Abhinav R BharadwajProjectProject: Artemis for Reddit
Artemis is a hypothetical third-party client for Reddit, designed for desktop use cases.
It is meant to be more lightweight than the official Reddit website, and provide quality-of-life enhancements for seasoned Reddit users, as well as some design interventions that seek to improve the baseline for general Reddit discourse, specifically aimed at providing more context and incentivizing users to better inform themselves.
Why did I design Artemis?
Reddit has seen a lot of design changes and updates over the years, a lot of which have aimed to remodel it into the modern social media platform archetype. However, these changes are not always well accepted by established users, who prefer function over form, and prefer more control over their content, not less.
As a result of this preference, there was a vibrant market for third party Reddit clients, primarily on mobile. These clients prioritized user-centric features that the official Reddit website redesign (and as-yet undeveloped official Reddit app) didn't provide.
There was an excellent third-party mobile app client for Reddit, called Apollo.
Apollo was long used as a UX standard (and was a reference for this project). However, due to the recent implementation of API pricing by Reddit, community-favorite third party clients like Apollo, Relay, Boost, and so many more, were forced to shut down or change their payment models, as they could not justify the new API costs for their millions of users.
Desktop Reddit users are subject to repeated UX updates and overhauls that affect their memorized browsing patterns, and they don't have a lot of third party options to explore.
In Greek myth, the god Apollo has a twin sister goddess called Artemis. So I decided to see if I could take the best of Apollo and the feedback of those who aren't satisfied with the current Reddit desktop experience to design a web client.
It's still Reddit
Your subreddits, your content, and everything else you’re used to on Reddit are naturally incorporated into Artemis.
The aim is to make it a better time browsing Reddit without having to deal with the shortfalls of their modern web UI, by prioritizing content and known user tendencies over design patterns inherited from other social media platforms.
What this design addresses
Providing more context
On an opinion forum like Reddit, context is key, and it's important to make sure users know as much as possible about what they're reading or talking about.
Maximizing screen space utilization
Reddit currently enforces a single column layout for post content, even in wide desktop viewports, leading to a pillarbox effect and requiring additional scroll to move from post to comments.
Power user features
Redditors are high volume and velocity browsers, so this design provides the tools they need to navigate content more efficiently.
Supporting individual API access
Making it easier for users to set up Artemis' access to Reddit via their individual API access tokens.
Let's go through how we achieve these things:
Providing more user context
Issue: Editorialization or missing context in titles
Editorialized or abbreviated titles lead to assumptions by the reader that are affected by the poster’s biases. The lack of relevant information without requiring the link to be opened needs to be fixed.
How this is addressed
We can provide the user more context by allowing certain approved members of communities to submit context notes that can be appended to posts (yes, like X’s community notes).
Approved users can submit context notes for posts.
Keeping the post content in view
Issue: Redditors don’t read past the headline
Context is often missed because Redditors read a post’s headline, don’t go view post’s content (text or external link), and then comment or vote with limited knowledge or context.
How this is addressed
A dual-panel content layout that accommodates post content as well as the comment section. Users can engage in comments while being more informed, leading to higher quality discussions.
Here's an example of this layout:
Improved comment tree navigation
Issue: Navigating across top level comments for a post
Reddit has no means to quickly move between top-level comments for a post. As a result, users have to scroll manually to reach the next comment thread.
How this is addressed
Up / down navigation buttons to quickly move between top-level comments. This allows users to go through comments without having to scroll or collapse threads.
Live mode for posts
Issue: Existing live mode is disjointed from content
Reddit has a live mode, but it is poorly implemented. Enabling live mode opens a live feed in a different page from the actual post. There are many use cases that could use a proper live mode.
How this is addressed
This can be improved by adapting the post page layout into a more standard live feed layout, with a dynamic chat panel on the right. Incoming comments can be streamed rather than periodically polled.
Improved content filters
Issue: By default, Reddit does not have keyword filters
Reddit only offers user blocks and excluding subreddits from your feeds. This still leaves a lot of unwanted content that needs to be addressed or managed.
How this is addressed
The introduction of keyword- or keyphrase-based filters. Any post that contains a specified keyword in its title, link, or flair, will be excluded from the Artemis feeds, enabling cleaner browsing.
Having a dedicated settings tab for filters and blocked content helps manage what users prefer to see.
Kitted to work with individual API keys
Artemis can work directly with Reddit’s Data API. Since individual usage costs for most users falls well into Reddit’s free tier of pricing, you can use Artemis as your personal Reddit client and enjoy a better, more optimized user experience without having to pay subscription charges, or be stuck with Reddit’s default UI.
All you need to do is set up an API key with Reddit for your use as an individual, and then authorize Artemis to use that API key.
The full design file
Summing things up
Designing for Reddit users, especially enthusiast Reddit users, can be a particular challenge.
What works for other modern platforms doesn't necessarily work here. Redditors prefer function over form, are keen on maximizing screen real estate, and browse information-dense content more intently than the typical doomscroll usage pattern of other social media apps.
This design made a few choices to evoke the look and feel of various inspirations, from the erstwhile third-party Reddit app champions, to the simpler, more elemental look of the original "old" Reddit UI.
This client won't replace the official Reddit website. It exists to provide an alternate portal into Reddit for those who want a more condensed experience, without the additional fluff, extra unused features, and avoiding the programmatic bloat of the Reddit web stack.
Further, given the limitation of having to establish an individual API token for each user, this would be the product for those willing and savvy enough to set it up for themselves. The good thing is, there are enough people who would. If this ever gets explored for implementation, it will be ready for those users.
Thanks for reading. Check out my other projects too.