Reddit is more than 10 years old and proved to be a great place for original content and is one of the greatest communities on the internet at this time. But, as you might have experienced, it has a very complicated and old UI which is really annoying. Old users are using the UI without any problem as they are used to it but the UI is hard to understand for new people and users might leave Reddit as soon as they join it.
It looks like the Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman, is aware of the problem and he finally realized that the UI is restricting its growth and decided to change the UI of “the front page of the internet” after 10 years. Steve compared Reddit to a restaurant which has great food but poor customer service and long queues. People who have already eaten at that restaurant know that the food is good and they will still bear the poor service, but new customers will prefer to go to another restaurant. Huffman realized that the user interface is a hindrance to the site, therefore, they are changing its design.
“Reddit did not succeed because it has a shitty UI,” Huffman said. “Reddit succeeded despite having a shitty UI.”
Steve promises that the new UI will not change the “core mechanic” of Reddit. You’ll only get a new design which will make it easier to interact with the site and save your time.
Reddit has a different design on its mobile app and it is possible that the new design will take ideas from the mobile app and implement it on the web. Steve says that the mobile app is “a lot better”. However, it is still unknown how the new Reddit design will look like. The ultimate goal of the new Reddit design will be to increase user conversion as 3-9 million new users visit the site every day and they never come back due to the poor UI.
A few days ago, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel also announced that Snapchat is being completely redesigned. The CEO admitted that they’ve been hearing over the years that Snapchat is difficult to use and they are going to finally redesign it. “One thing that we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback. As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use,” Evan Spiegel said. He made it clear that the new Snapchat will have a complete design overhaul and it will not be just minor UI tweaks.
It looks like the companies are finally realizing the importance of design and making it better to engage more users.
