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Comment by asddubs | Hacker News Reader

While I do use old.reddit and genuinely think it's better UI-wise, in the general case users tend to be resistant to any UI change because it breaks their habits and muscle memory. This is valid but applies even if the new design is easier to use/better in one way or another.

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> While I do use old.reddit and genuinely think it's better UI-wise, in the general case users tend to be resistant to any UI change because it breaks their habits and muscle memory.

It's funny how often people say "it's just habit / muscle memory / etc." in response to these kinds of discussions, as though it were somehow a counter-argument, and not something that corroborates the argument against making sudden, drastic UI changes.

It's really weird how common it is for people to say "well, Y is only true because of X" in response to "Z doesn't work because of Y", and thinking they're somehow defeating the argument against Z. If you acknowledge that X exists and causes Y, and accept that Y isn't compatible with Z, then you are conceding that Z does not hold!

I don't see it as a persuasive argument so much as resignation that quality doesn't matter (in this case, and in many cases of incremental enshitification)

My point is that it's not an objective measure of design quality, i.e. how well does a person who hasn't used the software before use it, or how quickly do they learn it. Whether that matters more than your existing users is up to you

There are no objective measures of design quality. Every aspect of interface design can only be measured in the extent to which it facilitates the user's access to the functionality of the software, so the only metrics that apply are ones that reflect the users' subjective experience.

And that experience is determined as much by the users' own expectations and prior experiences -- yes, including habits and muscle memory -- as any quality of the interface or the design of the software.

It's not merely a matter of optimizing the new-user experience for your own particualy software, either, as new users to your software will still be bringing with them the expectations and habits they've acquired through experience with other software. We're not in the '70s anymore, with new users likely never having used any software before, and where you're starting from a clean slate. People today have lots of particular expectations of software, informed by conventions evolved over decades and their own years of experience.

I'm not really a regular user of Reddit, but I'm reminded to use old.reddit every time I open a Google result and can't quickly skim or search the comments. That was an issue for years before LLMs so I'm not sure what the justification is for such a poor experience.

Except in this case, it’s seeing complete threads without clicking vs clicking many times to achieve the same thing.

Also, clutter…

These are measurable things, not moody things.

Like I said, I also prefer the old.reddit UI, I was more speaking about the general case that user feedback isn't always a good indicator depending on what you're trying to do (especially early in a platforms life, when you'll have much more future users than current users)

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