7 ms·

I'm not sure what the research shows on this sort of thing, but when I loaded up the landing page on my desktop browser, I saw two buttons, and neither applied

I'm not sure what the research shows on this sort of thing, but when I loaded up the landing page on my desktop browser, I saw two buttons, and neither applied to me. "SIGN UP" and "LOG IN". Since I did not yet know what this thing is, beyond my vague knowledge of Kanban and email, I wanted it to explain that to me. Instead, I have to take action. Oh wait... after a while I look for a UI element - a scroll bar. And this is the only clue I get to tell me how to navigate. Is this a good design choice, to make it appear like your only options are one of two actions, while relying on a native browser control to hint to the user that they can scroll to get down to the information they are going to need to start making decisions? (I'm not arguing that this can't be a good design choice, but at least for me, personally, it seemed pushy, while also being unintuitive if you're not there to take one of those actions.)

sam0x17 8y ago
For me, this was a self-explanatory app. Just seeing the background image told me everything I needed to know.
- lttlrck 8y ago
  sure, but enough to sign up?
  - sam0x17 8y ago
    not for me, but maybe for my co-worker
cellularmitosis 8y ago
Came here to say this. I really don't like this UI/UX trend of "If the user isn't smart enough to test and see if they can scroll, screw 'em!". Apple did something similar in their Podcasts app (when you are playing a podcast, it turns out you can scroll down on the "card" to see a lot of additional features. It took me months to discover this, and reminded me of the months it took me to discover that the Calculator app can rotate into a scientific calculator).
- cryptozeus 8y ago
  this is for hn users...you can assume we know. Plus its an mvp, who cares about landlords page.
  - iamdave 8y ago
    who cares about landlords page I really hope this is just autocorrect getting hilariously overzealous, heh.
  - cellularmitosis 8y ago
    I _am_ an HN user, and the landing page absolutely does matter for an MVP. The issue here is that they went to all of the trouble to make a landing page, then hid it from their users. The parent of this thread was tipped off by noticing his scrollbar, but it was worse for me -- Chrome hides the scrollbar. I opened the link, saw a barren a paywall / loginwall, closed the tab, and started to write a post questioning the decision to post a barren paywall to HN. Then I thought "wait a minute, maybe I can scroll...", and opened up the tab again. That's not the first impression they want.
  - braythwayt 8y ago
    “That depends.” Some MVPs presume that some instruction and filtering of users takes place outside of the app. In my company, we make “early access” versions of features that presume there is a product manager talking to an early access customer and walking them through its use. Other times a feature is being launched to a wider audience, and we cannot presume they know anything about it. In that case, if it doesn’t interest them and inform them enough to use it, it is not really viable. So... I neither agree nor disagree with you about MVPs not caring about landing pages. I think we need more context. Perhaps for the purpose of “Show HN,” it is a fine MVP. But perhaps it is not a good MVP for the purpose of my tweeting “Check this cool app out.”
- dumbfounder 8y ago
  I guess I'm not smart enough then, or maybe I am too old. Along these lines I also just recently discovered that when viewing photos on an iphone you can scroll and see more info about a photo (geo, related pics, etc). I only discovered this by watching my 3 year old play with my phone a few weeks ago. What else have I been missing?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Zombieball 8y ago
I read a good article once (can’t seem to find it, I’ll link it if I do) where a UX designer had a similar reaction to a website. He was angry that he needed to provide an email address to access the “show me what this tool even is” part of a website. He concluded it was bad UX and wrote an angry tweet. Turns out the UX of the website had been user tested extensively. The design they chose was the most successful at achieving their goal (new user signup or something). The learning lesson was you may not be the target user for the design. Or you may not realize what the primary goal of the design is. Edit: This was the article I referenced https://medium.theuxblog.com/there-are-no-ux-best-practices-fe43af1d96e https://medium.theuxblog.com/there-are-no-ux-best-practices-... To clarify I wasn't trying to defend dark / grey UX patterns. Just thought I'd share as it helped me look at (what I consider) bad UX in a different frame of mind.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Oh, I think everyone complaining knows precisely what's the goal of this design. This is a "grey" pattern - not very dark, but sort of signalling that the people you're dealing with do not have your well-being in mind. Not evil, just not nice.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Yup. If a user doesn't understand something that a designer has worked to make hard to understand, that's bad UX, not good UX. If the phrase "user experience" is to have any meaning at all, the analysis has to be centered in the user's values, not the designer's. As an example, if a mark is taken in by a well-executed pigeon drop [1], one could call plausibly call it a well-designed scam. But one cannot call it good UX. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_drop
- braythwayt 8y ago
  “Help, there is this defective machine, it made a loud noise and a piece of metal emerged and lodged itself in my abdomen. It is unsafe, a very bad design!” “Well, actually, it is a gun, and it is a very good design for its intended purpose. It’s just that the manufacturer does not have your interests in mind.”
Rapzid 8y ago
It's certainly a dark pattern. The area is purpose made to look like a modal has take over the page and left you with two options. That area even adjusts to the window size furthering the effect.
simonhamp 8y ago
Honest question: how did you not get what the app was about almost immediately?
- zhte415 8y ago
  It wasn't obvious for me either. I also didn't get the scrolling element. It seems to be a merge of emails and todo? Still not really clear. Perhaps an introduction video could help? I'm also concerned on information security. There could be a really clever solution how full privacy and match prioritising emails. Senders and subject lines are sensitive. At work I currently get 1000-2000 email per day, of which about 500 need personal attention, including calendar invites. This sounds horrendous, and it ain't great, but Outlook is surprisingly adept at rule setting, being really responsive, and integrated with Office (and to a lesser extent Skype, OC was more pleasurable for the from a UX perspective) to make this manageable.
- neogodless 8y ago
  Oh I got it. But that was not enough for me to Sign Up. I still need to know... - on which devices will this work? - what email hosting / APIs does this support? - do I like the UI? - do I like the web site UI and think it'll translate to the app... ? - does this cost me something, such as a subscription or time clicking through ads? - will I actually like this UI for my email over what I do now?
- sireat 8y ago
  I've used Kanban type of task management sparingly so it was not immediately obvious what it could do for e-mail.
jakobegger 8y ago
Typically there are two affordances that tell the user he can scroll: 1) A scroll bar 2) Clipped content Many browsers hide the scroll bar, so the only thing left is 2). For some reason designers think that it's a good idea to scale the content in such a way that the initial page load looks like a complete page. This is so idiotic! You are actively misleading the customer! You are hiding all the marketing copy. Some designers have realised this is a problem, and they add a little arrow to indicate you can scroll. Nobody understands those weird arrows except other designers. The easiest way to tell users that there is more content is to show it! Make it so that part of the second headline is visible, and noone will miss the fact that there is more content below! If you go for sexy screenshots, sure, go make your first section fill the browser window. If you want your visitors to read your page, don't do that!
- jehlakj 8y ago
  Interesting. I’m pretty sensitive to UX but this has never been a problem for me. I don’t come across single non scrolling static websites that often, and knowing that the entire content will most likely never be at the top, I immediately scroll down without thinking. I find it extremely fascinating that some people actually have to look for a scroll bar or clipped content (spoon fed) in order to scroll down. Sometimes I don’t even know there is one unless I have to speed drag on a long page.
  - mkhalil 8y ago
    > I don’t come across single non scrolling static websites that often google.com comes to mind. Actually, now that this post curiously made me look: https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ ACTUALLY has content below the initial search form. I have been visiting that page for a very long time now and I actually never knew that until testing it right now to add to above list. Wow. aside: not sure why you included the word "static" in there, since it's kind of irrelevant to what users see. Maybe you meant it in a different way than most people take it, which usually means the site looks the same to all users.
  - selamtux 8y ago
    age, every one has different life experience
davidivadavid 8y ago
The "false bottom" thing is pretty well covered in UX/Conversion optimization circles. See, e.g. https://conversionxl.com/blog/false-bottom/ https://conversionxl.com/blog/false-bottom/
- munk-a 8y ago
  I am amazed by how astonishingly bad that article took to heart it's topic. I thought the article was super short when I reached the embedded Rebecca Gordon quote because I just assumed that was an "about the author" box that I could ignore. I also don't really pay attention to "return to top" buttons, but while reading their section on why displaying such buttons before the end of the article is a bad idea I glanced to the right and noticed a "return to top" button. A lot of the points in the article are well thought out, and I'm a bit fan of cut content myself but... they're hilariously bad at listening to their own advice.
worble 8y ago
Funnily enough I came across the same thing today. I was browsing for a new switch game and came across http://www.fallenlegiongame.com/ http://www.fallenlegiongame.com/. My first thought was that if you have to put a moving sign saying "scroll down ya dummy", then maybe you shouldn't be designing pages like this? But hey, at least they tell you to do it, unlike most others.
madrox 8y ago
I had already closed the tab since it didn't seem like there was a way to get more info. I discovered I could scroll by reading this comment. So I don't think it's a good design choice, no.
keymone 8y ago
i did try to find something of interest in the tinted background image while my mouse was travelling to the close button. i didn't.
davegauer 8y ago
Thank you for saying this for "the rest of us" who also find this incredibly unintuitive, counterproductive, and off-putting! Let's see if I have this right: so, apparently this false "full page" design gets more people to sign up than if it were clear there was more content on the page? Is that right? So following that logic, wouldn't you get yet even more sign-ups if it actually was just a full page Signup/Login choice? I mean, the "secret" content that the initial appearance is trying to "hide" can't possibly be helping the signup counts, can it? Otherwise you'd just have a "normal" page with clipped content that can clearly be scrolled, wouldn't you? What I mean is, I can't understand the existance of more content except to "reward" visitors who either notice the scrollbar or (apparently) try to scroll on every page they encounter. Please help me connect the dots, oh Monochromatic Lords of the Grey Pattern!
- mkhalil 8y ago
  I think you are absolutely right. If someone is not interested in the two options they have - done by purpose to increase sign ups - they will try something else like scrolling; which in this case is more information about the product. I don't like it, but that's my understanding.
jethro_tell 8y ago
Man, I actually left before I realized I needed to scroll. I went back and looked at it after I read your comment.
xmonkee 8y ago
I look forward to the first Show HN post where the top comment is not a minor UX quibble.
- adventured 8y ago
  Then you're in luck. This isn't a minor UX quibble. It's a dog shit UX approach that attempts to fool users into signing up before they get introduced to the product at all. It's not the worst approach ever, it's merely intentionally somewhat abusive.
soneca 8y ago
I think this is is just a first version of an MVP launch without much UX research. I wouldn't assume all the design details have a well-thought intention behind. And I wouldn't be too harsh judging the design choices. It may just reflect some explicit or implicit assumptions of the founder who is much more focused on the product itself than on the sales experience or onboarding flow. A good sign, in my opinion, to be honest. And between giving too much and too little prominence to CTA buttons, I would err on the too much side.
- Booligoosh 8y ago
  Yeah, I literally launched an early beta yesterday to share with some online buddies. Totally not a finished product While many of the comments have been harsh, there's actually been a lot of genuinely good feedback which I will take into account before launching properly.

sam0x17 8y ago

For me, this was a self-explanatory app. Just seeing the background image told me everything I needed to know.

lttlrck 8y ago
sure, but enough to sign up?
- sam0x17 8y ago
  not for me, but maybe for my co-worker

cellularmitosis 8y ago

Came here to say this. I really don't like this UI/UX trend of "If the user isn't smart enough to test and see if they can scroll, screw 'em!". Apple did something similar in their Podcasts app (when you are playing a podcast, it turns out you can scroll down on the "card" to see a lot of additional features. It took me months to discover this, and reminded me of the months it took me to discover that the Calculator app can rotate into a scientific calculator).

cryptozeus 8y ago
this is for hn users...you can assume we know. Plus its an mvp, who cares about landlords page.
- iamdave 8y ago
  who cares about landlords page I really hope this is just autocorrect getting hilariously overzealous, heh.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  I _am_ an HN user, and the landing page absolutely does matter for an MVP. The issue here is that they went to all of the trouble to make a landing page, then hid it from their users. The parent of this thread was tipped off by noticing his scrollbar, but it was worse for me -- Chrome hides the scrollbar. I opened the link, saw a barren a paywall / loginwall, closed the tab, and started to write a post questioning the decision to post a barren paywall to HN. Then I thought "wait a minute, maybe I can scroll...", and opened up the tab again. That's not the first impression they want.
- braythwayt 8y ago
  “That depends.” Some MVPs presume that some instruction and filtering of users takes place outside of the app. In my company, we make “early access” versions of features that presume there is a product manager talking to an early access customer and walking them through its use. Other times a feature is being launched to a wider audience, and we cannot presume they know anything about it. In that case, if it doesn’t interest them and inform them enough to use it, it is not really viable. So... I neither agree nor disagree with you about MVPs not caring about landing pages. I think we need more context. Perhaps for the purpose of “Show HN,” it is a fine MVP. But perhaps it is not a good MVP for the purpose of my tweeting “Check this cool app out.”
dumbfounder 8y ago
I guess I'm not smart enough then, or maybe I am too old. Along these lines I also just recently discovered that when viewing photos on an iphone you can scroll and see more info about a photo (geo, related pics, etc). I only discovered this by watching my 3 year old play with my phone a few weeks ago. What else have I been missing?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Zombieball 8y ago

I read a good article once (can’t seem to find it, I’ll link it if I do) where a UX designer had a similar reaction to a website. He was angry that he needed to provide an email address to access the “show me what this tool even is” part of a website. He concluded it was bad UX and wrote an angry tweet. Turns out the UX of the website had been user tested extensively. The design they chose was the most successful at achieving their goal (new user signup or something). The learning lesson was you may not be the target user for the design. Or you may not realize what the primary goal of the design is. Edit: This was the article I referenced https://medium.theuxblog.com/there-are-no-ux-best-practices-fe43af1d96e https://medium.theuxblog.com/there-are-no-ux-best-practices-... To clarify I wasn't trying to defend dark / grey UX patterns. Just thought I'd share as it helped me look at (what I consider) bad UX in a different frame of mind.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Oh, I think everyone complaining knows precisely what's the goal of this design. This is a "grey" pattern - not very dark, but sort of signalling that the people you're dealing with do not have your well-being in mind. Not evil, just not nice.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Yup. If a user doesn't understand something that a designer has worked to make hard to understand, that's bad UX, not good UX. If the phrase "user experience" is to have any meaning at all, the analysis has to be centered in the user's values, not the designer's. As an example, if a mark is taken in by a well-executed pigeon drop [1], one could call plausibly call it a well-designed scam. But one cannot call it good UX. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_drop
braythwayt 8y ago
“Help, there is this defective machine, it made a loud noise and a piece of metal emerged and lodged itself in my abdomen. It is unsafe, a very bad design!” “Well, actually, it is a gun, and it is a very good design for its intended purpose. It’s just that the manufacturer does not have your interests in mind.”

Rapzid 8y ago

It's certainly a dark pattern. The area is purpose made to look like a modal has take over the page and left you with two options. That area even adjusts to the window size furthering the effect.

simonhamp 8y ago

Honest question: how did you not get what the app was about almost immediately?

zhte415 8y ago
It wasn't obvious for me either. I also didn't get the scrolling element. It seems to be a merge of emails and todo? Still not really clear. Perhaps an introduction video could help? I'm also concerned on information security. There could be a really clever solution how full privacy and match prioritising emails. Senders and subject lines are sensitive. At work I currently get 1000-2000 email per day, of which about 500 need personal attention, including calendar invites. This sounds horrendous, and it ain't great, but Outlook is surprisingly adept at rule setting, being really responsive, and integrated with Office (and to a lesser extent Skype, OC was more pleasurable for the from a UX perspective) to make this manageable.
neogodless 8y ago
Oh I got it. But that was not enough for me to Sign Up. I still need to know... - on which devices will this work? - what email hosting / APIs does this support? - do I like the UI? - do I like the web site UI and think it'll translate to the app... ? - does this cost me something, such as a subscription or time clicking through ads? - will I actually like this UI for my email over what I do now?
sireat 8y ago
I've used Kanban type of task management sparingly so it was not immediately obvious what it could do for e-mail.

jakobegger 8y ago

Typically there are two affordances that tell the user he can scroll: 1) A scroll bar 2) Clipped content Many browsers hide the scroll bar, so the only thing left is 2). For some reason designers think that it's a good idea to scale the content in such a way that the initial page load looks like a complete page. This is so idiotic! You are actively misleading the customer! You are hiding all the marketing copy. Some designers have realised this is a problem, and they add a little arrow to indicate you can scroll. Nobody understands those weird arrows except other designers. The easiest way to tell users that there is more content is to show it! Make it so that part of the second headline is visible, and noone will miss the fact that there is more content below! If you go for sexy screenshots, sure, go make your first section fill the browser window. If you want your visitors to read your page, don't do that!

jehlakj 8y ago
Interesting. I’m pretty sensitive to UX but this has never been a problem for me. I don’t come across single non scrolling static websites that often, and knowing that the entire content will most likely never be at the top, I immediately scroll down without thinking. I find it extremely fascinating that some people actually have to look for a scroll bar or clipped content (spoon fed) in order to scroll down. Sometimes I don’t even know there is one unless I have to speed drag on a long page.
- mkhalil 8y ago
  > I don’t come across single non scrolling static websites that often google.com comes to mind. Actually, now that this post curiously made me look: https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ ACTUALLY has content below the initial search form. I have been visiting that page for a very long time now and I actually never knew that until testing it right now to add to above list. Wow. aside: not sure why you included the word "static" in there, since it's kind of irrelevant to what users see. Maybe you meant it in a different way than most people take it, which usually means the site looks the same to all users.
- selamtux 8y ago
  age, every one has different life experience

davidivadavid 8y ago

The "false bottom" thing is pretty well covered in UX/Conversion optimization circles. See, e.g. https://conversionxl.com/blog/false-bottom/ https://conversionxl.com/blog/false-bottom/

munk-a 8y ago
I am amazed by how astonishingly bad that article took to heart it's topic. I thought the article was super short when I reached the embedded Rebecca Gordon quote because I just assumed that was an "about the author" box that I could ignore. I also don't really pay attention to "return to top" buttons, but while reading their section on why displaying such buttons before the end of the article is a bad idea I glanced to the right and noticed a "return to top" button. A lot of the points in the article are well thought out, and I'm a bit fan of cut content myself but... they're hilariously bad at listening to their own advice.

worble 8y ago

Funnily enough I came across the same thing today. I was browsing for a new switch game and came across http://www.fallenlegiongame.com/ http://www.fallenlegiongame.com/. My first thought was that if you have to put a moving sign saying "scroll down ya dummy", then maybe you shouldn't be designing pages like this? But hey, at least they tell you to do it, unlike most others.

madrox 8y ago

I had already closed the tab since it didn't seem like there was a way to get more info. I discovered I could scroll by reading this comment. So I don't think it's a good design choice, no.

keymone 8y ago

i did try to find something of interest in the tinted background image while my mouse was travelling to the close button. i didn't.

davegauer 8y ago

Thank you for saying this for "the rest of us" who also find this incredibly unintuitive, counterproductive, and off-putting! Let's see if I have this right: so, apparently this false "full page" design gets more people to sign up than if it were clear there was more content on the page? Is that right? So following that logic, wouldn't you get yet even more sign-ups if it actually was just a full page Signup/Login choice? I mean, the "secret" content that the initial appearance is trying to "hide" can't possibly be helping the signup counts, can it? Otherwise you'd just have a "normal" page with clipped content that can clearly be scrolled, wouldn't you? What I mean is, I can't understand the existance of more content except to "reward" visitors who either notice the scrollbar or (apparently) try to scroll on every page they encounter. Please help me connect the dots, oh Monochromatic Lords of the Grey Pattern!

mkhalil 8y ago
I think you are absolutely right. If someone is not interested in the two options they have - done by purpose to increase sign ups - they will try something else like scrolling; which in this case is more information about the product. I don't like it, but that's my understanding.

jethro_tell 8y ago

Man, I actually left before I realized I needed to scroll. I went back and looked at it after I read your comment.

xmonkee 8y ago

I look forward to the first Show HN post where the top comment is not a minor UX quibble.

adventured 8y ago
Then you're in luck. This isn't a minor UX quibble. It's a dog shit UX approach that attempts to fool users into signing up before they get introduced to the product at all. It's not the worst approach ever, it's merely intentionally somewhat abusive.

soneca 8y ago

I think this is is just a first version of an MVP launch without much UX research. I wouldn't assume all the design details have a well-thought intention behind. And I wouldn't be too harsh judging the design choices. It may just reflect some explicit or implicit assumptions of the founder who is much more focused on the product itself than on the sales experience or onboarding flow. A good sign, in my opinion, to be honest. And between giving too much and too little prominence to CTA buttons, I would err on the too much side.

Booligoosh 8y ago
Yeah, I literally launched an early beta yesterday to share with some online buddies. Totally not a finished product While many of the comments have been harsh, there's actually been a lot of genuinely good feedback which I will take into account before launching properly.