I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI. The site itself is just garbage and the difference between the redesign and old.reddit is just so jarring, and the Android client is also garbage.
Are there people who even thinks these designs are good? How do you even end up with something like this? Is it just garbage requirements thrown out by clueless managers? There must be some force here, because Twitter's UI is also garbage.
Some part of me hope that Reddit will kill all third-party apps and remove old.reddit, so I'll stop using the site.
"I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI"
Do you mean like... HN?
HN is missing lots of features. That's not UI. The HN UI is pretty good.
Do you use HN on mobile?
I do, using a 3rd party app which has an excellent user-friendly UI.
Due in part to the excellent UI and user-friendly reading experience, both on that mobile app and in a browser on my laptop, HN is the site I visit most often every day for a pleasant break to learn new things.
Reddit on the other hand is something I look at maybe once a month, where I'm reminded each time it's disorienting and hard work to use, so it's not somewhere I go to enjoy a calm read. So for me Reddit is just for finding specific information from a search result then leaving.
The Reddit UI has a lot to do with that. It ties to the "randomness" of the content. HN content also has randomness but because of its UI you can skim a lot in seconds so it's easier to pick out things of interest with low stress and just enjoy them.
Typically I glance through the top 100 to 150 headlines of HN to pick a few of interest, several times a day. It takes about 10-20 seconds to read those headlines, and to know I'm done - which is very different from scrolling-oriented sites which deprive the reader of perspective. I can see how this might be different for people who cannot skim text quickly or who find that difficult, or who are trained to infiniscroll through things showing only a tiny number of large cards on the screen at a time. The latter is how you destroy perspective.
What app do you use?