Thread by @Kavaeric

So on account of @jdl_werewolf's little spat I'd like to take you on a magical mystery tour of what it's like running the back end of a @Patreon creator account, and why you need to really know UX design or get someone else who knows

So right off the bat, if you're in your creator page and want to go somewhere, you're actually faced with three different menus to access things: Buttons on the left, a sidebar on the left, and then a drop down menu on the user

The organisation principle of this is unknown

You might ask, hang on, why do I start on my creator page? Why not on "home"?

Well, dear patron, that's because the "home" page basically shows exactly all the same information I get from my creator page (income/patronage, activity) but with a worse layout.

The majority of this page is actually dominated by random crap that Patreon gives me to build "engagement" I guess, including "inspiration" and buttons to share your page, as well as a promotion to enable kind of new feature (right now, annual membership).

Additionally, it's clear that the designers at Patreon have taken "rule of 3s" close to heart because on this page there are three buttons for you to do the same thing: you can create a new post with the circular sidebar button, in the drop down menu button, or on the dashboard

I am completely oblivious as to what purpose this "home" page serves that cannot simply be consolidated into the patron view of the creator page, but we're just getting started

If you are a patron of mine, then you'll be pleased to report that the non-patron facing version of my page is just godawful

like, have a look

I'm not usually a stickler for bad-faith arguments about "whitespace" (see: twitter) but I really have no clue as to why they've limited the content on this page to be displayed in one single narrow column

The amount of scrolling to get anywhere is absurd

Like, to get an idea, on my 4K 27" display that's scaled to 150%, you have to scroll about two whole page-heights long to get to the posts

You would think that, as a page meant to intice a viewer into signing up, the first thing you should show them is what they're missing out

I could also ask why the about and membership tiers aren't set to a side column like any sensible design layout, but perhaps that's asking too much

Wanna talk about patron benefits? Let's talk about benefits

Benefits are a fairly new feature that rolled out earlier this year. Prior to Benefits, the creator would have to track any support and benefits (e.g. sketch comms or merchandise) manually

And...this was fine? As far as I know? I don't remember anyone ever complaining

Anyway, the screen looks like this. There's of course a gigantic banner ad for another Patreon service they need me to sign up for but whatever.

The exact purpose of Benefits in this case is unknown, beyond just giving me a chore to do.

/Every tier/ needs a benefit. I cannot have a benefit-less tier. So I have to create a benefit called "General Support" for my $2+ general support tier, and a "Commission Discount" benefit for my $5+ tier.

The problem is that benefits are solely framed for creators who send out monthly periodic benefits, like merch. The system is completely ill-equipped to handle perpetual benefits, such as commission discounts.

As such, a Benefit is either "incomplete" or "complete", and you have to mark it as such.

For every one.

For every new patron.

And for every patron at every payment cycle every month.

What purpose marking "general support" or "commission discount" as "complete" or "incomplete" is left as an exercise to the viewer.

Keen viewers will note that "commission discount" seems to indicate that no one is signed up for it, despite the fact that half of my patrons are signed up for it.

It's because it's manual on the part of the patron and Patreon does not communicate this at all.

i.e. despite the fact that there are 31 people who sign up for $5+/mo, and despite that the tier explicitly offers 10% commissions, and despite the benefit being listed under the very tier settings page

Patreon says I don't have anyone claiming the "commission discount" benefit.

It suddenly becomes my responsibility to ensure that my patrons who sign up to receive a specific benefit actually get listed as receiving the specific benefit by Patreon

If that sounds stupid and obtuse and confusing, that's because it is

Also, there are no metrics for this system. I can't track which benefits are popular. The only metrics I have are just seeing how many are marked complete vs incomplete.

Again, the only purpose this serves that I can glean is to simulate virtual paperwork that does nothing.

Every time I have a new patron, and every monthly payout cycle, Patreon tells me to go push a button again. I don't know why. I don't know what @Patreon is trying to accomplish. I don't know how this is supposed to improve my life. I don't know how this benefits patrons.

Lastly we have our Rule Of Threes But Done Ass Backwardsly, in the form of these three menus: Earnings, Pledge growth, and Patronage.

They are three pages that all serve exactly the same purpose.

"Pledge growth" displays a graph of net income, along with new/departing patrons. At the bottom is a CSV/table showing patronage.

"Earnings" is the same thing, except the graph at the top shows a much shorter period of time by default, only shows income, and the table at the bottom shows slightly different stats.

"Patronage" is the same thing but doesn't have a graph and has a table that's less comprehensive in the last two examples except it also tracks number of patrons separately for some reason except for number of departing patrons.

Oh, and there's also a "declines" table, which only displays one metric (declines, duh) on its own table separate from the others because of reasons.

Why there needs to be four tables and two charts spread across four pages to display largely the same information is very beyond me.

Ah, right, there's also a separate page for payouts with its own separate special table but is not so special as to warrant its own chart.

Patreon also has a notification bell button on the top-right, but rather than give you a quick drop down as with most sites it just dumps you into a separate page.

If you had a new notification, it also doesn't highlight it for you. You just have to figure out what's different.

Also, it pretends it is chronological, but it isn't, on account of a design decision that thought it possible to organise "October 1 2020" under the header "October 8 2020" and before "October 6 2020".

I am actually really impressed that they've managed to take something as simple as a notification feed, where all you need to do is show information in chronological order and highlight the things that are new, and utterly fail to do that

Patreon is a glorified Tumblr where I just post media onto a blog and people pay me to see that stuff, yet somehow they've managed to dress it up as fifth dimensional rube goldberg chess that requires a degree in software engineering to operate

I wouldn't be so annoyed if this also wasn't also the site that a lot of people have to entrust with thousands of dollars a month and which forms a core pillar of income

If there's a lesson to take away here, it's that your service can have any number of flashy cool features that may actually be genuinely good, but if your UX/UI is atrocious then it will always bottleneck the quality of the service

Additionally, you should also probably hire @Tantacrul for help