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Why I love Snapchat

justinkan.com

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Re: Why I love Snapchat

#41

Post by nmat »

minimaxir wrote: post #12

The problem I have with Snapchat is that there are many deliberate, counterintuitive UI/UX decisions which make the app hard to use. This causes a lot of bad post-hoc rationalization from many startups that "Snapchat is a multibillion dollar startup, and they have these bad UX features, therefore if we have these X features we will be successful too!" And thus the startup ecosystem as a whole gets dragged down.

The bad UI generates a sort of viral effect. I know a lot of young kids who use snapchat and often the conversation starts with 'How did you do that effect on that video?' or 'How do you send a text message without a picture?'. Snapchat is one of few apps that has a lot of hidden features for power users that are not explained anywhere. I am not saying that it is a good thing, but it makes people talk about it.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#42

Post by squeaky-clean »

joenot443 wrote: post #13
minimaxir wrote: post #12

The problem I have with Snapchat is that there are many deliberate, counterintuitive UI/UX decisions which make the app hard to use. This causes a lot of bad post-hoc rationalization from many startups that "Snapchat is a multibillion dollar startup, and they have these bad UX features, therefore if we have these X features we will be successful too!" And thus the startup ecosystem as a whole gets dragged down.

What decisions specifically are you talking about?

What I hate most are the ton of features which are supposed to be "discoverable." Or in other words, you have no idea they exist until someone else tells you about it (and how did they find out)?

For example, aside from the traditional way of adding a friend, you can point your camera, in Snapchat, at someone else's phone displaying the profile screen, and it will automatically add them as a friend. Only one other person I've met has known about it before I told them (and they're the ones that told me).

The UI also is just generally clumsy or buggy. Another example, just some of my gripes about the part of the app where you can text chat with people:

You get a push notification that "X is typing" whenever someone begins writing a message to you, even if they don't send a message. Every few days I get one of these notifications when a friend accidentally began typing to me instead of someone else.

They've replaced the "send" button on the keyboard with a button that livestreams your camera to that person. Quite a surprise the first time you're chatting and you're only in your underwear.

You have to hold one of your fingers on the screen the entire time you're video chatting. And you change between the front and back-facing camera based on where on the screen you are holding your finger.

I actually really like Snapchat, it's the only social network/app I use regularly, but damn does the app suck.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#44

Post by JonFish85 »

Bahamut wrote: post #34
jmduke wrote: post #25

I was about to make a snarky comment disagreeing with Justin -- as one of those folks who can't deal with Snapchat, I think it's a weird encapsulation of a lot of my complaints of newer social apps. The UX feels deliberately confusing and disorienting; it promotes a culture of manufactured intimacy; I have to deal with a bunch of software developers thinking they're hip by saying 'bless up' and flooding their social…

Wholeheartedly agree - I spent 2 weeks at a friend's place just a week ago, and my friend I was in became obsessed with recording videos purely for Snapchat every time. Instead of focusing on the moment with friends, she was more concerned with posting something on Snapchat for our circle to see. I don't want everything I do blasted on social media - I want to enjoy the moments I spend with friends. Snapchat is the o…

> Snapchat is the opposite of living in the moment,

I used it only for a year or so, but my impression is/was that Snapchat is a way of trying to show other people how in-the-moment you are, even though you have to take the little bit of time away from that moment to broadcast it.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#46

Post by justin »

jmduke wrote: post #25

I was about to make a snarky comment disagreeing with Justin -- as one of those folks who can't deal with Snapchat, I think it's a weird encapsulation of a lot of my complaints of newer social apps. The UX feels deliberately confusing and disorienting; it promotes a culture of manufactured intimacy; I have to deal with a bunch of software developers thinking they're hip by saying 'bless up' and flooding their social…

To address some of your points:

I think celeb culture's existence on Snapchat and other platforms doesn't have much to do with what I wrote about how Snapchat works.

You get feedback in the form of private snaps and messages, not public #s of comments and likes. So, it isn't a public competition. This is true for celebs and for myself and for every day users.

But it still feels nice to get positive feedback (like someone telling you offline "I like your snaps", or someone snapping you a response to your Story). Getting more friends on it increases private, positive feedback.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#47

Post by CIPHERSTONE »

Touche wrote: post #5
soneca wrote: post #3

"The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I’m doing every day might be cool for other people to see." But what is the reward of content creation? Honest question. How do a user feel their effort in posting was worthy? I never used Snapchat, so I don't get it much. Although I'm for sure not dismissive as some, I just never tried it.

The reward is when someone replies to your snapchat, it's social validation.

Your comment really speaks to a larger problem that social media would appear to have created, that being a "need" for as you put it social validation. You hear stories about people becoming severely emotionally distressed because they only get a low number of "likes" an confront friends for not "liking" or commenting.

It just feels (to me at least), that this is a problem. Granted before what we consider to be the electronic age of social media, this kind of validation existed -- for example, getting a phone call from a friend would give one a similar level of validation - I have a friend! He/She likes me enough to call me!" - it wasn't something someone expected to happen every ten minutes and it wasn't something that required you to do anything.t

Now that we are all connected, we post, we expect validation that someone has read the nugget we posted. Yay! Friends!

I dunno, just strikes me as something to be leery of..

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#48

Post by kneel »

minimaxir wrote: post #12

The problem I have with Snapchat is that there are many deliberate, counterintuitive UI/UX decisions which make the app hard to use. This causes a lot of bad post-hoc rationalization from many startups that "Snapchat is a multibillion dollar startup, and they have these bad UX features, therefore if we have these X features we will be successful too!" And thus the startup ecosystem as a whole gets dragged down.

I think the UI is great, it took me a couple of times playing around with it to map everything out but once I got that down it became incredibly easy to use.

Swiping to move between screens (there's only 4 main views) is very fluid and easy to navigate.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#49

Post by squeaky-clean »

soneca wrote: post #3

"The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I’m doing every day might be cool for other people to see." But what is the reward of content creation? Honest question. How do a user feel their effort in posting was worthy? I never used Snapchat, so I don't get it much. Although I'm for sure not dismissive as some, I just never tried it.

It's incredibly easy to post to your story (you can also take a snap, and send it privately to certain people, which will notify them, while also posting to your story), so there's really not much effort involved.

I agree with the other commenters, that a reply to your snap (directly through the app, or in person at a later time) is pretty nice. One of my favorite little things, though I don't know if it's common with other users, is my friends will often have a sort of open "conversation" indirectly with each other through their stories.

Last weekend, a friend of mine posted snaps of her working on some ambient music to her story. So I posted some snaps of me playing a synth. She posted snaps of her playing her synth. Another friend posted to his story him playing his piano, then another friend just playing the Mario Bros theme on a keyboard. And this continued for a few hours until my "Stories" section was just filled with friends playing music.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#50

Post by onewaystreet »

minimaxir wrote: post #12

The problem I have with Snapchat is that there are many deliberate, counterintuitive UI/UX decisions which make the app hard to use. This causes a lot of bad post-hoc rationalization from many startups that "Snapchat is a multibillion dollar startup, and they have these bad UX features, therefore if we have these X features we will be successful too!" And thus the startup ecosystem as a whole gets dragged down.

I often see people over 20 complain about Snapchat's UI/UX, and yet the app has millions of daily users. I don't think it's successful in spite of its UI/UX, so there is something to be learned there if you are developing a new social app.
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