Products · Pattern or everyday thing
A/B testing
Raised as a usability problem by 14 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 14 threads.
People raised many different problems with A/B testing, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 16 complaints
- Buttons vanish from expected places and reappear elsewhere, frustrating users who must hunt for them2026-10-01
- Interface layout changes unpredictably overnight, so users can't rely on where controls are2026-09-30
- Search box vanished for the commenter with no way to know why2025-04-11
- Support staff and users get confused when the site shows different layouts, so troubleshooting fails2025-01-14
- Support callers can't guide users because the green button they describe differs by test variant2025-01-14
- Design changes make users click around more because they are frustrated and confused2023-06-16
- Homepage is super confusing until the user submits and sees output2023-02-15
- Obtrusive UI patterns cause the commenter to leave the site immediately via the back button2022-07-12
- A/B testing used to justify dark patterns that push users into choices2021-02-03
- Clicks land about 90px below the drawn buttons, so clicking one toggles a different control2020-06-22
- Silent visual changes from A/B tests make things seem off and hard to pin down2020-05-21
- Features move around or vanish unpredictably as users land in different test variants2020-05-21
- Interface decisions driven by A/B test data make apps user-hostile and less functional2018-12-02
- Non-expert user wouldn't know how to scroll the interface and would give up2013-07-05
- Can't find the company's homepage link; it's buried in a cloud of right-side menus2013-01-18
- Slow loading makes page elements vanish and get replaced, confusing visitors mid-click2011-07-07