Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter to the point where it makes them not want to switch sites?
To me, the stripped down clarity on Lemmy is a feature. I remember back in the day when people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, in large part because they were sick of eye gouging customized pages and just wanted a simple, consistent interface. The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?
Definitely multiple sites on the fediverse can use some UI/UX tweaks and a high level pass on user flow and functionality. Like I get it, people shouldn’t flock here and expect it to be a Reddit clone, but if people want mass adoption (and you do because you want comment and engagement), there needs to be QOL improvements to the core experience.
Lots of devs going around though trying to fix things up. I’m looking into kbin myself, but give it a few months and everything will be in a much better shape
I agree that a major blocker for the average people to enter the fediverse is indeed the lack of UX design in general. Collapsing comment threads comes to mind, for example, or a better layout for reactions (up-downvote is in top right corner, but reply/boos is bottom left, not really the best approach).