Accessibility and UX - New Mobile UI

Hi,

I'd like to address specific concerns that I haven't seen too many previous posts boost yet.

Accessibility

Fact: Approximately 19% of Americans live with a disability. 

• What proportion of that group is in Discord's user base, and what proportion has a motor or vision issue that this update impacts?

These are all concerns that prevent disabled users from properly enjoying the discord app, and not personal preferences. The key points are bolded.

• Anecdotally, I've spoken to multiple people with motor issues that are having trouble using the new app. The modern gestures are much more specific and fluid than the previous layout, and some buttons for common actions are much smaller. As a result, someone with a disability that involves shaky hands or reduced fine motor control can have issues with navigation.
• Specific examples:
  • Swipe-to-reply is absolutely tiny on single-line compacted messages. It's very easy to swipe on a different message instead.
  • Swipe-to-reply on larger messages (such as single full-size or image messages) is too sensitive. If someone with motor issues is trying to hold-press on a message, they can have trouble with it accidentally swiping instead.
  • The responsiveness of the top bar for the member list and other lists+search makes it difficult for motor impaired users to navigate. 
    • The fact that the top bar is the only way to access the member list does not work well with modern phones. Due to their size, those with small hands, arthritis, or other motor impaired people have a difficult time reaching the top bar to accomplish a very common task. 
    • Two elements serve the same function (bringing up the member list/server info menu): channel name and search button.
    • When the menu is expanded, the only way to collapse it is to tap in a small region of the screen. Consider compacting the non-interactive menu content and making the active region for closing the menu larger.
      • Profiles solve this by scroll-to-close. I agree that wouldn't make sense for a lists menu, nor does that help the accessibility problems so expanding the close region or adding an explicit close button is probably needed for proper UX.
  • The default behavior when clicking on a link to another channel or server on Discord is to push a new navigation pane, rather than a context switch. This makes it easier to inadvertently swipe and pop the current pane when navigating around the content of that link. 
    • Previously, the in-app web browser had a much more rigid motion to leave than in-app gestures. This prevented the sort of accidental leaving when you push a navigation context that is present here. The gesture to leave the in-app web browser feels slightly less rigid as of right now, which raises the same problems as the main bullet.
  • I can't speak to the theme colors as well as others can, so I'll leave that discussion alone.
  • The new messages tab has good button position, and none of the swipe or other gestures from the new servers UI seem to apply to cause accessibility issues. It's unclear what is actually reactive in this messages tab, but that's a UX complaint, not an accessibility one.

UX

Personally, I think it's against Discord's interests to have such a divergent client from its desktop experience, because it means that suddenly there have to be two UX teams and two experiences for users to keep track of mentally. 

In old discord and the desktop client, the hover reactivity made it very clear what was or wasn't interactive, and any explicit buttons were very minimal. The new layout removes this visual clarity and replaces it with cards reminiscent of Facebook Messenger (probably not to the level of trademark infringement, but as someone who works in the field the state of corporate IP infighting is very volatile). It's not only hard for prior users, it's hostile to new users.

On the new asymmetric UX for horizontal swipes, I understand the vision of trying to evoke more of a standard mobile email or message client feeling, but I don't think that UX is suited for discord. If the market pivot truly is for discord to become a standard mobile messaging app, it would need additional UX and implementation changes, such as:

• Priority on personal direct messaging and group messages rather than server-based communication (which would take away what makes Discord Discord)
  • giving Messages the leftmost spot in the bottom bar
  • restructuring notifications for servers as a lower-priority alert rather than something personal
• Security emphasis suited to personal communication
  • end-to-end encryption of direct messages
• Personal communication features
  • Greatly expanded contact discovery (standard in competing personal message apps)

As such, I think a more symmetrical UX as a whole with two collapsed menus is a much more coherent design for a community-centric app.

The above-mentioned “ambiguous reactivity” is also a concern. When a user doesn't intuitively know what a feature does, it can be perceived as hostile UX, especially if this is a new change from a very coherent prior design language.

Also I would pay for Nitro if there was a “classic” theme with at the very least the old client color scheme, but that's admittedly a very personal resistant-to-change outlook on my part.