Gregory's ServerI tried eating fruit but the onboarding was confusing. I have to choose from apple, banana, orange? How is a normal user supposed to navigate this complexity
 112 comments
I'm going to stick to that chopped fruit you get in the little plastic boxes marked "Fruit". Regular fruit needs to take some UX lessons from those guys Getting some annoyed responses to this. Look it's up to you if you don't want to take UX seriously, but you can't expect fruit to reach a mainstream audience if you don't solve the onboarding issues      @tomw it is a funny point but you're likely getting annoyed replies (which I can't see because "fediverse stuff") as you appear to be defending a deeply important issue by using a false comparison. Fruit complexity does not let the fediverse off the hook my sentiment. Mastodon has serious UX issues, and onboarding issues. some users have serious ideology issues, resembling linuxians and feel the need to make fun of 'noobs. the protocol activitypub has issues regarding privacy (there is none) and problems with after post audience changes. there is no de-activate account feature.  @katharina_buholzer well, you need to be more specific when you mention UI issues. I'm the maintainer of a niche client, tooter, on a niche mobile os, SailfishOs, and we likes are just trying to keep up with the bugs. This is unpaid work we do because we're into community company and not community as commodity. Onboarding is an offensive word, btw. I do not know wha onboarding might be offensive. It is a short word for the process of getting people onto a platform. the UX issues I mention are more related to the web interface. I am aware of some clients out there enhancing the experience. As a rule: I do not recommend using any social media app on a smartphone. @katharina_buholzer when people, in corporate speak, say onboarding, i see cattle being prodded onto wagons to the slaughterhouse. Or worse. Ok, WHICH mastodon web client? The 'official one' I suppose?  @scottjenson @tomw fruit interfaces are also remarkably consistent and thus, forward-thinking parents teach them in early childhood already; as we all know, familiarity is intuitive.  @tomw sometimes you're not even supposed to eat the fruit. You ignore the fruit and eat the root. So confusing! Someone really needs to streamline this whole plant issue. @tomw And the ridiculous names! They even named some fruits after colours (orange), birds (kiwi) or mental states (bananas). Torn between replying to the sincere posts about UX and the ones that stick to the topic in hand, namely fruit  @tomw it gets worse. Have you heard about the tomato? How am I to know what is compatible with what? @tomw Certainly, Sir. That's not going to be a community success. However, for the nerd you seem to be, the scientific comparison of apples and oranges is a proven way of entering into this complex subject:  @tomw You dont *have* to but new users may find it easier to use peeled, although they may need help from an experienced fruit user with the right tools to peel and slice into more manageable pieces. Power users usually don't bother though.  @tomw @tomw  Hey, I'm releasing a new fruit! It's spiky and smells like death! Come try Durian™️ today!  @tomw The funny thing about this is they literally bred what we know as fruit to be usable by regular people where as oss devs could take the smallest amount of effort but are too busy laughing at idea of usability @dale I hadn't considered that you could see selective fruit breeding as a type of 'UX' - though I don't think they ever quite fully optimised the FTUE @tomw it's very well optimized because some people actually care about other people benefiting from being able to eat fruit whereas a lot of mastodon proponents just want to be able to dunk on people without a CS degree from their little clique  Oh, and you're oversimplifying things! There are a confusing array of different *kinds* of apples!!!  @lucifargundam @tomw @JeffGrigg Parody is dead. No matter how ludicrous the joke, it seems you'll find that it's actually happening/happened somewhere. 🙄  The large platforms have formed an expectation isn’t compelling with a bit of context, right? It’s like walking by 3 restaurants and deciding on one. It is true however that the expectation has momentum and it should be addressed. @tomw and then when you switch from apples to bananas you have to… download… a bunch of fruit…files? And wait for it to propagate and hope the… banana doesn’t get stuck halfway (or the apple, I guess?) And then you lose 30% of your… fruit… followers? And now you’re subject to the rules of the banana community, and the banana people swarm you to say you are…. peeling it wrong? Sorry my dumb fruit brain can’t comprehend your perfect very enlightening metaphor @tomw To be fair, if you'd never encountered a fruit before, and then someone put various fruits in front of you and left you to it, it wouldn't be immediately obvious which one you should try or how.  @frankmcp It's true, there are still several fruits I am mystified by. What's up with that giant stone in the middle of a mango? How am I supposed to more than a slither of fleshy fruity bit from this? @tomw Sincere question: Do you want non-techies (so, most humans) to be able to join the federated web without a manual? I have smart, kind, thoughtful friends who have repeatedly tried to join and participate on mastodon, but the onboarding confusion has kept them off. There’s no need to gatekeep. @rcbo I think gatekeeping is going around saying "this is too hard for you", which is the opposite of what I'm doing here. The idea that anyone needs a "manual" to make one decision is ridiculous. @tomw Fair definition of gatekeeping, agreed. But blaming users is never the way to making a successful product. If a decision is asked of someone, and they aren’t given the context/info needed to feel confident making the decision, the issue is with the system, not the person. @rcbo I agree to that extent, which is why I'm strongly in favour of having .social as a default instance in the 'official' apps, even though everyone screamed about it endlessly @tomw Ah, I may not have been active here during that debate. That’s definitely one solution! Maybe even narrowing it to three, like choosing your first Pokémon. 😆 Thanks for the earnest chat. 🙌   @tomw ?? You (likely) have a whole lifetime of experience with fruits. What they are. How they taste. Textural differences. But yeah, sure, you also know everything about 25 randomly named servers, none of which have a description, and it was a simple choice? That's rude. Give some consideration to normal folks who really have no idea what a "server" is or how to choose one. Your post is insulting to all the non-techies who just want to leave the bird. @tomw Your actual point would be more effectively made if it was made in the first post, not 3 deep into the thread. Fwiw, I agree w/your actual point. But your first post is just "rage bait" and I guess it worked. @glowrocks @tomw Where are servers listed without descriptions? They almost all seem to have them on joinmastodon.org (where the concept of servers is also explained) @hyperlinkyourheart @tomw This is a very useful page: https://joinmastodon.org/servers I think it's somewhat new, and it certainly does make things easier. I recall starting the app and being presented a list of servers w/very brief, if any, descriptions. This is MUCH better. @glowrocks @tomw That existed when I signed up! Maybe it's just the app specifically that's the problem? I've never used it, I signed up on the web and use Tusky. @hyperlinkyourheart @tomw I don't know ... to me, the point is that mastodon used to be hard to sign up for and folks have done a lot of work to make it easier. That's a good thing in my opinion. There's probably more to be done, but it's hard for me to say, as I'm here now 🙂 @tomw I intended to explain how the names of the fruits start with A, B, and O, so they're clearly keyed to blood types which would give you onboarding guidance. But then I read the rest of your thread [?] and now I get that there are whole layers of complexity I didn't fathom. One really has to be a complete nerd to understand how the system works, right? @Bodling Yes, and what role does vitamin C play in all of this? Fruit needs to work on its complexity issues  @tomw exclusively eating raw durian in public may make me smell like rotting gym socks, but all my friends are doing it, so @tomw sadly the average internet has been conditioned to the convenient one-click-away-to-reach-the-world of centralised platforms, and coupling that with massive network effect, average users would rather not bother with fediverse despite all knowing twitter or meta’s harm @tomw @rstockm That‘s why people love Smoothies and pay way too much money for them. This is a weak argument for I don‘t know what. @trustedsystem @rstockm Twitter is a smoothie... buy some of the stuff they've blended in there ain't fruit  @tomw well, when you were a child, you didn’t get notion about anything anyways. Probably you just put in your mouth and see what happens. I suggest this as a move forward of this predicament 🤙🏻 @tomw Focused Connection by Starforce Production LLC. share Nutritional Options in a interesting and enjoyable staycation fashion. https://www.starforceproductionllc.com   @tomw Fruit juice. Orange and banana liquefied, with some protein powder is…a good meal.  |
Each fruit peels in a different way, apparently you don't even have to peel an apple? It's a compatibility nightmare