HN: Merry Christmas (Did HN just RapGenius me)
A little less than an hour ago, I suddenly noticed the HN header color had become deep-red.
http://oi39.tinypic.com/2v2t8ut.jpg
My first thought, "Damn, I've been hellbanned on Christmas" aka "HN is pulling a RapGenius Christmas on me", thankfully on examining the index there the numbers on the ordered list alternated between red and green and then I realized it may just be for Christmas!
Thought I'd add a post for others, in case there is anyone else who gets spooked like me :)
Comments
Okay, but, it is time to fix those unconventional navigation items up there.
Come on, it's been 71 days already. Can we fix them already? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6550469
I could fire up a vim and fix them if I were the developer. The time it took them to add the color changes would be better off for something long past due.
I hadn't noticed your poll, or your criticism. But I've gone and looked now, and, quite frankly, I'm shocked.
I'm shocked that so many people on a site called Hacker News haven't explored, experimented, and generally poked and pried. I'm amazed that so many people just assumed the "New" meant "Make a new post", and that "Ask" meant "Ask a question", and didn't actually try them out!
Do you really need every little detail spelled out for you? You claim your criticism was genuine - in return, this is a genuine question!
Did you really not explore?
I don't know about others, but I did explore (which you can tell from my comment) and hence why I constantly feel the whole nav is broken and useless for the most part.
UX is essential and nav names should be as self-explanatory as possible. Naming New instead of Newest or Latest can be confused with "Create", hence I said Submit vs Create vs New. Even though HN is supposed to be a somewhat geeky place, UX is still important. If nav is a low-hanging fruit, then instead of coloring on Christmas, fix those navs in 3 minutes. If you can't even do that, I call that bullshit and lazy.
If we go to stackoverflow, most of the navs are pretty self explanatory. Threads and comments are the worst. Threads show my latest comments, whereas comments show the latest comments from everyone. How the hell do we come up with these names in the first place? It sounds like legacy stuff that the developers never bother to remove or to fix. It is as if forward arrow is now downward arrow and backward arrow is the forward arrow. One word: mind fuck.
I will give the creators a little credit because creators will have blind spot; they just don't notice the inconvenience as much as users do.
And the final point is that nav should be helpful and is usually served as shortcut. So if I want to see all my threads, threads should show topics. Instead, the links under my profile makes more sense to me and I always end up (and some others too) clicking profile -> comments / submissions. That's two steps. :(
Personally, I find StackOverflow un-navigable. Every time I visit I need to click on links again to find out what they do - nothing is obvious, everything is obscure and/or opaque. HN, instead, seems to me a breath of fresh air. Clean, simple, and to me, the labels are obvious.
In short, don't assume everyone thinks the same as you. What seems clear is that I don't. That doesn't make either of us right or wrong, it simply means we're different. But that doesn't then give you the right to claim the interface is "wrong" or "bad" or whatever, just because it doesn't match the way you think.
To be fair, everyone has different preference and how they interpret things. But it doesn't mean there isn't some common UX principles out there and how majority of people see or read things. People make tools and make compatibility with how people use the tools. A iOS news app can introduce sideway swipe or up-down swipe for users to flip back-and-forth, but the app wouldn't ask the user to draw a circle to signal next page and triangle as previous page. Why? Because swiping up/down, left-right looks more intuitive and simpler, more align with how we work with a physical book.
http://uxmag.com/articles/guiding-principles-for-ux-designer...
http://uxmag.com/articles/the-secret-to-designing-an-intuiti...
http://www.uxbrainstorm.org/user-experience-design-as-applie...
How is "new" more clear than "newest" or "latest"? Are you telling me, from the first sight, that there is no doubt that "new" means "newest submission"? And by looking at "threads" you can tell it means "my latest comments"? Of course not. You said people should explore so you are putting the hard work on users.
This is a simple site. We don't need some confusing nav names like threads and comments when the results don't really agree with the title. What constitutes simple and intuitive? You don't call your sign up page Santa and logout page Buddha.
1. new's actual link is newest, don't save 3 char.
2. threads makes no sense. Threads by convention means a collection of post from BBS. Gmail and Google Group enables thread style which expands to an original post and a series of replies. So calling it threads when it actually means MY COMMENTS is reinventing the word.
3. comments is confusing to me, at least, at first glance means global latest comments.
4. ask, what the hell? ASK HN? Where is show (SHOW HN)? Actually, what the hell is /ask anyway? Doesn't that makes it more like "a url to ask a new question"? How does the filter actually work?
5. jobs, okay fine. I did think of job posts.
6. submit, fine, but it becomes confusing when you look at new.
And stackoverflow. While you are entitled to you opinion, I will argue that stackoverflow isn't so bad. http://stackoverflow.com/
When it said Questions it means Questions, all the questions. When it said users, it means a list of users. When it said tags, it means a list of tags. Though each link provides a filter, so you can filter questions being newest, being feature questions. Sure you can call Questions "Problems" instead. The point is that when you name something, it should match the result it is going to return as much as possible.
And you are telling me that text does not match with the display result? If I tell you click on users, do you expect to find a cheeseburger? No.
A good UX means users don't need to memorize how he got to page X as much as possible. It means there is some path, which is easy to follow. I don't have to create my own solution: click on profile, click on submission / comments. This is like designing a good url and good RESTful URL. Try to make the url match with what it is intended to do and present.
And finally, I do have the right to claim it is wrong or bad, because I am a user. If you think a user cannot criticize or claim that the interface sucks, then app creators don't need feedback at all. Since you claim to be a mathematician, then I can say that a proof is poorly written and hard to follow when the proof uses some confusing, creative notations when the conventions one are good enough to use in the first place. Why draw a knot when QED is good enough.
It's gone midnight here, and I lack the time and interest to debate this. I disagree with you on nearly every point, but there seems little to gain by arguing it. I agree that we disagree. More, I don't really care, except to say that this is nearly the only site I find easy to use, and almost immediate to understand. Just a datum for you.
Funnily enough, it was thanks to the Christmas theme that I realized that "Threads" was highlighted when I went to "Profile -> Comments" to view my comments.
I have been doing the latter for years. PG does need to review the naming of those links.
I had the same shock moment too :)
It reminds me of the Slashdot 1st April "Pony" edition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slashdot_omgponies.png
I didn't notice because I use a custom color for the header bar (settable on your profile page). I only noticed when I went to reply to a message.
On that page the custom header color is not respected.
What surprised me was the time of day it happened. 1-2pm EST?
That surprised me too :)