My wife tried to alter her profile image today, and thinking about that experience, to be frank it's shocking that #Hive has any users at all...
This post is just to highlight and document some of the problems experienced. @peakd and @keychain are IMO two of the best apps for UX here, so this post is not to dunk on them, but just to point out that the Hive user experience overall is still very poor.
In short, here are 5 UX problems she ran into:
- Searching for "Peak D" resulted primarily in unrelated ads on Google before the actual result
- Log in Page confusing, but got through it with guidance
- Edit Profile page confusing due to "continue" button hidden below scrolling page
- HiveAuth session on Keychain had run out by the time she tried to alter profile
- Keychain wouldn't scan HiveAuth QR code when trying to log in again
Searching for Peakd
She first asked me what site she should go to, and I told her peakd, so she searched for "Peak D" in the browser on her Mac. The first results were advertisements for winter coats - that's on Google, but it still impacts our discover-ability. After she scrolled down a bit, the top non-ad result was peakd.com.
Logging In
She found the log in page on face value very confusing, but she at least had some guidance from me. Unfortunately she doesn't have Keychain on her Mac, nor would she know how to easily find it, so I got her to put her username into the @hiveauth bar and she was able to log in with her Keychain on mobile. That actually worked quite smoothly which saved some stress, though I did have to guide her on how to do it.
Trying to change profile pic
She found where to go to alter her profile pic quite easily herself, however after selecting a new profile pic, it wasn't clear what she needed to do, as it seemed like it was done, but the "continue" button was pushed down below the window with a scroll bar. I had to get her to scroll down to see that there was a button she needed to press before any changes would be applied.
Unfortunately before trying this action, she had spent some time considering about a post she wants to write, which may contribute to what happened next...
Lost @hiveauth Session
When she tried to save her changes, she got quite frustrated, as it told her she needed to authorize the action on Hive Keychain. However, on her app, it appeared there was no HiveAuth session at all any more. She kept trying the same thing a few times and got annoyed with the site and with Hive in general.
Eventually I encouraged her to log out and log back in on peakd, again using HiveAuth, but it wouldn't work at all any more on her phone (nothing would happen when she scanned the QR code).
Luckily I have her account on my Hive Keychain on my own phone, so I scanned the QR code instead. That worked, and we tried it all again, and were able to alter her profile pic this time.
However, she could not see the changes on her own browser, even after a full refresh. I verified that the changes had gone through on another PC.
Conclusion
Again, the point of this is not to detract from the great work that has already been done improving the user experience here on apps like peakd.com and hive keychain (which are the most popular for a reason) - user experience is extremely challenging and the use of crypto introduces unique difficulties along with security concerns. User experience also has markedly improved over the years.
However, as I wrote some months ago, something causes Hive to have a very poor user retention rate. While I still can't prove it with data, I am leaning towards user experience as the most likely main cause of our poor user retention based on anecdotal data and personal experience.
I would go so far as to say that our overall user experience is so poor that the mere fact we still have any users at all demonstrates the drive our community has - it shows just how much the people who are still here are willing to put up with in order to keep our network and our community going.
The image used in this post is public domain and does not require attribution
When Keychain Mobile does not react for actions to be validated with HiveAuth, the solution is to close Keychain and relaunch it. This is an issue that I have already reported to @stoodkev and am awaiting a solution from them.
try googling hive, lol.
we are doomed
There are definitely usability issues with Hive. Some of them are down to the complexity of crypto and having to have all these keys, but there are more basic user interface design problems. I don't know how many people are working on dapps like peakd and they may be overloaded, but this is important.
Hiveauth is really cool, but I haven't had much actual need of it yet. We need to avoid people exposing their keys. I've seen in the last few days that someone lost control of their account and it's causing issues. That could have been via a phishing attack.
I have friends who are managing to use Hive without being too technical, but I do wonder about their security practices.
With great power comes great responsibility and that is the way I see the key controls in Hive. Once you get your head around it it all starts to make sense but most people just want simple, being able to login with username and password. Keychain has done a great job and I think it should be packaged with all new sign-ups.
I am all for open source but when it comes to the front door for Hive it should be fewer options. I like what Hivesigner and Hiveaut are doing but it is also confusing for me to choose the best one.
Hive should be like an onion with a very simple surface and you can peel back the layers as you feel more confident.
I think the HiveAuth model actually makes things extremely simple, when she was able to log in without a password it was extremely smooth. But it has to work consistently, robustly. I don't know what the nature of the problem was when she was not getting approval requests to her Hive Keychain app.
Maybe the old instance was stuck in the background and it is worth sending them a bug report.
^ @stoodkev Keychain Mobile interaction with HiveAuth needs to be improved!
I have noticed that new users have a really hard time learning how to use hive
and it is that I feel that we are still in a stage of development, more DAPPS are needed to make the experience of the new ones better.
It is very useful that you have made this post because if nobody emphasizes that kind of thing then nobody finds out
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