Ironic the site has such a bad UX. Emoji make it hard to read; all the information is pointlessly in collapsing boxes, it has screwy animations and scrolling, crazy hover effects, bad zoom (it's blurry), silly checkmarks instead of bullet points...
It is indeed ironic. I was initially interested in the content, but I closed the site in less than a minute after getting frustrated by the emojis, blurry text and annoying sidebar and header animations when scrolling.
I remember another site with similar content and also pretty annoying UX: https://lawsofux.com
I'd take a long markdown document with a table of contents over this any day.
I'm still interested in reading about these UX principles though. Is there another alternative, easier to read resource?
Agreed. It's almost surreally lacking self-awareness. The very first entry is a warning not to display too many items, and it's immediately followed by a very very long list of items.
Most of which are still blank.
If you set out to parody poor UX - in fact poor UX culture - this is probably what it would look like.
I don't hate the textual content - not great, not terrible - but I do somewhat resent the fact that it's selling itself on disinterested helpfulness when it's also clearly harvesting emails, which I assume are going to be used for some other purpose/project.
Removing the emojis in the ordered list at the top would be really helpful. My brain wouldn't let me properly read that simple list with them there. I get that they are trying to introduce the way-finding anchor link piece, but it really gets in the way of the content.
This is really nice, and the collection of practical examples is what makes the content here shine.
Presentationally, the emoji are maybe a little overrepresented, but some of the pairings are amusingly clever. Apparently some here don't appreciate the use of progressive disclosure for the navigation, but for content of this length, it's an appropriate alternative to navigating to a new page.
The one thing I'd suggest is limiting the expand/collapse interaction to one open at a time. There isn't really any advantage to having multiple open at once as there isn't a use case for comparing between open boxes, and keeping everything else collapsed makes exploring the index simpler.
You actually understood exactly what we tried to achieve with that progressive disclosure and management of cognitive load ;). It's the #1 positive feedback we get from the people who use this page.
We did quite a bit of user research with different cohorts of people before we released this list. We originally considered auto-closing the other panels when you open a new one (!), but beta testers mentioned that it was convenient to compare two elements or to Ctrl-F through some stuff that saw a few tiles back.
So I guess we had the same thought process, but our beta tester descoped that need for us. So we launched that MVP without it.
I'll definitely keep an eye on the feedback (and comment section) if more people raise that concern.
We intend to update that page regularly.
Cheers!
PS: One of the UX hacks that I added though is scrolling back to the top of your active tile when you close it to avoid losing your anchor. With that said, even that was a bit limit for my JS skills (I'm far from a dev, merely a curious person).
100% Abdullah. Behavioral psychology should be used for good.
We've been in touch with Nir Eyal for a bit now. He wrote "Hooked", but quickly realized that the ethical side of behavioral psychology was misunderstood completely and started to focus his efforts there.
We asked him for a quote because we believe this is extremely important (just Ctrl-F "Eyal" on the page you should find it).
We also really like his "regret test" regarding the ethical side of behavioral design. It comes down to answering: "If users knew everything the product designer knows, would they still execute the intended behavior? Are they likely to regret doing this?"
Side note: As for us, we don't believe in "growth for the sake of growth". We define "growth by design" as a process at the intersection of Growth (a scientific method to improve) and Design (a human-centered process used to solve problems). It involves crafting meaningful experiences at scale so that an organization can exceed its business goals while delighting their customers. We talk about this and our vision on our /about page if you're interested!
On that note, you make me realize we should probably add something regarding this in the conclusion. Great idea, cheers Abdullah!
UX is to Human Computer Interaction what petroleum engineering is to chemistry.
The methods aren’t wrong per se but it’s probably something we’d be better off with less of, and any questions around “ethics” or “sustainability” are going to be met with lots of entertaining hand waving.
Yeah, Kahneman is a legend in that area indeed. Huge influence in the behavioral sphere. Another nice read (althought much lighter) that is covering many biases as well is "You are not so smart" and "Super Thinking" (already linked in the article).
We don't have any product to sell :/. We've been creating case studies for 15 months for people in 120 countries. All for free. The community has been asking us to build more even though we're strapped for time. The only way we could make that happen is if we start a premium subscription for those interested (but keep a foundation of free content of course).
That's very kind, thanks Drew! :) Since we're only two indie hackers, honestly it was an insane amount of work to map the product examples and design the page.
It's a good thing we found the work of Buster Benson a few days before we published. That allows us to split the biases in the four categories that he found. (Buster deserves a MAJOR kudos for that. His research summary was brilliant.)
cosmotic|5 years ago
falafel|5 years ago
I remember another site with similar content and also pretty annoying UX: https://lawsofux.com
I'd take a long markdown document with a table of contents over this any day.
I'm still interested in reading about these UX principles though. Is there another alternative, easier to read resource?
TheOtherHobbes|5 years ago
Most of which are still blank.
If you set out to parody poor UX - in fact poor UX culture - this is probably what it would look like.
I don't hate the textual content - not great, not terrible - but I do somewhat resent the fact that it's selling itself on disinterested helpfulness when it's also clearly harvesting emails, which I assume are going to be used for some other purpose/project.
psweber|5 years ago
1ark|5 years ago
mortenjorck|5 years ago
Presentationally, the emoji are maybe a little overrepresented, but some of the pairings are amusingly clever. Apparently some here don't appreciate the use of progressive disclosure for the navigation, but for content of this length, it's an appropriate alternative to navigating to a new page.
The one thing I'd suggest is limiting the expand/collapse interaction to one open at a time. There isn't really any advantage to having multiple open at once as there isn't a use case for comparing between open boxes, and keeping everything else collapsed makes exploring the index simpler.
danbenoni|5 years ago
You actually understood exactly what we tried to achieve with that progressive disclosure and management of cognitive load ;). It's the #1 positive feedback we get from the people who use this page.
We did quite a bit of user research with different cohorts of people before we released this list. We originally considered auto-closing the other panels when you open a new one (!), but beta testers mentioned that it was convenient to compare two elements or to Ctrl-F through some stuff that saw a few tiles back.
So I guess we had the same thought process, but our beta tester descoped that need for us. So we launched that MVP without it.
I'll definitely keep an eye on the feedback (and comment section) if more people raise that concern.
We intend to update that page regularly.
Cheers!
PS: One of the UX hacks that I added though is scrolling back to the top of your active tile when you close it to avoid losing your anchor. With that said, even that was a bit limit for my JS skills (I'm far from a dev, merely a curious person).
bogdanoff_2|5 years ago
GloriousKoji|5 years ago
petewailes|5 years ago
Which is probably the least user-friendly thing I've come across in a while.
danbenoni|5 years ago
abdullahkhalids|5 years ago
danbenoni|5 years ago
We've been in touch with Nir Eyal for a bit now. He wrote "Hooked", but quickly realized that the ethical side of behavioral psychology was misunderstood completely and started to focus his efforts there.
We asked him for a quote because we believe this is extremely important (just Ctrl-F "Eyal" on the page you should find it).
We also really like his "regret test" regarding the ethical side of behavioral design. It comes down to answering: "If users knew everything the product designer knows, would they still execute the intended behavior? Are they likely to regret doing this?"
Side note: As for us, we don't believe in "growth for the sake of growth". We define "growth by design" as a process at the intersection of Growth (a scientific method to improve) and Design (a human-centered process used to solve problems). It involves crafting meaningful experiences at scale so that an organization can exceed its business goals while delighting their customers. We talk about this and our vision on our /about page if you're interested!
On that note, you make me realize we should probably add something regarding this in the conclusion. Great idea, cheers Abdullah!
GuiA|5 years ago
The methods aren’t wrong per se but it’s probably something we’d be better off with less of, and any questions around “ethics” or “sustainability” are going to be met with lots of entertaining hand waving.
RivieraKid|5 years ago
I'm just reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and several of those principles are talked about in the book.
danbenoni|5 years ago
Yeah, Kahneman is a legend in that area indeed. Huge influence in the behavioral sphere. Another nice read (althought much lighter) that is covering many biases as well is "You are not so smart" and "Super Thinking" (already linked in the article).
yellowapple|5 years ago
jamesonicklaus|5 years ago
31337|5 years ago
kristopolous|5 years ago
danbenoni|5 years ago
*edit: typo and clarification
hiidrew|5 years ago
danbenoni|5 years ago
It's a good thing we found the work of Buster Benson a few days before we published. That allows us to split the biases in the four categories that he found. (Buster deserves a MAJOR kudos for that. His research summary was brilliant.)