Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Chat interfaces
Raised as a usability problem by 41 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 30 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Users can't tell where their chat text wentUnreviewed
20112026- Jumping to a point in a chat stream requires scrolling through unrelated messages to find things2025-02-04
- Chat has horrible discoverability and non-obvious edges, so users struggle to find what it can do2023-08-29
- Chat archives are hard to follow because messages lack context2021-11-10
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 41 complaints
- Chat-based UI is a poor interface for most tasks2026-10-14
- Chat becomes suffocating for higher-level design work, like piloting a plane through popup notifications2026-10-12
- Chat interfaces are seen as an inadequate, lazy default for interacting with LLMs2026-09-16
- Can't set the model to extra thinking in the Chat tab; must use Work instead2026-07-13
- Chat is a poor interface for general use, needs apps instead2026-05-18
- Reverting interfaces to chat is a loss to UI usability2026-04-19
- Chat is horrible as an interface for tasks other than information retrieval and REPL-like use2025-10-06
- Chat makes it slower than buttons and filters and hides what it can do2025-10-06
- Chat does not scale or arrange information well for complex tasks2025-10-06
- Chat and voice interfaces are a poor experience for average users2025-09-29
- Chat is a poor interface; people tolerate it only because nothing better exists2025-08-18
- Users cannot tell what the system can actually do2025-04-01
- Chat interface is painful for accomplishing tasks and LLM replies are too slow2025-03-21
- Chat is the wrong interface for some tasks, forcing conversational back-and-forth instead of editing one query2025-03-20
- Users give up after one or two prompts in chat interfaces2025-02-04
- Chat interface is poor for modifying large existing codebases, needs tighter editor integration2025-02-04
- Chat is a terrible interface for doing tasks, not just for correspondence2025-02-04
- Jumping to a point in a chat stream requires scrolling through unrelated messages to find things2025-02-04
- Opaque; users must guess what the software can do2025-01-24
- Chat interfaces are harder to operate than direct interfaces for everyday tasks2025-01-23
- Chat interfaces are tediously slow for tasks like ordering pizza compared to buttons and lists2025-01-23
- Chat page is large and uncomfortable to scroll on phone2024-11-21
- Chat-based interfaces are awkward and people don't thrive using them2024-11-02
- Must open the whole chat app to turn off notifications, which exposes conversations on screen2024-04-30
- Choosing settings through chat takes more back-and-forth and is harder to discover than radio buttons2023-09-20
- Chat UIs everywhere are crappy and poorly designed, hard to use2023-09-20
- Chat has horrible discoverability and non-obvious edges, so users struggle to find what it can do2023-08-29
- On a phone, you must type what you want instead of tapping2023-06-16
- Signup takes many steps across email links and payment before reaching the chat2023-06-04
- Commenter finds chat worse than a conventional UI in many cases2023-04-18
- Last words of chat bubble text fall outside the bubble and are unreadable on Firefox Android2023-03-07
- Long back-and-forth conversation is tedious to get anything done2023-01-28
- Users must state what they want from scratch every time, adding cognitive load2023-01-27
- No option to decline surveys permanently; prompts keep coming back2023-01-19
- Chat archives are hard to follow because messages lack context2021-11-10
- Chat bubbles are a bad experience; a separate popup window is easier to keep an eye on2020-10-15
- Chat bubbles are so intrusive users block them or never notice them2020-08-05
- Chat bubbles are bad UX that visitors ignore and get distracted by2020-08-05
- Chat and voice interfaces are harder and more annoying than buttons for simple, well-understood tasks2016-04-05
- Replies on one device trigger notifications on three other devices2016-03-30
- Chat feature isn't obvious and users can't tell where their text went2011-09-16