I've been a member of Hive for quite a while now. I joined around Sept 2017, which puts me at about 3 1/2 years now.[1].
When I joined it was tougher to get in. These days it's a bit easier. But still too complex. And that leads to the point of this post.
I was reading @revisesociology's post about some of the reasons for Cub's ever declining price (read it here) and that got me thinking about the problems behind Hive and why it has never really been all that successful.
The main problem is it's too complex.
Now hear me out. I know many people here have some kind of coding backgrounds or have otherwise been in this crypto space for so long that they wave this off. But think of the common user. We won't be successful unless we can reach these people. Grandma who's signing up to Facebook in order to trade stories with her friends—we want her here!
There seems to be almost no word-of-mouth for Hive, nor advertising, so these normal people we want aren't going to find their way here. But even if they randomly do, somehow, what do they find?
The Sign-Up Screen
Just the sign-up screen for Hive is hopelessly complex!
I can imagine what goes through the head of normal users when they encounter this.
So... I can sign up for free with these options, but these other options cost money? And some ask for my email, some for a phone number. Why are the money amounts different? What's this 3 hive option? How much money is a Hive and how do I get one? Do I need to get one? What's going on? Is one option better than the other? I don't understand!
This is an absolutely terrible welcome screen. Say what you will about Apple (I know a lot of people here dislike them), but Steve Jobs was a hell of a good salesman and he understood that the way to sell is to make it as simple as possible. Repeat that: As Simple As Possible. Do not overwhelm with options.
Hive could learn something from him.
This intro screen should be pared down to a single sign-up option. Make it the easiest option (free, email/phone). Below that there can be a button that leads to other sign-up options. As is this is far complex for normal people.
And no, I'm not assuming people are idiots. They aren't. But I am assuming that people have other things on their mind and don't really have time to learn something new, so when confronted with something that gives more info than they need, they tend to shut down and move on. It is always far easier to move on to something you already understand than to take the time to figure out what is going on.
Before I moved to Japan I worked in IT. I saw this behavior constantly, even from very very bright people. This has nothing to do with intelligence, it is just basic human psychology.
If this intro screen can't be simplified, then at the very least there should be some help text for each option.
The Keys
Keys keys keys... so many keys!
Oy, where to begin.
From a user perspective, passwords are a terrible system. As I mentioned above, people are not stupid. They understand that passwords need to be a certain length and complexity. But, people are lazy. AND people tend to assume the best. Oh, I will never be hacked. That happens to other people, but it won't happen to me.
Back to my pre-Japan IT job. Yeah... you wouldn't believe some of the terrible passwords people use. So you reset it to something complex, explain why, and watch as they then write it down and tape it under the keyboard—and change it back to something simple as soon as they figure out how.
Did I say Pre-Japan.... Hell, that happens here. Companies even send mass emails with the password in it. In a very misguided attempt to be secure they will send a mass email warning that the next email contains a password, then send a second mass email with the password. smh
Much has been written from security people who are smarter than me about how passwords are a terrible system to confront users with.
But what's the alternative? Some companies have experimented with fingerprints or face recognition. While these systems do hide the complexity of passwords from the user (a huge win), they introduce other problems.
Anyway, we come to Hive.
When someone signs up to Hive they get a password and eight keys! They are told to record all these somewhere secure, then told only use one of these keys most of the time when you log in, but sometimes use this other one, and in rare cases you may even need to use this one. But don't use that one most of the time or bad things could happen! And this one over here, well you may never use that one, but you could! So keep it around.
Talk about overwhelming!
Normal users don't even want to make complex passwords for Facebook and we are loading all this on them? No wonder so few new users join this site. We scare them off immediately!
Are all these keys more secure? Of course. But they are terrible complex and very user hostile.
Now we have a perfectly good option for hiding this complexity: The Keychain plugin. But this is not pushed nearly enough. It should be listed on the sign-up page and new users should be told to immediately install it.
Other
I won't even get into the other issues facing Hive. Most of the posts about Hive's problems that I've been reading for my entire time as a member of this site have talked about these problems, so I won't add any there.
But in my opinion, these first two user interface problems need to be solved before anything else. The sign-up screen would be easy to solve. Present just one option and put the rest behind a "other sign-up options" button. The complexity of the keys system is a much harder problem to solve, but I think we do have to solve it and figure out how to make the system simpler if we want to attract more people.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. Let me know if you have anything to add or if you disagree with me on anything.
I doubt any of my followers will care much about this. People following me expect haiku translations, photos of Japan, and other Japan trivia. But if you know someone who has some sway here, mention these things to the and see what they think.
Bottom line is I want Hive to succeed and I am here long-term. But... I want Hive to succeed! And to do that we need to take hard looks at why it isn't succeeding and how we can fix that.
❦
 | David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
I've sometimes posted 4 years in other places, but that is just me quickly estimating. For this post I looked it up for sure. So I'm not quite to the 4 year mark yet. ↩