I hate the damage that Apple seems to have done in this regard. I also hate it when apps hide features because “they’re for power users and regular users won’t understand them”.
Sure, there’s a difference between UX being so bad that it’s frustrating to use and “we need to simplify things because we don’t want to scare the users”.
Lemmy UI has its problems to solve and features to add, but it’s not bad, even on mobile. I’ve been using it extensively and it does fine all things considered.
Anyways, at this point I believe there’s even a benefit to making a UI a bit ugly and scary, so you end up with a higher quality of users instead of quantity, as cold as it might sound.
Edit: I didn’t mean to just talk about Lemmy. That was just an example and I understand that for a social platform numbers are important. My rant was more general in regards to the dumbing down of UI in all areas.
Edit2: I’m sorry. I didn’t want to come off as elitist. I’m actually concerned about the loss of power user features more than non-tech savvy users having a bad time.
No. And to think otherwise is elitist. Ease of access is important. Advanced features are important.
Making UI easy to use for casual users is how you end up with power users or advanced users.
I need a UI that makes it easy to get started and then let me grow into it. I don’t need something that takes weeks to figure out and then I can lorde it over the un-initiated.
Agree with this.
From the op:
It’s right though. 90+% of users are fine with default settings, so it makes sense to hide them. Otherwise, at best it is confusing & intimidating, at worst a lot of users will have an awful UX because they tweak settings they don’t understand.
So far several folks I know are avoiding Federated services due to this. They like the idea but they are less tech savvy.
100% agree. People nowadays are used to easier applications to navigate, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has the time or patience to wrap their head around what’s usually quite a dense look.