It's been a while since I've done a proper rant screaming about the UX here. Longs story short, I still think it's the biggest issue and barrier to people using Hive. SURPRISE!
Something that needs to be said though is that we have indeed made HUGE strides in improving the UX. Here's a few big steps forward.
- You can now create a Hive account easily and for free using https://hiveonboard.com/
- You can create a link to create an account for a user or multiple users using https://hiveinvite.com/# With this you can onboard groups of people and automate the process of giving them a delegation to help them get started.
- You can buy Hive with a debit card using https://www.sequoir.com/ After going through KYC though.
- Tips are live on PeakD and integrated into the exciting new @dapplr app.
- Communities are a big step forward in the huge problem of Content Discovery and organization.
- Crossposting is live on PeakD and hive.blog
- You can very easily swap Hive and HBD for other crypto using https://swap-app.app/
- You can get tons of info about your, or any account on Hive with https://hivestats.io/
- Some other bells and whistles.
That's quite a lot of stuff and if there's anything in that list that you didn't know that actually leads me into the first issue.
There's no way to know any of this stuff unless you're SUPER plugged in. (Most users aren't)
This goes for any new dapp or service that anyone builds. It might be super useful, but it's useless if people can't find it.
This is one of those issues with a decentralized platform that I feel like we just haven't solved yet. I really don't think the solution needs to be complicated, the problem is it would take the C word...Cooperationnnnnnn.
Off the top of my head I think a simple solution would be to simply make a "Whitelisted" Community(A Mod would have to manually mute all posts from people who post in the community that aren't whitelisted), Something like "Hive Resources" then the key that actually would make it have the desired effect and where the cooperation comes in, is that instead of this Community just being in the rankings with all the other communities, there is a link at the top of frontends that takes you straight to this Community.
The people who are whitelisted in the Community are people who've created Dapps or services. They create one post per dapp or service, and continually update that post with new updates so that the Community stays easily navigatable.
This leads into another issue we have here.
There are ZERO tools for content organization.
In the above example of the Whitelisted Community for Hive Resources what would be MUCH more useful is if this Community could be organized into relevant Collections/Playlists/Groups whatever you want to call it.
- Frontends
- Exchanges
- Data and Analytics
- Utilities
- Etc.
You get the idea. As we grow and more and more people build useful dapps and services this would allow for people to find the content they're looking for faster.
Filters by tags would be a great addition, but I think what would be more powerful is what I described in the post below where a user or community owner can tag posts to be added to certain collections, then those collections have their own links or tabs where they're grouped.
Specifically in my case, I'd like to have a "Featured" Page for OnChainArt that has all the best contributions all across time. I've talked about this before but we aren't properly leveraging all the content on Hive. The way we deal with content, it seems like the content here is sub-par sometimes, but that's not the case. The reality is there is a ton of amazing content here on Hive, but there are no tools that allow me as a Community owner to organize and drive traffic to the best content.
The best content becomes undiscoverable in a matter of days and the only tool I have to push eyeballs in the right direction is pinning, which is better than before, but still not really enough. We're catering too much, actually exclusively to the people in the system, playing the "game" of Hive, and not at all to someone just browsing for interesting relevant content.
As a curator, you're interested in the most recent content. This may also be the case if you're an active community member that maybe views the community daily or multiple times a day. These two users are the ones that have tools to address their needs, in the "New" and "Trending" pages. The user that is not being serviced and the one I think we'd be most wise to cater to is the casual observer. Someone who is not already on Hive, someone who landed here for whatever reason. The content that we show them is the bait for them to want to come back, to want to get involved, to want to share something they saw here, etc. This is my new most wanted feature. This is my new "Tips" :) I'll be the best friend of whoever can make strides on this front.
This is something in general that all users and especially Communities need to make Hive a competitive platform for people to be able to create and manage communities as well as for the end user experience. I made a post a while back talking about this more here.
With something like this, a user can organize their content better for their followers and Communities could do the same.
Aright, I'm just repeating myself now, moving on...
Analytics
Again, from the user perspective as well as the Community owner perspective, we need analytics. The more the better. I don't think I've ever heard anyone on any platform complain about too much data being thrown at them because it's all useful data that you can then base action items on. Some things I'd love to know as a Community owner:
- Who's Posted the most
- Who's Earned the most
- Who are the top curators by number of votes
- Who are the top curators by stake
- Who's commented the most
- Who's posts got the most views(from where?)
- Who's posts got the most comments
- What's the traffic on the Community landing page(where is it coming from)
- What are the Community earnings over time (days, weeks, months, all time)
I'm sure I'd think of more if I thought about it longer, but these are the tools we need to really leverage our competitive advantage to say Reddit.
Stop and think, what advantages do we currently have over Reddit?
- Better censorship resistance and immutability (which tbh it seems the masses don't highly value)
- Financial Incentives (which again, the masses tend not to value because crypto is too hard for them)
What benefit does Reddit have over us?
- More features/tools
- Easier (Big deal and we can't really win here as crypto will always be harder than centralized legacy platforms)
- Everyone is already there (This is the biggest deal)
The first two things here are the only ones we can attack directly, and the third can only be affected indirectly. It is MUCH easier to create something brand new and acquire users than it is to get users to leave a similar product and use your instead. That's the challenge in front of us and I cannot see us winning this without not only catching up to these legacy platforms, but innovating on our own. Most of the people on these platforms are relatively comfortable. They might complain about this or that, but when they get banned, they BEEEEEG for their account back. They ask their followers to help them beg. We've all seen it. We need to offer people serious alternatives.
There is no silver bullet that exists where "...if we just do blank, everyone will come here" We have to keep polishing, and keep polishing, and keep polishing and keep improving and keep improving.
Alright, I've rambled on enough. This is what happens when I go for too long without posting. I have idea vomit. What are your most wanted features for Hive or for frontends?
P.S. Someone please add tips and different view modes to hive.blog. Please?
Great post, reblogged. You last point is particularly good. Iterative development, lots of it. will lead to a much better result eventually.
Thanks @markkujantunen :)
UX professionals should be listened to. It's vital that the use of the most popular Hive apps be as smooth as possible. Also, many new useful tools are being developed I had not heard of. I think PeakD would do well to have a tab for a collection of tools.
Given that there is already a "filter by tags" in individual blogs/profiles (only visible if you're not using grid view so it took me a while to find it and it was purely by accident) I don't think it would be too much effort to add them to community pages BUT I have no idea how either of those things were coded so it could be a lot of effort for all I know XD
You're not the only one that's been screaming for content organisation. And for each person doing the screaming there's probably at least five that desperately want it but are too scared to scream :)
A resources thing would definitely be helpful, I didn't know about some of the stuff there (I apparently should be super plugged in given how long I've been kicking around here but I'm not).
It is MUCH easier to create something brand new and acquire users than it is to get users to leave a similar product and use your instead.
I don't think that's necessarily true.
Bitchute is pulling in new users from YouTube by the thousands every month.
Parler (twitter equivalent), has pulled in over 500,000 !!! users in this last few days..
(Steem) Hive is flawed in much deeper ways than user interface issues, in my opinion.
A tinkering with the wing mirror, while the engine isn't running properly, kind of thing.
This exerpt is from @practicalthought, (in a comment on my post, https://peakd.com/hive-174578/@lucylin/would-you-care-to-dance-or-are-you-just-greedy)
....sums it up nicely.
...you mention onboarding one person per year. It could never happen. As you point out, 10000 would become 80000 within 4 years, which all things remaining constant percentage wise in activity, would dilute/reduce current payouts by almost 90% for most ( I say most as those on auto voters would still retain a higher share of the pool, but would still feel the impact a lot nonetheless).
This would also be exacerbated by the slowdown of inflation. Sadly, I do believe that it was probably known from creation that the math would only be sustainable if those in at the beginning held most of the initial stake and that instilling the idea that down voting was good for the community to stop theft and abuse would help extend the life of this illusion the math is sustainable.
A final observation on the intent is this. If the real objective was to bring in the masses, there would be some sort of reverse curve that rewarded lower staked accounts greater than higher staked, in order to promote ownership feelings and entice masses to come. As it stands now, most come, get little to no attention and leave. Or, they come with a large following, get the crap downvoted out of them to make sure they don't stay and reveal that bad reward math.
I don't think that's the case. Since every new user needs resource credits to transact on the chain, that increases the demand on Hive, so the user base can't increase and everything else stay even. An increased user base is an increase of demand on the token.
Also speaking outside of abstractions, the reality is if we had that much user growth, speculation would dramatically increase as well.
Most other social blockchain apps are a single application, so they almost inherently have a better UX. THAT is the thing. THAT is the difference. People getting ignored, that's a UX problem. The vast majority of people don't come here and get downvoted to oblivion.
The vast majority of people don't come here and get downvoted to oblivion.
True. It's the culture that it creates - a negative one.
(oligarchical, 'elitist' might is right, blah blah..)
Time will tell, but 4 years with zero increase active users, tell me my perspective is more accurate than the steem/hive sycophantic BS.
10,000 users, retaining just one user A YEAR!, would put us at 80,000 active users...
Maybe I'm looking at different writing, on a different wall, than yourself.
Time will tell...
Lot of good ideas.
My biggest gripe is the lack of options to find the category of posts I am searching for. I have to leave the front-end I am using, and go somewhere else in most cases. Otherwise I am stuck viewing algorithmic selected posts (basically ADs), just like google, promoted to bonkers levels to get me to click on it.
When all the search filters are designed to get me to upvote something fresh, to benefit an author, instead of helping me to find something specific that exists I am searching for, we have a big problem.
The basic search tool has not evolved much at all on Hive. I agree, a filter search would be great. Any advanced search options are the most obvious missing features.
I would love to be able to turn on Hive Cookies, for instance, and the search results fills up with things geared towards posts I visit the most frequently, or similar to the ones I've curated. Add a tag word, and the search becomes even more narrowed down.
Eventually search needs to allow a person to type in a quotation, and find the exact post that quotes the searched item. Reverse image search would be wonderfully useful too, to find out who originally posted an image.
All good points. Should also point you to this post
https://peakd.com/hive-139531/@good-karma/from-esteem-search-to-hivesearcher
and this tool
https://search.esteem.app/
and this proposal
https://peakd.com/me/proposals/114
Forgot about this one in the post.
Yes, I used this a lot for steem. I was actually confused when the update notes came out. I thought esteem was for steem, and I was waiting for the new hivesigner to release for Hive, but it looks look esteem can search for both hive and steem posts. I'm not sure on how that works specifically. Is it searching for Hive posts after the hardfork, and steem posts before the hardfork, or both chains completely?
The developer really confused me by telling people to visit the new website (https://hivesearcher.com/), which currently does nothing helpful. Hivesearcher autocomments many people asking them to visit the new website, which only currently has a logo you cannot interact with.
So basically, they want people to use the esteem app, even though they are already advertising the new name for Hive, which isn't ready yet. Very confusing.
Wow, exlenet y muy instructivo lo que has publicado, es de gran ayuda, gracias por compartir, te dejo mi voto y te sigo.
I use PeakD list function quite a bit. I have varying moods for what kind of content I want to look at and the list function works very well. I have a small group of people I have delegated to, I have a list for them. I have my favorite photographers, so I have a list for them. I still use my default followers feed. As time has passed I have quite a few and at times I need to adjust my following feed.
I currently have 13 list. Some people are duplicated on list, because they have different types/styles of content. I don't want my list available for others to view, it is my list. Perhaps for communities @asgarth can make list available for communities and make them viewable for others to see. The top 5 could be under the Team and then in the navigation bad a list drop down like you show. I don't think I would call it Collections though, I see it more as a categories list.
Being able to have meaningful list with short 30 word description would be a big help for communities.
That sort of categorization, people visiting can now find a breakdown of the overall community of Art to the various types being offered in the community.
You have some good ideas in your post. By this time next year things could look a lot different and be easier on the eyes and on finding the content that brings people in. Can you see a future where an Artist posting in OCA has as the first tag #oilpainting and then their post is linked/placed in the oil painting list.
Keep pushing, when time comes I am sure someone will help to build/improve it.
As you said you've said this before.
I can't believe there's no decent 'FAQs' section either.
What I find the most depressing is that there are now people who know less about Hive than I do writing 'ultimate guides' to Hive - missing out various bits and pieces.
We really do need a web site funded by the DAO with all this information.
So true. Especially for Hive.blog, one can actually draw inspiration from Medium.com (once logged in). The algorithm has recommended reading and features relevant post — also emails them — to retain the users.
Would love to have them here. Question is: Who is going to do it?
That is the magic question. I would if I could, but that's not my area.
As for the analytics I might give you some data, manyaly pulled out, for the time beeing. What is the community you want this?
OnChainArt that would be amazing @dalz!
I like what you wrote. A featured page would be awesome. Unfortunately it is true that after days great content becomes forgotten. Continuos improvement is necessary
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Nice post!
I'm going to add one thing: Roomservice has already done a pull request for hive.blog to integrate the referral system, and yet nothing has happened.
It's good there are people who think in terms of innovation and improvement.
You're right: organisation is a good priority on the to do list.
More specific: an organisation through which the user can better find categories and tags.
How's the lockdown going?