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View submission: Addressing the new video player
Next Steps: Part of my mental makeup is that if I identify an issue, I try to find a solution to offer along with pointing out the screw up. So heres what I think would save a lot of head aches for Users, Mods and Amins:
1. Announce in advance your intention to change something, don’t just drop it half baked and non tested on everyone and expect everyone to love it.
2. When redesigning part of the core experience of Reddit (i.e. “new” Reddit, Reddit official app, Mobile Web, etc.) make that redesign (at least at first) function somewhat like what you are replacing.
3. After you have stabilized the replacement,THEN start adding in those bells and whistles the stakeholders are so fond of… and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY MAKE THEM EITHER OPT-IN or AT LEAST HAVE A WAY TO TURN THE DAMN THINGS OFF! (Please see chat, followers, new video player, etc).
A great example of this is the “new” reddit. No one is debating the fact that “old” Reddit’s back end needed to be updated… and building on a new platform made perfect sense.
What caused the blowback was that they put out a new reddit that didn’t look or function ANYTHING like the old Reddit that people have been using for years. They even put in a “classic” view THAT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE THE OLD REDDIT!
This is UI Design 101 people, if user’s can’t figure out how to use your new UI, then your UI design failed.
They could have avoided a lot of this by simply creating the new Reddit to make it close to design and functionality as the old, and then start iterating from there. But they won’t because see step 2 above.
To any admins still reading, please take the above as a plea from a long time reddit user… there’s a reason I use old reddit and 3rd party apps, I don’t want to be subjected to whatever new hotness feature you jam out there.
This is ruining the Reddit experience and if there was a viable alternative out there I would have switched already (re: Digg). Please stop doing this and let us decide how we use Reddit, not push what is deemed the right way by leadership/stakeholders on us willy nilly. (Yes I said willy nilly, and I’m sticking to that choice)
I expect zero response from admins to this post, but maybe one will glance over it, and the next time they are in a meeting planning the rollout of a shiny new feature… maybe one will raise a hand and say “Shouldn’t this feature be opt-in?” or “this has a lot of potential for abuse, maybe we should re-think it?” or “this is going to confuse a lot of people because we’re changing the way everything works without telling them about it!”
Probably won’t happen, but a boy can dream right?
There's nothing here!