A YouTuber Misunderstood My Product in Seconds and It Exposed a Serious UX Failure

Context

There’s a YouTuber who reviews open-source websites.


I have a site I wanted him to review. It’s freemium, not fully open source. At first I hesitated, but then I thought: worst case, he just won’t review it.

So I posted my site, clearly mentioning that it’s freemium, and shared a link to the community GitHub repo (used for discussions and issues).

What happened

My site is a blocks platform for React / Next.js, built on top of shadcn/ui.


It’s categorized to make navigation easier.

While reviewing, he navigated into nested levels. At the end, he clicked a card, which opened an image modal preview of a block.

He closed the modal and said something like:

“This is just a screenshot. Don't have any code.”

Even though there was a clear button that leads to the actual block page, he didn’t explore further. He simply closed the site.

Moment of truth

My first reaction was emotional:


“How can he miss a button right in front of him?”

But then reality hit.

I’ve spent months building this:

• categorized blocks for all sections
  


• a page builder (can even be used for wireframing)
  


• animation presets for quick implementation
  

And yet, a first-time user completely misunderstood what the product even is.

That’s on the design. Not on him.

The mistake (I think)

To actually reach the code, the current path is too deep:

/blocks/category/section/block

Which means the user has to make multiple correct clicks before they ever see anything real.

Here’s what that flow looks like:

On:

• /blocks/category
  


• /blocks/category/section
  

the cards are clickable in multiple ways.


After two levels of clicking, users stop thinking. They click blindly. When a modal opened, he assumed that was the product.

Psychologically, he had already “decided” what the site was.

What I’m questioning now

• Should code access be one click away from the first screen?
  


• Should the modal even exist, or is it masking the real value?
  


• How do you design so that misinterpretation is impossible?

Thank you for reading this far, to the end.

I’d really like feedback from people who design dev tools or UX-heavy products.