Email is well established and has incredible UX.

Email wasn’t competing with a well established centralised version of Email with a vastly superior UX when it was trying to gain users.

Lemmy doesn’t exist in a vacuum

Strawman

The reality is this filters out all non tech savvy people.

This I like, it solved many of the issues. I wish it was the default.

The UX for both Voyager and Sync seem really good. I’ve tried it out on a device, you can scroll before logging in, and when you try to create an account there aren’t loops to jump through and a default instance is pre-selected

Unless we use one of those as the default UI, the problem isn’t solved, people will give up before knowing of their existence.

We need more users for those small spaces to grow, one of the reasons I still use Reddit alongside Lemmy is that there is no ‘South African’ community on here, there is a very alive and fun South African community on reddit, that alone will make me keep using Reddit.

I’m sure that’s true for many other niche communities, for those to take hold in Lemmy we need numbers.

This is fantastic thank you, I’ve created an account. I like the onboarding

Hopefully some instances will move away from that thinking and not gatekeep

We should try to do both, give a good UX and make it fun.

Everyone benefits from good UX

Fine, here is how 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.

I’m not saying everyone should have the one I think is best.

I’ve said many times I don’t have the solution, it’s just painfully obvious that what we have now sucks. (goes against basic UX principles)

I’m saying the instances that care about not filtering out non tech savvy people, and that want to attract more users, should care and put some effort into this.

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

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.