5 ms·
He's already received complaints and sort of laughed them away: http://dcurt.is/unkudo http://dcurt.is/unkudo Personally I think it's bad UX, but what do I kno
by Smudge 15y ago
He's already received complaints and sort of laughed them away:
http://dcurt.is/unkudo http://dcurt.is/unkudo
Personally I think it's bad UX, but what do I know; I'm not Dustin Curtis.
- Killswitch 15y agoI just hovered it, damn you dcurtis!
- 54mf 15y agoI have a ton of respect for Mr. Curtis, but he's utterly and completely wrong on the issue. It's not a "serious" thing, just like calling someone a mean name isn't necessarily a "serious" thing, but both kind of make you a dick.
- tptacek 15y agoHow could you possibly care enough about Curtis' made-up number to call him a dick? Never mind. I couldn't possibly care. It's a game. Relax.
- 54mf 15y agoIt's a dark pattern. In my opinion, at least; an ambiguous interface element with unexpected and unintended consequences. Judging by his obvious design talent, I think Mr. Curtis should know better, especially in light of the incredibly negative response. It's a dick move. You care enough to follow through with replying to me, it seems. I'm plenty relaxed, I just thought it was worth calling a spade a spade in this case.
- recursive 15y agoExcept it doesn't actually have consequences.
- ricardobeat 15y agoIt does have, and you're seeing them right here and now.
- md224 15y agoIt's definitely bad UX. Curtis tries to brush away criticism with his claim that the "kudos" number is "an otherwise meaningless number," but this argument is fatally flawed. Plenty of things that human beings use for social signaling are, when removed from context, technically "meaningless", but within context they can hold plenty of meaning. In the case of Curtis's website, the "Kudos" counter is implied to display a count of voluntary approval. By essentially tricking users into incrementing the count, Curtis violates this expectation, which is why everyone feels "cheated" by it. Subsequent visitors to the site who don't realize the counter has been gamed may take it as an indicator of how many people enjoyed the article, when in fact the numbers are inflated by other users against their will. This is not only terrible UX, but bordering on outright deceit. In a world dominated by social media and ubiquitous "Like" counters, for someone to brush off a Kudos count as "an otherwise meaningless number" is either an incredible display of naivety or straight-up bullshit.
- aprescott 15y agoWhile I agree, my complaint with it is even simpler: hit refresh and you can ostensibly keep adding kudos without limit. If that's not the case, then it's a UI problem because it doesn't tell you as much. If it is the case, then it certainly removes whatever meaning it has the moment someone starts inflating the count.
- fruchtose 15y agoThe problem is really a combination of the two. People expect kudos to be tracked in a reasonable fashion for the reason that, if the counter exists, it must be taken seriously. The rest of the system is stripped down, leaving people with the impression that whatever is left must be important. This is a false impression, and that's what's disappointing about the feature. Dustin Curtis has taken a serious (read: pretentious) approach to the rest of the site, but he's left the kudos system hanging by a chad.
- bricestacey 15y agoI repeated this about a thousand times and he seems to have fixed it ;). Also, he seems to have reverted the count on his unkudos page. Not the actions I would have expected from someone who thought nothing of it.
- pclark 15y agothis is a good reminder as to how different visual and user experience design are. just because you can make a pretty design does not automatically qualify you to design useable software.
- nchlswu 15y agoThis may be a UX/Visual issue, but how is it a usability issue?
- Domenic_S 15y agoIt breaks discoverability by executing its action /during discovery/. Imagine if you, using a new web browser, clicked on the "File" menu to see what was there and instead of dropping down a menu, it opened a file browser. In the end not a life-changing or permanent problem, but bad usability problem. Also, usability is a subset of UX.
- bricestacey 15y agoI would agree with you, but this is a blog. You're taking it too seriously.
- jarek 15y agoFrom this very article it seems the author of the blog is taking its design pretty seriously. Why shouldn't we?
- nchlswu 15y agoI know usability is a subset of UX. Thanks for the explanation. Breaking discoverability makes sense re: usability.
- unjinxable 15y agoIt's easy to call it a meaningless interaction, but it's far from meaningless. He's explicitly breaking an implicit trust between himself and the reader. He's saying "Hey reader, I'm watching you." If you don't think this is a big deal, I invite you to think about a natural extension of this concept: A comment form that sends its entire contents to the server on every keypress.
- spullara 15y agoI wonder how many already do that....