Hello Hello Lions
The first of May has come and gone. In the LeoVerse the first of May was eagerly anticipated...
Why?
It was the much-anticipated launch of Project Blank, the day that the new UI went live into production as The only Leo Finance front end.
Did it disappoint? Let's find out...
Some background
Threads / Project Blank / The Everything App / new UI / alpha
These are all terms that have been bandied about and to be honest has led to much confusion for people who were not keeping up with the aims of Leo Finance.
LeoThreads our answer to microblogging have been on the go since August of 2022, so that is quite some time.
Since then has been a new UI in alpha phase which ran in parallel with the old UI.
However khal was committed to only having 1 UI for LeoFinance, this meant the new UI went live on May 1st and basically is The Everything App but now in Beta phase.
What is my first impression regarding new UI?
I love the fact we land on threads which is a short form content Hive answer to twitter.
The thing to remember is that this is a WIP Work In Progess, the best way to test something is put it Live into Production.
This, therefore, is feedback on a WIP UI.
I am not sure what is coming or when it is coming.
The first two things that I notice and miss are emojis and gifs. Yes you can work around it. Nor can you easily see the long form content. Again yes you can work around it.
However, for attracting new users it is still too much of a WIP.
The biggest plus for me though, is a big one...
If like me you have more than one account, perhaps you are a curator for a community. So here you can see that you can easily switch between accounts.
That is massive and keeps me happy enough until the UI is improved by finished things on the todo list.
Not being able to readily see long content posts of ours is a pain, but it is a WIP.
Has the UI improved?
It is unfair of me to answer unequivocally. At the moment in my opinion it is not an overall improvement. Long form not readily accessible, no gifs emojis. But it is all coming, so right now I will pass on judgement.
The importance of engaging for new Lions with the new UI.
With the advent of polls, there was a buzz around the place.
You have to give the 
Coming up with a shortform content was a brainwave and adding polls is simply another masterstroke.
This makes engaging very easy.
With the new weekly authors polls, we are getting new users to LeoFinance, and we want to keep them. The best way is to engage with them and fix the issues.
What are the best features of the new version?
- The option to switch accounts so fluffing easy is my best new feature.
- Polls now they are not being abused or spammed are a great addition.
Like all new things, people are like little kids with a new toy and they abuse the hell out of it, that was done with polls, thankfully people have come to their senses. - Three dots, are you like me, you see three dots so you click them?
But click on those three dots at top right and your thread opens up, that is awesome when you have lots of replies and want to engage with them all! - The tags, I love the clickable tags and makes curating so much easier.
Yes it sort of looks like Twitter, but if you start comparing to Twitter and it's UI and features then you are on a hiding to nothing.
Just imagine how much money is in the Twitter UI, of course it should be way better than our UI at the moment.
Talking of Twitter, there is one difference where Twitter does have the edge.
240 characters plus images for Twtter, 240 characters including images/links for our UI. Okay we get used to it, but it is an example of why I don't like comparing apples to oranges!
The bottom line is that the new UI is fun and has teething problems 😉
The only way is up, and soon we will be saying WoW!
Thanks for visiting and this was my entry for LEO&HODL Contest - Focus: New UI of LeoFinance
Why not come and share your new UI thoughts and join the contest 
