the horrible redesign. Reddit changed for the worse in every way possible. The quality of content is pathetic. All you get is just political ads pretending to be reddit content and reposts. But the biggest disappointment is their change in ethos. Reddit used to support free speech, now they support censorship just like most publishers and media companies.
When digg screwed up, we had reddit to fall back on. Now that reddit screwed up, there is nothing else to fall back on.
Several of the subreddits I mod make extensive use of CSS decorations. It's simply impossible to construct anything similar with the redesign. There are also so many missing or broken features that are in a state of flux it's hardly worthwhile to put forth a lot of effort attempting to do so.
Moreover watching the traffic stats it's clear that the majority of users access Reddit in the communities I care for do so through mobile apps where not only is it impossible to do nearly any form of differentiation, it's difficult to communicate community standards or other info, like FAQs to casual users.
So currently the most functional user interface that can effectively communicate all features available to communities is the old desktop one, which by design is now the least used. It's a farcical disaster.
Access is going mobile. I would make (the uneducated) argument that most people dont want to install your app, they just want to access your site from a mobile browser.
I hate getting 5000 worthless push notifications and cluttering my phone with a bunch of apps.
While that might be true in general, I don't think it's the case with reddit. Most apps offer significant advantages over any browser-based approach. It's possible that a browser-based reddit client could offer many of the same features, but so far, AFAIK, that's not the case.
For HN I use a web app, and it's good enough, but sometimes I wish I had a client that offered as many features as the reddit apps I use.
A lot of people, myself included, won't install an apps unless it brings value over the website. When you look at it that way, very few apps make sense for the user, most of them are built to capture information about you.
I'm an avid reddit user but I completely agree with you. The redesign is outright horrible to the point that if they stop allowing the old design (old.reddit.com) sometime in the future and force me on the new design I will most likely just stop using reddit.
I never opt in to anything and somehow my account got permanently opted in (as in none of the opt out links work and I have to use a browser extension to keep old.reddit). Further, based on replies to my gripes, this seems to be a common state of affairs.
Don't praise them just because you're in the control group ;)
Definitely, and I think that's very likely reddit's goal here. But I also think they have enough sense to not make it mandatory or opt-out anytime soon, since there are so many complaints.
Same here. I starting seeing front page posts about how much everyone hated the redesign and I had no idea what anyone was talking about. It's a total non issue to me.
It is still a beta so I hope that some of the bugs will be ironed out.
However, it is frustrating because everything now takes an extra click. Mulireddits, changing from hot to new, or top all used to be right there. Now each of them are hidden behind a dropdown menu. I mean is Big Mouse an investor in Reddit and trying to make our mice wear out twice as fast?
I think you're looking at the re-design from a user-experience perspective, and this is probably wrong. Think of Reddit as a for-profit company, and then consider what that company might want out of a re-design. They'll talk in public up one side and down the other about making it a friendlier place and easier to use, but ... consider some alternative motives.
What might those be? I suspect some VERY important goals of the re-design are:
INCREASE USER ENGAGEMENT - get users to stay longer, and if they leave, make it less permanent ... tactically:
• all external links open in a new tab now
• infinite-scroll
• simplify subreddit / multireddit management
INCREASE AD VIEWS & AD CLICKS - with users more engaged, monetize their attention:
• make subreddit designs far more uniform, with fewer CSS tricks to really change the layout / experience
• make it difficult / inconsistent (!) to try to do some impressive CSS design, to discourage subreddit managers from taking layout changes beyond a certain threshold
• make the "post" ads just a little less obvious and a little more enticing
• make the "post" ads far more common than before
---
I could be wrong on all these. I suspect I'm right on several.
>I think you're looking at the re-design from a user-experience perspective, and this is probably wrong. Think of Reddit as a for-profit company, and then consider what that company might want out of a re-design.
But I am a user, how is it wrong that I don't prioritize the business goals in my assessment of the redesign? Their goals are obvious, and the person your replying to already acknowledged them anyway.
considering how much larger Reddit has become than Digg ever was, if the redesign becomes mandatory and if it causes a mass exodus, this one would be worse.
The question is if these two things will happen, of course.
EDIT: another avenue of foot-shooting might be closing the API off from the unofficial reddit apps.
Digg was much much larger then Reddit. Then the redesign happened (They also had people gaming the scoring system which soured the waters) Digg died in a few months.
It's super slow to load.
It's slow to use (Scroll is sluggish. It loads giant images and puts huge autoplaying videos in your face. Comment function now starts an ugly html wysiwyg editor).
It misses features (outgoing links in the sidebars are gone).
It takes away screen estate by having a fixed element on top of the screen that stays there when you scroll down.
It's buggy (often weird overlaps between elements happen when you resize the screen).
It's confusing. When I click on a post I get a view that shows the post in an overlay of the page I was looking at. When I reload the page I suddenly get a completely different view with only the post.
It's almost unusable on my iPad (where I have to beg for the desktop version every time I open it because the mobile version is even worse).
It seems like they are still A/B testing it. Because sometimes I get the redesign and sometimes the original design.
Funny enough, I can see how the redesign might increase user engagement. The endless scroll with content right in your face is kind of addicting. It pulls you in a state of "I hate this. And I hate myself for using it. But I can't stop. I will just scroll down one post further.". So the experience is worse but the KPIs might be better. I bet this is how booking.com became the hell that it is.
I would love to see how the numbers of those tests look like.