I'm sure most of you know what this is, but let's go over it for the benefit of those who haven't heard the term before. The Grandma Test refers to if something is easy enough for the typical grandma to understand and do. Now obviously this could be taken as a bit of a patronizing term. It's not really used in a bad way, but one can see how it could be insulting, which perhaps is why it is almost exclusively used in the tech industry. Maybe it's still insulting even in this context, and reflects badly on the tech sector, but... well, it is as it is.

At any rate, this term is often thrown around to describe of some tech product is easy or hard to use. If it is perceived to be easy enough for your average grandma to use, it passes; if not, well, managers yell and designers work hard to make it easier. So you can see that "grandma" is really kind of a stand-in for "the average non-tech user".

Facebook passes the grandma test with flying colors. Not only is it so easy to sign up for that even a baboon could do so, but right out the gate it populates your friends list, showing you a large assortment of people you know.

Yes yes, I know. The privacy and security side of me recoils in horror at that, because I know how they do it, how they've built up shadow profiles on basically everyone on earth by connecting phone numbers and addresses, by encouraging people to tag their friends even if their friend isn't on the service, so that when you actually do sign-up, they just activate that shadow profile for you that they already have and show you all the connections. This is absolutely horrifying to me, as I'm sure it is to most people reading this on Hive, but... for the average user who doesn't care about online privacy or security, it's amazing and cool and makes the service look so easy.

But I digress. The point is, FB passes the grandma test with flying colors.

Hive, on the other hand, fails so badly the teacher is going to talk to its parents about repeating the grade again. Consider the intro page to Hive. Eight (!!!) options for signing up! That's pretty overwhelming right off the bat.

Then payments accepted are Hive, HBD, or various cryptos? Right there over half potential signups are lost, as they have absolutely no idea how to buy any of these cryptos or even what they are.

But let's say the cheapskate throws out all except the free ones—that's still three options! In marketing they teach that you don't give the user any choice because every additional choice adds cognitive overload—stress—and makes it more likely that they will decide not to do anything. Right off the bat, Hive is failing. How many people do we lose even at this sign-up screen?

Then if they do register, well, just try explaining the four keys and the master password ideas to a regular person. Even tech inclined people often have trouble understand it. Then if, even if, they get past all that. Say they have a kind soul who is walking them through it and has managed to get the new user past the key system, perhaps by offering to manage it themselves until the new user is up to it, then Hive does nothing to help the new user know where to begin. You and I know that often if a new user makes an intro post then that post will get a lot of attention and upvotes, but most new users are not told to do this, and even if they do wrote one, they aren't told what tags to use. Is it "intro" or "introduction" or "userintro" or...?

This isn't even to mention that as soon as the new user posts a post certain people consider not long enough, they will be downvoted and told to come to discord to appeal the decision or other incredibly user hostile things. Is it any wonder that of the few new users we actually get on Hive, most quit within the first few weeks?

Yeah, Hive not only fails the grandma test, Hive comes in dead last. Hive is in the negative, seemingly trying to discourage anyone to sign-up and then seemingly trying to chase them away after they do sign up.

Whew... deep breath.

I get frustrated because I've been on Hive for 7 years and it annoys me that we still can't seem to figure out that these user hostile things are, well, user hostile and are preventing us from growing. But... deep breaths.

Anyway, so that's the grandma test. Insulting name or not, it does highlight a truth that in order for a product to succeed, it has to be easy to use. Hive will never succeed until we can pass it.

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.