from Hacker News

GitHub's new user signup is an unusable GPT-ish interface

by jackpirate on 1/18/23, 7:32 PM with 40 comments

• by devjab on 1/18/23, 7:57 PM

  What? Seems perfectly fine?

  I know interactive "one-step-at-a-time" signup forms may not be popular among the HN crowd, but let me tell you, they sure are wonderful in non-tech enterprise. At least in my experience. I guess you could argue that the target audience for Github isn't exactly non-tech enterprise employees, but I can't speak about people outside of that user group as they are the ones I have experience with.

  I must admit that I can't remember how it worked when I signed up many years ago, but I'm personally liking this new version.

• by logicalmonster on 1/18/23, 8:03 PM

  Why does every website need to look alike? What happened to some whimsical stuff that does something out of the norm? Stop being responsible for draining all of the fun and creativity from the world.

  I think this style of UI might suck a little for browsers that try and autofill email/username/password suggestions, but overall I find it a little more clever and interesting than a generic bootstrap form. As a bonus, this probably introduces a bit of friction to bad actors that try and programmatically mass-produce accounts.

• by orangecat on 1/18/23, 8:02 PM

  Ugh. The overall style may be a matter of taste, but "give us your email before you have any idea what else we're going to ask for" is obnoxious.

• by cschep on 1/18/23, 7:53 PM

  Calling it unusable seems like unnecessary hyperbole. That said, it does seem like a step backwards! Do these things get A/B'd with static signup pages? Surely they are going to lose some signups for this. Maybe they don't care!

• by chrismarlow9 on 1/18/23, 8:08 PM

  On my Android mobile the error response label is hidden below the keyboard. So on the first step if I type "test@test.com" and click "Continue" the error of "already taken" is hidden below the fold by the keyboard and the impression I got as a user was that the "Continue" button was broken until I hid my keyboard.

  I didn't bother testing other parts but they could probably highlight or border fields with errors in red. Maybe put the response above the field. Just my 2 cents.

  I intentionally tested an error path because in my experience that's what separates the joes from the pros in UX.

• by atsjie on 1/18/23, 8:07 PM

  I think it's fine, pretty clear what to do.

  The user cannot press a wrong button, is not distracted by a whole bunch of fields and there is no ambiguity. Cognitive complexity is low throughout the registration proces.

  My only two small points were:

  - I miss some some kind of "progress" indication. Normally you see the whole form at a glance, now you don't so you're not sure how far you've progressed.

  - The outline of the input field touches the button on the right. There should be a padding between the two.

  But these are small points, overall I quite like it tbh. It reminds me of a CLI wizard, which seems fitting for Github.

  (tested on desktop only)

• by tomrod on 1/18/23, 7:56 PM

  Wow. I greatly dislike this signup page.

  Give me static forms without heavy JS, please!

• by bastardoperator on 1/18/23, 8:02 PM

  Unnecessary negativity. The sky is not falling...

• by gmiller123456 on 1/18/23, 8:48 PM

  Looks like they were trying to emulate a command line style interface to reduce the monotony of filling out forms. As with any radical deviation from the norm, some people will hate it, some might love it. Don't assume your own experience, or people you've heard from, is representative of everyone.

• by mirekrusin on 1/18/23, 7:59 PM

  People complaining/adoring it/in general talking and sharing link to signup is PR dream.

• by pookha on 1/18/23, 8:42 PM

  I actually hate this. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves. It's 2023...Treat people like adults. They don't need a corporate CUNextTuesdaY Hal interface to walk them through a sign-up form.

• by apetresc on 1/18/23, 7:54 PM

  Is there an A/B test at play? I don't see anything unusual or GPT-ish about the signup form. The only "unusable" aspect of it is the slightly-more-annoying-than-usual captcha.

• by acedTrex on 1/18/23, 7:57 PM

  I mean... it seems fine, a bit odd for sure and the padding on the green confirm button need to be fixed but its fine overall. does the job

• by malinens on 1/18/23, 7:59 PM

  Recently we are having issues with recaptcha/hcaptcha as bots seem to have broken them or got very cheap services to solve them. Only Cloudflare Turnstile helps us now. No wonder also github tries harder to block bits now

• by insanitybit on 1/18/23, 8:08 PM

  It looks pretty usable lol the fuck is this title?

• by revskill on 1/18/23, 8:09 PM

  I forgot my github password (so my account is secure), so i can't access the signup page anymore as i'm signed in.

• by daqhris on 1/18/23, 8:13 PM

  What does OP mean by unusable? From my side, if I click on the link, I get signed in and logged in straight to my feed. Cookies are working as I would expect.

  The new thing is the "onboarding cards" which I dismissed because I'm already familiar with GitHub and have a set of habits when using the platform (managing my own repos).

  Definitely, I do not understand the title. Don't see proof of unusability.

• by nipperkinfeet on 1/18/23, 11:16 PM

  The only criticism I have is that unnecessary animation in the background.

• by upon_drumhead on 1/18/23, 10:08 PM

  I swear it was this way a year ago when I signed up for work.

• by sedatk on 1/18/23, 8:09 PM

  > Enter your email: billg@microsoft.com

  > Email is invalid or already taken

  oooh!

• by eddsh1994 on 1/18/23, 8:29 PM

  I quite like it!