3 improvements Product Hunt should make ASAP

1. Notifications

Notification popup acts like Pandora’s box, once you open it you will have to make some really tough efforts to close it. Presumably clicking the bell icon once again should close it. You, naive user! No way! It doesn’t. Nothing happens. The popup is still there.

The next option for closing it might be clicking on white space out of the popup to close it, but this try will neither make the popup close.

Option number 3 might be clicking on one of the nearby elements, either “+” or user profile picture (which presumambly should open the user menu). If user clicks on the plus sign (naivete level GOD!) nothing happens, just like in the case with clicking on the bell icon again. The last and the most desperate option remains: clicking the user’s profile pic, and here is where the worst thing about usability may occur: user gets the most unexpected result ever: if user clicks his profile once, nothing happens, but if he clicks it twice, the popup will migrate to the left border of the window. By the way, the same will happen, if you try to click the horizontal qebab near the “LIVE” link.

If you click the bell icon again twice the popup will migrate back to the left side of the window.

While your eyeballs are rolling on the floor and you’re trying to pick them up, I will let you know, that a regular left click on the “VIEW ALL ACTIVITY” link will take you to the all activities’ list view, but the popup on the newly loaded page will still be there.

Another “interesting” view will be experienced, if you try to open one of the hunted products using a regular left click: the popup overlays the opened product.

Opening the product it in a new tab will kill the popup.

Too many irritating problems for a humble popup, huh?

So here is the list of the actions, that will finally make that immortal popup close:

1. Reload the page.
2. Click the logo.
3. Open the “View All Activity” link in a new tab.
4. Navigate to one of the website main menus (tech, games, etc), or use the SEE ALL link.
5. Open one of the hunted products in a new tab.

2. Product Single View

I do love the fact that users have two options to browse hunted products:

1. Sliding products in a popup view
2. Opening every product in a new tab

While the second option looks clear, solid, well organized and carefully crafted, the first option of viewing products in a popup window is quite questionable and is a subject to a discusssion.

When I first clicked a product and saw the popup view I thought, that the page was broken and some styles hadn’t been loaded properly. I reloaded the page several times, hoping it will be fixed, but nothing changed.

Close button

The most ridiculous thing about this screen is the fact, that the close icon is placed on the left side. To be honest I can’t remember interfaces with a similar functionality where the close button is placed on the left side. The first place where users search for the close button is the top right corner of the interface, and I do believe such a placement would be a good solution only in one single case: if most of the visitors of the wesbite were left-handed, but according to Scientific American research, 85% of people are right handed.

White Space

We all know, that white space is our friend. Yes, friend, but not our close relative. What do I need so much unbalanced white space on the left side of the window for, while the main content is shoved in the right side?

Wouldn’t it look much more balanced if the content was center aligned, and the control block (slider arrows and close button) were moved to the right side?

Proposed view:

3. Posting a New Product

The same issue with white space and strange positioning of the form on the right side exists here.

Another issue that is quite irritating: clicking on the white space out of the form area closes the whole window without saving the data I have already submitted!

When I was submitting my first product to the community, it took me 4 or 5 tries to successfully fill it in and submit and only my true love towards Product Hunt prevented me from leaving the website deeply disappointed.

Filling in this form assumes jumping from one tab to another while collecting the required information about the product and a single click somewhere in the white space (which covers almost 40%-50% of the screen on wide moniotors) irretrievably ruins all the work done.