There is also the problem when sharing a Substack Note or Post, the URLs are inconsistent and have different link structures.
Depending on whether you’re sharing from the browser from the app or from the article link.
I find that when I share other people‘s articles via iMessage, the thumbnail is maintained when I try to share my own articles that thumbnail is replaced with a generic one.
On top of that, when you share via iMessage or another app, the thumbnail doesn’t appear, even though Substack generates separate thumbnails for these posts.
This makes you wonder: if they’re already creating thumbnails, why don’t they just include them in the share function?
I'm a UX UI designer too (25 years) and have basically just given up with the app. Well done for taking the time to review and break down the problems. It is demoralizing to see, after all these years of web site, web app and mobile app design, that usability is still such an issue for so many digital experiences. I agree that it is highly likely that the goal of rolling out new features rather than considering usability etc. is the culprit.
To be clear, I still really like Substack and as long as you do not try to navigate between all various home pages, the UX is motivating bad. I just think that they made some bad fundamental design decisions related to Home pages that are really hard to role back without pissing off users even more.
But, yes, it is demoralizing to see usability declining over the last 10 years. I think part of the cause is shift towards preferring glitzy graphic design over usability. So many of the UX designers now come from a graphic design background and do not know how to break down complicated workflows.
Yes, it is even more frustrating on the writer side. Substack pushes readers to become Followers instead of Subscribers. Most readers have no idea what the difference between the two is, and that Followers do not get articles emailed to them. I know many of my Followers would like to read my articles, but as a writer I have no way to contact them.
As for the linked article, I have a little different take:
I’m completely lost and frustrated to the point of giving up on this app. I have tons of short comedies that I wanted to post on SubStack as my “author newsletter” (because I have no interest in straightforward newsletters). And this experience has been all negative. I don’t know who I’m following. I don’t know how to connect with others. I don’t know how to find anything. I only found this article by complaining on a Google search about how confusing SubStack is. I click and re-click different parts of a post to attempt to interface with it and end up stuck on the picture or in a comment input box that I wasn’t trying to access. It’s been all bad. All. 100% Bad.
Thank you for writing this! I find their UI is completely unintuitive and will hold them back from expanding as a platform. For example, I was just on notes and could not figure out how to go to someone's home page! Then, when I couldn't do that, it showed the substacks that this person was following and it said click to see the rest of the list. But nothing happened! Frustrating!
Yes yes yes. As a business analyst who works with a customer facing UI team, I agree the navigation is confusing. Part of the problem for me is it’s not intuitive and having different functionality in the app vs the site (this is not uncommon though and can be overcome). I would much rather substack make the current experience better rather than add new features. They risk it becoming unwieldy when the reason so many like it is the ease of use.
I like what is on Substack but trying to Navigate it on the app is near impossible. For instance, I was watching video of Jim Acosta and tried to pause it to leave a comment, I got bounced to some other comment thread and became completely lost. The more I use it the worse everything gets. I guaranty you I am seeing this page now but may never be able to find it again. About to give up on it.
One defect you do not mention is associated with the Home screen. You get a set of images on the top, and there is a nice x in the top right corner of the image. I thought that the x would mean, 'remove this article, I don't want to see it, I'm not interested'. So I clicked on it, and the article went away, and I thought _great_ just what I wanted. And I do this for several years, and throw away thousands, maybe tens of thousands of things I had zero interest in.
Alas. The X there means *would you like to save this article to read later*. Right now I have
the slowest user experience on mobile because I have so many articles saved for later. And there is no way to get rid of them without reading them from the 'read saved articles' interface, one at a time. And they don't expire if you leave them unread for weeks, months, years. There is no way to say 'delete all my saved articles' or delete all from before a certain date. It's frustrating. If you get traction on improving the interface, please recommend that this gets changed. Thank you.
Just joined and I expected better given its popularity. It feels like a 90s throwback. I'm also also a UX designer - and its it's too much for me. Everything I click on brings me to a feed of "stuff".
The skill of many writers on Substack appears to lie in direct contrast to the platrom itself, and its organisation. It reminds me of year three of my German degree studying the works of Franz Kafka, and then dropping acid. How does this even work?
I thought it was just me. It is convoluted, confounding, confusing. I even took a Substack so called 'Masterclass' on their YouTube channel, didn't help much.
I just spent 20 minutes trying to understand how everyone on Substack seems to have both a personal profile and a separately named publication — and still couldn’t figure out the right setup. This is a perfect example of why user-first design matters and why observing your user getting stuck during real-time interactions is key. People have a very low tolerance for friction.
Thank you Michael! I was beginning to question my own learning abilities, but you've made it clear that Substack was sabotaging my effort to learn how to use Substack. It's fair to say that for some reason Substack now has a system that's unlearnable for members of the target creator audience who want to use it in any but the most-easily-understood ways.
By the way, as a fellow Mac user, I've found Preview useful for resizing images for Substack posts. Have you tried it?
Thank you! I thought it was just my old ass brain that couldn’t make it make sense.
As a UX designer, I can say that navigation difficulties are never because of an “old ass brain.”
Technology needs to adapt to human needs.
Substack’s navigation is the main reason I spend so little time here, even though I subscribe to a few creators here. Thank you for posting this.
There is also the problem when sharing a Substack Note or Post, the URLs are inconsistent and have different link structures.
Depending on whether you’re sharing from the browser from the app or from the article link.
I find that when I share other people‘s articles via iMessage, the thumbnail is maintained when I try to share my own articles that thumbnail is replaced with a generic one.
On top of that, when you share via iMessage or another app, the thumbnail doesn’t appear, even though Substack generates separate thumbnails for these posts.
This makes you wonder: if they’re already creating thumbnails, why don’t they just include them in the share function?
I'm a UX UI designer too (25 years) and have basically just given up with the app. Well done for taking the time to review and break down the problems. It is demoralizing to see, after all these years of web site, web app and mobile app design, that usability is still such an issue for so many digital experiences. I agree that it is highly likely that the goal of rolling out new features rather than considering usability etc. is the culprit.
Thanks for the comment.
To be clear, I still really like Substack and as long as you do not try to navigate between all various home pages, the UX is motivating bad. I just think that they made some bad fundamental design decisions related to Home pages that are really hard to role back without pissing off users even more.
But, yes, it is demoralizing to see usability declining over the last 10 years. I think part of the cause is shift towards preferring glitzy graphic design over usability. So many of the UX designers now come from a graphic design background and do not know how to break down complicated workflows.
But it is far better than in the 1980s and 1990s.
This post explains a lot of my disappointments but there’s also someone in the comments saying there’s an update to the app which will allow the user to stay on their “Following” tab. It was having no clear way to just see who I follow that I found most confounding. https://substack.com/@clairejhartnell/note/c-163126550?r=5inuh8&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Yes, it is even more frustrating on the writer side. Substack pushes readers to become Followers instead of Subscribers. Most readers have no idea what the difference between the two is, and that Followers do not get articles emailed to them. I know many of my Followers would like to read my articles, but as a writer I have no way to contact them.
As for the linked article, I have a little different take:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/will-substack-writing-become-winner
I’m completely lost and frustrated to the point of giving up on this app. I have tons of short comedies that I wanted to post on SubStack as my “author newsletter” (because I have no interest in straightforward newsletters). And this experience has been all negative. I don’t know who I’m following. I don’t know how to connect with others. I don’t know how to find anything. I only found this article by complaining on a Google search about how confusing SubStack is. I click and re-click different parts of a post to attempt to interface with it and end up stuck on the picture or in a comment input box that I wasn’t trying to access. It’s been all bad. All. 100% Bad.
Thank you for writing this! I find their UI is completely unintuitive and will hold them back from expanding as a platform. For example, I was just on notes and could not figure out how to go to someone's home page! Then, when I couldn't do that, it showed the substacks that this person was following and it said click to see the rest of the list. But nothing happened! Frustrating!
And you haven't even touched on the audio interface. Yikes.
I agree. The UI is primitive and chaotic.
I would not go that far. The UI has many good points.
My main problem is with the multiplicity of Home pages and an apparent inability to navigate between them.
Yes yes yes. As a business analyst who works with a customer facing UI team, I agree the navigation is confusing. Part of the problem for me is it’s not intuitive and having different functionality in the app vs the site (this is not uncommon though and can be overcome). I would much rather substack make the current experience better rather than add new features. They risk it becoming unwieldy when the reason so many like it is the ease of use.
I like what is on Substack but trying to Navigate it on the app is near impossible. For instance, I was watching video of Jim Acosta and tried to pause it to leave a comment, I got bounced to some other comment thread and became completely lost. The more I use it the worse everything gets. I guaranty you I am seeing this page now but may never be able to find it again. About to give up on it.
One defect you do not mention is associated with the Home screen. You get a set of images on the top, and there is a nice x in the top right corner of the image. I thought that the x would mean, 'remove this article, I don't want to see it, I'm not interested'. So I clicked on it, and the article went away, and I thought _great_ just what I wanted. And I do this for several years, and throw away thousands, maybe tens of thousands of things I had zero interest in.
Alas. The X there means *would you like to save this article to read later*. Right now I have
the slowest user experience on mobile because I have so many articles saved for later. And there is no way to get rid of them without reading them from the 'read saved articles' interface, one at a time. And they don't expire if you leave them unread for weeks, months, years. There is no way to say 'delete all my saved articles' or delete all from before a certain date. It's frustrating. If you get traction on improving the interface, please recommend that this gets changed. Thank you.
Ouch. Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. I have not use that functionality and based on your description, I will not do so any time soon!
Note: somebody seems to have fixed the speed problem here. Thank you whoever-it-was.
Just joined and I expected better given its popularity. It feels like a 90s throwback. I'm also also a UX designer - and its it's too much for me. Everything I click on brings me to a feed of "stuff".
The skill of many writers on Substack appears to lie in direct contrast to the platrom itself, and its organisation. It reminds me of year three of my German degree studying the works of Franz Kafka, and then dropping acid. How does this even work?
I thought it was just me. It is convoluted, confounding, confusing. I even took a Substack so called 'Masterclass' on their YouTube channel, didn't help much.
I just spent 20 minutes trying to understand how everyone on Substack seems to have both a personal profile and a separately named publication — and still couldn’t figure out the right setup. This is a perfect example of why user-first design matters and why observing your user getting stuck during real-time interactions is key. People have a very low tolerance for friction.
It is similar to authors writing multiple books or writing for multiple magazines.
Yeah, I get the idea and analogy behind it, but the UX is indeed so confusing it takes longer than it should to set up such structure.
Thank you Michael! I was beginning to question my own learning abilities, but you've made it clear that Substack was sabotaging my effort to learn how to use Substack. It's fair to say that for some reason Substack now has a system that's unlearnable for members of the target creator audience who want to use it in any but the most-easily-understood ways.
By the way, as a fellow Mac user, I've found Preview useful for resizing images for Substack posts. Have you tried it?