Robinhood’s brand is severely damaged: 56% of account holders consider leaving | Hacker News Reader

Robinhood’s brand is severely damaged: 56% of account holders consider leaving

fortune.com

12 pointshackitup78 comments

It has the best user experience I’ve ever seen. It made derivatives trading accessible to morons. Think about that for a second. Tech barely knows how to make project management software intuitive (a literal shared todo app), and these guys nailed derivatives trading.

It’s a masterclass on product design. It has totally inspired me to tackle saturated app ideas. Like, how are you so sure your calendar or todo apps are intuitive? Think harder and boil this stuff down.

Whoever Robinhood is hiring on the UI/UX/Product team are best-in-class, it’s not even close.

How much did Robinhood pay you for that comment?

What nonsense assertions and comparisons.

I wish they’d pay me. There are todo apps on the top of the App Store that are less intuitive than buying options on RH. Their app is an indictment on how bad UX is in the tech industry outside of the elite product design of things like RH, Uber/Lyft, Apple.

It’s inspiring really, it means that almost all of our ideas are nowhere near their potential.

How’s that nonsense? They do have great UI/UX.

Its UX is too good, which results in addictiveness, a negative consequence close to dark patterns

What? This is your opinion and certainly not any objective truth.

It does have a decent UI, but far from a "masterclass". Completely dark-pattern ridden to have people lose money more often than they can turn a profit. Check out OptionStrat, for example, for a far better interface for understanding options.

Robinhood:

- No user-facing distinction between ITM and OTM options.

- Confusing to know whether you are buying or selling, since UI doesn't always update to reflect a new choice.

- IV and greeks hidden from buying interface. Need to click on bid-ask spread to see them.

- No way to know what the impact of said statistics are on options price development. Designed to have new investors lose many on FDs.

- No way to discover good options deals without clicking 1k times back and forth.

- Unlike shares, no way to follow options price development until you actually buy them (except for day's % change).

- Surprising pricing rules. Market price listed at 0.28? Cool, but you can't actually buy it for 0.28, since for this particular offering only 0.25 or 0.30 are allowed.

- Bought an option? Cool. How do you actually turn a profit after buying? How do you exercise it? No way to know until you actually buy it. No directions to "documentation" from the actual UI.

It's a masterclass in making fish accessible to sharks, not derivatives trading accessible to morons.

Yeah, you really figured it all out. You’re totally right.

Robinhood is prefect platform for hype driven retail investors. As the article says, it's unlikely that people switch.

Robinhood’s is commission-free, has fractional trading. With lower price you have to accept lower quality and more risk, like hitting clearinghouse deposit requirements. Also, when something is free, you are the product.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com