[TotempaaltJ]

I've had to explain Reddit to my mom--she wanted to see what her kids were so busy with all the time--I can tell you that voting comments aren't nearly as simple as they might seem.

Neither is the concept of subreddits, the difference between text and link posts, subreddit discovery, the community and culture... These were all hurdles that she needed to get through and at the end she gave it up. Too complicated.

The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined to get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.

The difference between her and most non-Reddit users is that she's quite tech-savvy. She worked in tech for 20 years. She fixes her friends' computer problems.

[wyldfire]

Well, if her experience is representative of other folks, then I suppose it is a problem. But is it one that a new interface could fix? I believe that it's possible, but it's not obvious to me how it would be improved. I'm not experienced at all in UI/UX design.

> The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined to get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.

I don't understand -- she persisted and others who use reddit don't/didn't? Meaning they don't need to apply significant effort and she did? Does that mean that it's somehow intuitive to them and not her? I feel like I am missing the point you're making.

[swearwolves]

> But is it one that a new interface could fix? I believe that it's possible, but it's not obvious to me how it would be improved.

A new interface could fix a lot of the issues, but I think the jury is still out on whether or not the current redesign is fixing those issues.

In my opinion, the higher level concepts of subreddits and subreddit discoverability are one of the main hurdles that brand new users have to understand and overcome. Most people that don't know anything about Reddit just assume it's a massive forum of people posting random shit - and don't bother going much further than that.

I think the new sidebar and the overhauled search are a great start at making the browsing experience much more intuitive - but the new profiles and messenger are all questionable design decisions that feel a lot less "Reddit" and a lot more "Facebook".