I’m writing this post on behalf of my friend, a non-technical user who had the chance to use Matrix for about a week. I’d like to share his experience with you and ask what you think about it.
Matrix clients are incredibly challenging for the average user and seem unfriendly towards non-technical users. Unlike Discord, a non-technical person won’t grasp most things without thoroughly reading the Matrix specifications. Many can’t afford to do so for various reasons: lack of technical knowledge, limited time, or simply not wanting to, preferring a functional communicator like Discord or Facebook Messenger.
Discord’s registration is straightforward, with a refined user interface that just works. You register, invite friends, and you can chat and voice call seamlessly.
Now, Matrix registration. You choose a client like Element, widely promoted as the flagship Matrix client. After registration, you face the user interface, with unclear options tucked away where you wouldn’t expect. They are cryptically named, making it hard to figure things out.
After googling how to invite a friend, your friend joins, and a decryption error appears. Another 10 minutes spent reading how to fix it. Okay, problem solved.
Your friend calls, you want to answer, and… darn! You can’t click anything because “the voice call is in an unknown state,” and the dreadful ringing sound reminiscent of a '90s phone puts you in a gloomy mood.
This isn’t something a new user should encounter right after registration. Element may be open source, but it’s developed by a for-profit company with a team of programmers. The issue isn’t exclusive to Element but extends to almost every Matrix client.
This way, the Matrix network won’t attract new users. If users face such issues, they’ll quickly flee to a stable, popular platform like Discord.
I agree that Element and other Matrix apps should focus on making the user experience as seamless as possible. The problem though is perception.
It doesn’t matter if Element is as good or even better than Discord, people will still be reluctant to move over to it because all of their friends and communities are still on Discord. And because they are new to Matrix/Element, any error or bug, no matter how small or rare, will seem like a big annoyance.
When I first switched over 100% to Linux from Windows, I encountered lots of different issues. For months it seemed like Linux was a buggy, unstable, confusing mess. I was constantly pissed off at my computer and pissed at all the folks online saying how great Linux was.
After about 6 months though, most of the issues were worked out. Now that I’ve been 100% on Linux for 4+ years, it is super stable. Partly because I’ve adapted my workflow to how Linux likes to do things, and partly because I’ve gained so much knowledge on how to deal with various issues that come up. Now it’s Windows that feels strange and clunky and unintuitive.
I think we as FOSS advocates need to focus both on interface, yes, but also on mentality of potential converts. We need to show how the FOSS ecosystem and the greater fediverse is better than the standard way of doing things. And we need to focus on why. I don’t think our emphasis should be on how nice and easy our apps are, because quite frankly, except for a few big projects with the budget, the vast majority of FOSS apps will never look as good or be marketed as well as mainstream ones.
Corpos have hundreds of millions of dollars to pour into marketing and UI/UX development. Most FOSS projects have a core of a few dozen primary contributers, often far fewer, and the vast majority can’t afford more than a pittance for payment.
Instead, we need to focus on why FOSS and decentralization is good. Focus on privacy, data ownership, right to repair, etc.
If I wasn’t already committed to those principles strongly when I started to try Linux, I would have moved back to Windows within a month or two and probably never went back.