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Is Discord's UI/UX just hideously awful or is this just me? Here are a few highlights: - Icons for the servers you're on. I know what it's called. I don't know

by jmyeet 4y ago

Is Discord's UI/UX just hideously awful or is this just me? Here are a few highlights: - Icons for the servers you're on. I know what it's called. I don't know the name. Maybe there's a way to search for that? If so, it doesn't appear to be obvious; - Multiple places where you set settings; - You can create an alias for a given server but you have to do this manually. If you forget (or possibly people can see it anywhere) your identity is linked or can be leaked. Why is there no cohesive model for pseudonymity? - Searching and indexing. Nuff said; - Discord gives you a collection of essentially walled gardens. Personally I find this to be a subpar experience; - You can follow certain channels in another server. Or sometimes you can't. No idea why. Did the owner block it? I have no idea. Sometimes you just don't have the option and there's nothing to tell you why. Overall this is just a bad experience also; - Discord seems to be built for people who are terminally online on that server. People who see every chat message. If you're not in that category all you see is a hot mess with no direction; - Direct messages are another hot mess. Finding particular DMs or people can be a challenge. It's also used for spam and scams where servers haven't locked down the ability to DM other people on that server; - Discovery of servers is awful. You're relying on other sources for this in its entirety. So now we're having another communication model: forums. Great. Forums don't work for finding information. There's a reason why the likes of Reddit or even Stack Overflow supplanted forums: you can bubble up good comments or answers and skip all the noise that inevitably pollutes forums (eg "first!", "you shouldn't do X"). At least Discord has some authentication mechanisms to tie in with other platforms and the ability to make bots (note: I've never actually made one so I have no idea how easy or hard this is). Still, it's another embedded Chrome Electron bloatware nightmare. I've never understood the appeal. What am I missing? Because I'm sure I'm missing something.

themagician 4y ago
Its not you. It’s a disaster. I often wonder how something like this even came to be. For me the biggest issue is the most basic: the UI is a mix of random icons (some labeled and some not), text buttons and command line functions. But there is no rhyme or reason. It’s even difficult to explain how to do something. I imagine if you have a disability where you can’t use standard inputs or use a screen reader that Discord is, in fact, completely unusable.
haunter 4y ago
>I've never understood the appeal. What am I missing? Because I'm sure I'm missing something. - Easy to use multiplatform free voice chat. That was the original biggest selling point. Yes not everyone wants to selfhost or pay for something a dedicated server, basically killed Teamspeak, Mumble etc and such - UX which is still better than any combination of alternatives. Yes people want rich media chat, voice, private messages etc. - It just works. As I said above there might be individual better options but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts It's not perfect at all but does its job and what I want.
datagram 4y ago
> - You can create an alias for a given server but you have to do this manually. If you forget (or possibly people can see it anywhere) your identity is linked or can be leaked. Why is there no cohesive model for pseudonymity? I'm not sure I understand; pseudonymity is the norm on Discord. If you're worried about your identity being leaked, then why not make the pseudonym your username and use your real name as an alias on the few servers where you want it to be known? Also, I feel like the Quick Switcher (Ctrl/Cmd + K) would alleviate a lot of your problems finding things.
acedTrex 4y ago
> - You can follow certain channels in another server. Or sometimes you can't. No idea why. Did the owner block it? I have no idea. Sometimes you just don't have the option and there's nothing to tell you why. Overall this is just a bad experience also Server owners have the option to create announcement channels (different from text channels), you can subscribe to those and the owners of the channel can choose to publish posts. You can tell which channels you can subscribe to by the megaphone instead of the hashtag on the left of the channel name. > - Icons for the servers you're on. I know what it's called. I don't know the name. Maybe there's a way to search for that? If so, it doesn't appear to be obvious; What does this mean? if you are looking for a server that you are in by name you can do ctrl-k to open the command palette and search with that

by jmyeet 4y ago

themagician 4y ago

Its not you. It’s a disaster. I often wonder how something like this even came to be. For me the biggest issue is the most basic: the UI is a mix of random icons (some labeled and some not), text buttons and command line functions. But there is no rhyme or reason. It’s even difficult to explain how to do something. I imagine if you have a disability where you can’t use standard inputs or use a screen reader that Discord is, in fact, completely unusable.

haunter 4y ago

>I've never understood the appeal. What am I missing? Because I'm sure I'm missing something. - Easy to use multiplatform free voice chat. That was the original biggest selling point. Yes not everyone wants to selfhost or pay for something a dedicated server, basically killed Teamspeak, Mumble etc and such - UX which is still better than any combination of alternatives. Yes people want rich media chat, voice, private messages etc. - It just works. As I said above there might be individual better options but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts It's not perfect at all but does its job and what I want.

datagram 4y ago

> - You can create an alias for a given server but you have to do this manually. If you forget (or possibly people can see it anywhere) your identity is linked or can be leaked. Why is there no cohesive model for pseudonymity? I'm not sure I understand; pseudonymity is the norm on Discord. If you're worried about your identity being leaked, then why not make the pseudonym your username and use your real name as an alias on the few servers where you want it to be known? Also, I feel like the Quick Switcher (Ctrl/Cmd + K) would alleviate a lot of your problems finding things.

acedTrex 4y ago

> - You can follow certain channels in another server. Or sometimes you can't. No idea why. Did the owner block it? I have no idea. Sometimes you just don't have the option and there's nothing to tell you why. Overall this is just a bad experience also Server owners have the option to create announcement channels (different from text channels), you can subscribe to those and the owners of the channel can choose to publish posts. You can tell which channels you can subscribe to by the megaphone instead of the hashtag on the left of the channel name. > - Icons for the servers you're on. I know what it's called. I don't know the name. Maybe there's a way to search for that? If so, it doesn't appear to be obvious; What does this mean? if you are looking for a server that you are in by name you can do ctrl-k to open the command palette and search with that