I was part of a Reddit A/B Lightbox Test and absolutely loved the new version. It might get shot down due to user test results. I think the user tests failed us.

The title basically says it all. I think reddit designers came up with a simple but significant change to the workflow that people would learn to love. But when I wrote the mods one replied "there were a good amount of people that wrote in asking to be taken out of that experiment because they didn't like it. I personally think it's great."

The change was when you click on a link it opened it up in a lightbox. Then you could right or left arrow down that reddit page's worth of links. I riffled through three pages of reddit in a few minutes. It was awesome. Currently I right click and open a series of links in a new tab, and if I'm interested, I'll also open a link to the comment thread page. No more. This was awesome and I think it got shot down because it was different and new.

Here's the link to the actual test. http://ift.tt/2jkHraz

Here's how you contact the reddit mods and indicate your interest in the lightbox option. http://ift.tt/1xhzJvC Or email contact@reddit.com And comment on this thread if you're interested in the lightbox.

Also, feel free to comment on your opinion of user tests. I think they're important but you can't place too much weight on them. Sometimes I feel like designers want to hide behind them too much. The big changes will actually be rejected at first, but embraced more later on. Not saying I think Apple should have gotten rid of headphone jacks, but heh, maybe I am actually. =)

Great design resource

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) Submitted January 24, 2017 at 04:11AM by sundried_tomatoes http://ift.tt/2jraFlJ