I find it odd that Medium, a company that preaches design from every corner of their soap box, can't even create an enjoyable reading experience. From top to bottom the entire site is just a UX mess.
Medium's hallmark is an 'enjoyable reading experience'. Care to give some opinion on what makes it poor? Not being funny here, I'm not their biggest fan but such an dousing comment provokes debate.
• Home View: I see two visible stories on my screen (with the second almost cut off). That's it. Two stories. If I didn't already know what medium was I'd have no idea what it _is_, how it works, or how to see stories that I actually want to read (I'd probably think it's someone's personal blog). If I was truly curious about what Medium was I would probably click on the tiny "Learn More" button in the masthead but given it's size and low contrast I might miss it.
• Article View One: Massive obnoxious image that takes up the entire screen with the title overlaid in white text....scroll scroll..finally! Words! I can't entirely blame medium for this layout though. A user has the option to add an image, which brings me to...
• Article View Two: These elements are also on View One as well but I'll talk about them here. The medium logo "M" is in no way representative of it's function (a menu). I was thinking that it would bring me back to the home view. Instead a menu slid out from the side like I was on a phone. This isn't the worst experience in the world but I'm confused why the logo doesn't function like every other website. So then I look inside the menu. I see collections..hmm what's that? Why didn't they tell me about that on the home view? This allows me to traverse articles I find interesting by collection topic?! That's awesome! WHY DIDN'T THEY PUT THIS ON THE HOMEPAGE? (IIRC they actually had collections on the homepage but have since gotten rid of it). The green hearts on top. What are those? People who liked the article? I actually don't know the answer to this question. I clicked on one and it just took me to the persons profile.
• The actual words: Reading a medium article gives me the experience of floating in space. I often loose my spot. It's a combination of the overuse of whitespace and the random "hallmarks" on the page, inline comment icons appearing on hover but only on a specific line, sticky headers that come back on scroll, and elements that appear to be just kind of thrown on the page, the author spot at the bottom where you can share and subscribe seems oddly misplaced.
I don't have time to go one but you get what I'm saying.
