@dfox and @trogus

I’m quite into lean development, sorry... “Lean Development” and I can’t help but notice your users are trying to tell you something by their actions.

I keep skimming past posts where a user is @‘ed in the main rant.

Then either themselves or someone else will @ those people in the first or second comment as @ing doesn’t work on the main body.

I understand you have your reasons but in the spirit of lean, MVP, build measure learn etc etc

Shouldn’t you accept the behaviour of least resistance and implement the functionality in the main rant body?

Because you’re not stopping anyone from @ing folk, you’re just making it more annoying to do so.

This meme says it all

@dfox @trogus

Did you see what I did there...

@SSDD
Heh, you can make this an issue on the DevRant GitHub, if there isn't one already :)

Unless I completely missed the point that is :/

This has ALSO discussed in the past, but @dfox prefers this way.
I do too.
Mentioning from a rant will eventually clutter the notifs, making a horrible UE.
You can just mention in the comments.
And I believe i saw this in the issue tracker

Or maybe have a "mention" box in the rant post section.

@CozyPlanes the op eventually tends to tag/mention the people in the comments anyways.. I guess distingushing tags (mentions in the main rant body) and mentions (tags in the comments) will make the notifs more the less cluttered..

The thing is, you're referring to "least resistance", even though you don't know if that "feature" is wished by the greater amount of the community (as you see in previous comments). I'm not against such an implementation, neither am I a fan of it. Starting a discussion on GitHub (as mentioned by @coolq) should be the first thing to do imho.

I'd say you're doing poor user experience design if you try to accommodate every action the user wants to take. Part of design is prescribing the userflow to some degree. I think this is an intentional decision to discourage directing top level rants at a particular person, so that they will be applicable to a wider audience.

@rjedlin seems convincing now that you have put it this way... Hmmmmm...

I agree with @CozyPlanes @rjedlin here. People do tend to tag others in rants, but it’s really not a behavior we want to encourage and I think building a feature to accommodate it would just make it a more frequent occurrence.

I think for the few times when it’s appropriate, the tagging itself doesn’t really matter. On the other hand, if you’re directing a rant at someone so to get their attention, then I don’t really think that’s an appropriate use anyway. For me it really comes down to what the rant feed is for. It really should be for content that is consumable by the whole community, IMO, rather than content directed at specific people.

We’ve gotten a number of complaints in the past from people who think there are too many rants directed at me. And I tend to agree with them. I think it’s distracting in the rant feed and generally those posts aren’t that interesting to the wider audience. This doesn’t apply to statements, more questions or posts that specifically seek a response from me. For statements, where I personally see it as more appropriate, the tagging/notif isn’t really needed.

I also think there is already an issue in our issue tracker where there’s discussion. This has definitely come up in the past and I expressed the same points.

Lastly, on the note of usability and learning how users use the product, I definitely agree. That’s the #1 reason we’re planning on building a private messaging system. We see that as a much more appropriate way to address specific people. When that launches, we will probably start cracking down more on rants that address specific users in a “contact” type format since the PM system will be specifically for that.

I’m curious to hear thoughts on this and thanks for the suggestion.

@dfox is there an app beta system or something? It would be cool to be able to use experimental features and stuff in the app.

Awesome! A PM system!!

Thanks a lot to everyone who replied. The only, and final, point I wanted to make is that there were a lot of

“Users should”
“Users shouldn’t”

Type arguments. The point I was trying to make is that “USERS WILL”.

Wether or not it’s what the designer wants, if a user wants to tag someone, they will. It’s just extra effort right now, but they will still do it.

I thought that meme illustrated it perfectly.

@SSDD Place a boulder in the path, and suddenly user behavior changes. If you want to discourage a behavior, you can take measures to adjust that behavior. While it's true you can't control users, you *can* control the options they have available when.

@rjedlin why would you want to? As product designers and developers it’s our job to facilitate the user, not block them.

The days of dictating to users how they should behave are long gone. Modern product development is about identifying the way users want to use our apps and then making that easier for them.

@SSDD As product designers, it's our job to find user needs and address them elegantly, not to blindly follow user behavior. This behavior helps us identify needs by looking closer. Why do DevRanters try to tag other ranters in posts? A few I've seen: 1) to give kudos to a DevRanter that helped them out 2) to get a response from that particular DevRanter 3) to say something publicly inflammatory about that DevRanter

What needs are shown here? Among others, DevRanters need a way to publicly thank other DevRanters, DevRanters need a way to directly converse with other DevRanters, and DevRanters need to let off steam when other DevRanters upset them. The first need is handled already without the need of tags. The second is more elegantly served by a direct message system. The third is actually a reason why we might want to prevent allowing mentions in rants, as disallowing this creates friction in the act of brigading and flaming, encouraging the angered user to use a more civil outlet.

@rjedlin i’ll just refer you back to the original meme I posted.

And... I’m out.

@SSDD By carefully considering how our design decisions affect messaging and interact with the mission and vision of the company, we can not only better meet user needs, but meet them in innovative, delightful ways that fit better. All design decisions guide user behavior and alter the messaging of the product: the elegant crafting of those decisions is the very heart of what is design. Failure to discriminate what design decisions to make is failure to design, plain and simple.

@SSDD The meme you posted is at its very core nonsense. If you are referring to the ideals of user experience and design, then you are separating things that are intrinsically linked. If you are referring to the manifestation of what the user experiences as opposed to what experience was intended, this is still a poor example.

The meme seems to say, "Pedestrians need a sidewalk here." But needs are not nouns, they are verbs. We can guess at some of the verbs; for example, I can guess, "Busy people need to go from a building on one corner to a building on the other corner quickly," and, "Pedestrians need to stay out of the street at this corner to avoid bikes, cars, and golf carts coming through this corner," but to think I instantly know all the needs present here and how to address them is naiive.

If I were to go to this corner and watch it, I might find that a group of people are creating the path by running a very particular route that is exactly 1 mile long. They need a track...

@SSDD There are plenty of other possibilities I can't think of off the top of my head.

The worn in dirt path concept is not saying that our designs should ape the actions of our users, but that our users act of their own accord. By cluing in to anomalous behavior, we can identify where they are trying to solve needs that have not been met for them, and then through more investigation, identify those needs, lay down design criteria, and develop an elegant solution to those needs.

I think @rjedlin’s point about “why” is by far the most important one.

IMHO, the main reason people tag others in rants is because we don’t provide an adequate way to have a private conversation with someone on the app. @SSDD to your point, I think it would be wrong for us to say “we’re not going to allow tagging users in rants and we’re not going to offer any other solution either.”

But I personally think that good usability comes down to, like you point out, seeing where users are finding shortcomings in the product and helping to solve those. I don’t think it’s always best to operate from a UX standpoint of just developing on top of workarounds that people have taken advantage of because of gaps in features.

So yeah - we agree that the community wants a way to contact other users, specifically. I do not agree that the workaround that’s been used (literally the only one available) is the best solution.

@dfox Exactly! There's a common misconception in UX that the point of finding user workarounds is to find new solutions to integrate into the product, but the real value is to identify what it is the user wants to accomplish.

The first time someone shared that meme with me years ago, I made this meme in response:

@trogus ha - now now. Users will do what users will do. Blocking them with a crocodile = real life frustration.