Defaults are crucial for good UX and getting more users on the Fediverse

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

Small things like Auto expand media being set to true, can have a huge impact on user retention rate.

The vast majority of users people never open or change default settings in the social media they use.

When they try out Lemmy etc., and the defaults aren’t great a lot of them will have a bad User Experience and leave.

I’m a IT professional, and joined Lemmy a few months ago, the UX sucked, most of that could have been fixed by having good defaults in place.

I powered through, but I won’t recommend Lemmy to many of my friends or family because I know they will give up due to too much friction in finding the right settings and how things work.

For the Fediverse to succeed focus needs to be put on giving people a very smooth UX from first opening a app or page, to finding enjoyment seeing and engaging with content.

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0x01@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Default instances would go a long way, I know there’s a lot of hate for lemmy.world but defaulting to the biggest instance or a random one in the top 10 would help ease some of the early friction. Users can choose an instance later when they get more comfortable with the platform.

Federation is neat but the average person just wants to scroll and chat

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- Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Top 10 ( lemmy.fediverse.observer/list )
  
  LW
  
  lemm.ee
  
  lemmynsfw.com - not suitable
  
  sh.itjust.work - shit in the name, not appealing to the average user
  
  lemmy.ml - power tripping feddit.uk/post/12952230
  
  lemmy.dbzer0.com - requires to follow and agree the Anarchist code of Conduct - not appealing to the average user
  
  lemmy.ca - Canada-oriented, non-Canadian users might not want to join as they wouldn’t think they would belong
  
  feddit.org - German-focused, feddit.org/c/main content is in German
  
  lemmy.blahaj.zone - queer-focused
  
  programming.dev - programmers-focused
  
  I made a more complete analysis in this post lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 (pinned on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com ), nowadays I basically go with:
  
  " Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
  
  discuss.online if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
  
  sopuli.xyz if you want a server located in the EU
  
  vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
  
  Feel free if you have any questions"
  
  Because yes, the USA/EU question appeared during the Luigi announcement in LW.
  
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  - joyjoy@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I would suggest something like phtn.app as an alternative desktop frontend (also has mobile view support)
    
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  - crimeschneck@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    sh.itjust.work - shit in the name, not appealing to the average user
    
    I really don’t understand how this is actually a problem. It’s just “shit”, that’s very moderate profanity.
    
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  - xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    An anarchist instance having strict rules is quite ironic.
    
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  - ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Does lemm.ee have as obvious a political stance?
    
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- CidVicious@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Defaulting to any one instance would be against the goals of federation, I think.
  
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  - JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    A geographically based default is a great idea.
    
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  - Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 (pinned on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com ), nowadays I basically go with:
    
    " Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
    
    https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency) https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU https://vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
    
    Feel free if you have any questions"
    
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- AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I completely agree. People who have never had to do this before May not know what to pick and never sign up because of it.
  
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  - Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 (pinned on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com ), nowadays I basically go with:
    
    " Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
    
    discuss.online if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
    
    sopuli.xyz if you want a server located in the EU
    
    vger.app/settings/install if you want an app
    
    Feel free if you have any questions"
    
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- Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  
  Default instances would go a long way
  
  No, suggesting actual websites to people, rather than “Lemmy”, would go a long way.
  
  Default instances result in centralization. In recreating the existing structures that, ostensibly, we’re all here to reject.
  
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  - AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Once people are in the ecosystem it’s easy for them to move around, if eg. lemm.ee mods go on a powertrip it would be such a smooth transition for people to switch.
    
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  - dmark3d@linux.community ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    So one thing I wonder is if there would be some way that when they are creating an account, for them to put some info in- mostly language spoken and maybe preferred country to start and it randomly selects a default general interest server. That might help onboard people easier without everyone joining one instance
    
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- Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Default instances would go a long way, I know there’s a lot of hate for lemmy.world but defaulting to the biggest instance or a random one in the top 10 would help ease some of the early friction.
  
  I’d rather join-lemmy (and join-fediverse) were smarter.
  
  Have a series of questions (for join-fediverse add “what service do you want?”):
  
  Where are you?
  
  What languages do you speak?
  
  Select your hobbies from the list below:
  
  And it then spits out 2 or 3 instances.
  
  It’s what I’d do if someone asked me directly for a recommendation and should be relatively easy to do.
  
  As we say with someone posting a link to db0 on r/piracy, if you just say to people “this is the instance for you” and it seems relevant then they make the jump. I’m tempted to go to the main subs for Canada, Australia, the UK, etc and just post a link to the relevant instance.
  
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  - Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Be ready to get your post removed for self promotion, and yourself banned. That’s what I noticed on most countries subs (except Australia I guess? !melbourne@aussie.zone still thriving everyday)
    
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Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
won’t recommend Lemmy to many of my friends or family because I know they will give up

Yeah, when I first started out here, my experience was like this:

I went to the join Lemmy page, then clicked to show all servers. Then waited. And waited. Then I went to bed.

By the next morning, the list of servers had managed to load. I spotted one that was advertised as “recommended for users to join to reduce load on the Fediverse”, which seemed like a good idea after seeing how even the join page was battling to load.

Found out that the server I joined seemed to have all sorts of issues loading content. And was apparently de-federated from a bunch of instances that align with my interests. So search results were showing me little to nothing in regards to queer communities for example, only dead communities.

Signed up on world instead and encountered multiple posts that said they had comments but loaded nothing. Found out that there were no languages selected in my settings. So I selected ‘undefined’, scrolled down, selected ‘English’, then saved.

I was still missing a bunch of posts after that, so I went back to settings and saw that ‘undefined’ was deselected again. That’s when I realised that you have to ctrl click each language you choose or else it just deselects the previous language that you clicked on.

Finally success! 3 or 4 days later. And now I’m here.

I would love to recommend Lemmy to the few people I know who use Reddit. But I can’t see any of them trying without just giving up and going back to the place where all you need to do is sign up and hey presto, content to look at and interact with.

I have a feeling that even the process of choosing an instance would probably put them off. I could give advice but there’s only so much I could do or explain without being there in person helping them. If they have to read walls of text explaining how to get started, it would probably end there.

I’m not sure what the solution is though, or if there even is one. It might just be a little bit like trying to recommend Linux to people who just want to be able to push a button and go. Which is the majority, based on what I’ve seen.

Also just one last thing and something that has been discussed to death. There’s just not enough content here yet for the average person to see any reason to switch over from the place with all the content.

And on that note, recommending this place to people that I know in real life would be too risky right now that they would see my account and figure out who I am. Because there isn’t a crowd of a million people to slip into and disappear here. And this isn’t Facebook. I don’t want people to know about the very personal things I sometimes say on anonymous social media.
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- EddoWagt@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I was still missing a bunch of posts after that, so I went back to settings and saw that ‘undefined’ was deselected again. That’s when I realised that you have to ctrl click each language you choose or else it just deselects the previous language that you clicked on.
  
  This actually took me multiple months to figure out, Lemmy felt like a ghost town, now it feels like a small town at least
  
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- Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  FYI, I added your initial post to this one lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 as a reason why join-lemmy.org isn’t a good recommendation
  
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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  These things are so important to get right. We should address them, we’re likely losing so many users because you’re average person isn’t going to spend more than 10min to figure it out, definitely not 4 days
  
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Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Feel free to crosspost to !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com, it’s a community dedicated to promote Lemmy and make it more welcoming to new joiners, so your post would fit right in!

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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Thank you, I will do that and join their cause
  
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masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It’s not that popular of a concept on here, probably since there’s massive selection bias (everyone here evidently found a way to struggle through), but you’re completely right and I find that that lazer focus on usability is one place that Open Source advocates and projects often struggle with.

And personally, I think it’s because most open source projects are built and run by programmers since they’re the ones who can build an open source project, whereas a consumer facing site like Reddit / FB / TikTok/ IG, would be planned out and designed by a product manager, working closely with a designer and market researcher, and then get programmers to build that for them.

It’s a model that’s really difficult to pull off though in a community primarily consisting of programmers volunteering their free time, but I think it’s worth keeping that in mind. Open Source projects that are consumer facing (and especially ones that rely on network effects), really need to work hard to stay in that user facing headspace.

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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  That’s the problem yes, but we can make small changes that will have a huge impact.
  
  It’s a very easy change to default ‘Auto expand media’ to true for half of new users, and see what effect it has over a few months. It’s also a fun experiment with no real drawbacks.
  
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  - masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    It’s a very easy change to default ‘Auto expand media’ to true for half of new users, and see what effect it has over a few months. It’s also a fun experiment with no real drawbacks.
    
    Writing the code to do that is very easy, determining what metrics are actually important and impact user success and what metrics accurately track user success is much harder.
    
    I do generally agree though! Personally I just asked the instance admins of lemmy.ca to redirect lemmy.ca/r/… URLs to lemmy.ca/c/… URLs as a tiny user facing feature for Redditors coming over, and they did it in a second.
    
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hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Agreed. And the default UI hasn't even gotten attention in the past. It's just there. My experience with Lemmy has been that the devs fix bugs, but they're mostly focused on the backend. I'm not sure aboit the consequences, though. A lot of people seem to be using phone apps, so their default might not even be Lemmy's UX.

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- Microw@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Which in turn is probably the reason why the devs dont focus on Web ui
  
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RobotZap10000@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I personally value the decentralization and personal control a lot more than laypeople being arsed to try to figure it out. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t even be here in the first place. Why try to accommodate for users that don’t give a crap about the main selling point by diminishing the said selling point?

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- AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  You would still have control over it. It would just remove a barrier to entry.
  
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- avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  If people went as far as registering in a Lemmy instance, they clearly have some affinity towards the Fediverse. Getting through Fediverse to work nicely for them is what bridges the gap. It’s the same with anything people do. Better defaults is a trivial low hanging fruit that can help perhaps significantly.
  
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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Not a lot of thought was put into selecting the defaults, all I’m saying is at the very least we should put thought into the defaults that are set. It takes away no control from the user.
  
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smeg@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
We have a few different frontends available on feddit.uk, you can easily tell a new user that there are different ways of viewing the same content and to pick their favourite

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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Sure but is the default feddit.uk ? because that sucks, and many people will give up before finding p.feddit.uk
  
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  - Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    It’s something I’ve raised with the other Admins and we may see if our users would be up for swapping the default frontend to one of the others.
    
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  - TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I am almost certainly not the “normal” user, but the default theme is much better usability wise than the “p” version. The one would have me looking for an alternative UI/app.
    
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  - smeg@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    What makes you think it sucks? That’s just your opinion, do you mainly just look at image posts? Personally I prefer posts being collapsed by default so I can scroll through and find the interesting ones. Arbitrarily setting one thing as the default is just as bad as setting another.
    
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avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
That’s a great point and a really low hanging fruit that would likely help with adoption and retention. The defaults weren’t great for me either.

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OpenStars@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Personally I find the UX better on PieFed (unless it's for a part where most of the development hasn't happened yet, so yeah it's hit or miss). See e.g. the tiling view.

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DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Yeah, if I hadn’t been so committed to Rexit, I doubt I would have stuck around long enough to find a UX that I liked. Just to name one, it’d be nice if MLMYM were a default skin.

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RedSnt@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I had to find this theme (and tweak the colours a bit) to just stand the site. The userscript Lemmytools also helps a bit, albeit half broken.

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- AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  That’s my point, it’s so many loops people aren’t going to jump through.
  
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JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
While this is of course true (and I too have professional experience in this field), my own experience is the opposite. The UX and defaults here are generally better than on, for example, the R-site.

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AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
We should experiment with setting different defaults for new users.

For new signups, set ‘Auto expand media’ to true for half of users, and false for the other half, give it 3 months or a year and see what effect it has on user retention.

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- avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  There’s faster ways to get data. We can do a few surveys on existing users. We’ll get hundreds of responses easily. Perhaps multiple surveys, one for each setting.
  
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  - AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    That’s a great idea, how can we get this ball rolling?
    
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subiacOSB@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Spot on buddy. The web interface was rough AF until I got the app I’m using. People are going to give up easily. I’m tech savy and was an early adopter but gave up then with everything I was hearing I gave it a second shot.

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bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Isn’t there a new UI in the works for the 1.0 release anyways?

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