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Early Quora Design Notes

artypapers.com

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Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#11

Post by mattmanser »

To be honest for a long time I thought Quora was a stack exchange site with a different skin; I only ever saw the q&a pages.

In the article he actually says he took 3 months to get the q&a page design done, interesting that they ended up with a design for that page that is so uncannily similar to SO's.

I appreciate that the reward mechanism is different and I can't comment on the home page as it is behind a signup page, but still, they seriously had never seen SO even in June 2009? Not even a little bit of influence there?

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#12

Post by huertanix »

JCB_K wrote: post #10

What I think is funny about Quora, is that the idea is absolutely not new: there's loads of similar websites online like it. (Yahoo Answers et al). Still there's a big buzz around it. Fair enough, the UI is a lot better than on those other websites, but that doesn't make it that special. Or am I missing something?

Its the users. Quora started out as an invite system, so as invites percolated outward from the founders, many Silicon Valley technologists and their friends came into the fold and sort of defined its current culture. Yahoo Answers, on the other hand is full of, well, Yahoo users, and its culture is literally a joke: http://www.epicfail.com/tag/yahoo-answers/

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#13

Post by ryanglasgow »

mattmanser wrote: post #11

To be honest for a long time I thought Quora was a stack exchange site with a different skin; I only ever saw the q&a pages. In the article he actually says he took 3 months to get the q&a page design done, interesting that they ended up with a design for that page that is so uncannily similar to SO's. I appreciate that the reward mechanism is different and I can't comment on the home page as it is behind a signup pa…

The designer is a she, Rebekah Cox.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#14

Post by rdl »

Quora has evolved in a lot of ways since this (a year ago?), but remains one of the cleanest and best realtime UI/UX I've seen.

The biggest flaw seems to be that if you're not already very familiar with how FB, other near-realtime UIs, etc. work, the Quora UI is somewhat difficult to understand. It's definitely built for "power users" at the cost of being obvious to some new users.

The key thing to understand is that for the casual user, contact with the site is probably via a direct google result or link to a specific question or answer. The "related questions" and search box are really the key elements for that user as far as navigation; everything else is on-page.

Users who "live in Quora" creating content are pretty happy with the quora UI as it is; I find it frustrating on other websites when things don't behave the same way.

They may need to work on a better process for going from casual visitor to actual user, but there are a lot of policy and content-quality issues to address as well. Having a slightly difficult to use UI might actually be somewhat intentional.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#15

Post by jdp23 »

danilocampos wrote: post #9

(Disclaimer: I gave up on Quora months ago – maybe they've fixed these things) I desperately wish I could effectively convey how bad I think Quora's implementation is. I'll try now. The visual design is simple, if bland, but that's not my beef. Simple is usually good. I think it mostly hinges around discovery and sense of place. On Quora, it never feels like you are anywhere. No sense of hierarchy, no sense of order.…

The tepidness is a direct result of the approach they took: "Really early on I decided to focus only on the product design and would forgo any time spent on things like visual design and, to some extent, branding."

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#16

Post by joshhepworth »

emeltzer wrote: post #5

Hmm. There's something appealing about tweaking a bunch of fairly mundane parameters (button color, for example) in order to more effectively allow people to come together and make something interesting with your site. It might not be as interesting on face as game design, but it can be really rewarding when you get it right. edit: and quora is an example of extreme attention to detail enabling a really great site to…

It really is amazing how much making sure the little things are right can help. I think it helps develop a slightly more emotional connection for the user as they find themselves subconsciously enjoying various elements that the designer/developer took the time to polish.

To that effect, http://littlebigdetails.com/, is a great list of 'little things' that can be great for inspiration / a list of innovations. Quora is on this list for a few elements.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#17

Post by danilocampos »

jdp23 wrote: post #15
danilocampos wrote: post #9

(Disclaimer: I gave up on Quora months ago – maybe they've fixed these things) I desperately wish I could effectively convey how bad I think Quora's implementation is. I'll try now. The visual design is simple, if bland, but that's not my beef. Simple is usually good. I think it mostly hinges around discovery and sense of place. On Quora, it never feels like you are anywhere. No sense of hierarchy, no sense of order.…

The tepidness is a direct result of the approach they took: "Really early on I decided to focus only on the product design and would forgo any time spent on things like visual design and, to some extent, branding."

Hmm, but none of the tepidness is a result of the visual design. craigslist continues to look like shit but it works well. Quora doesn't.

It's just bad product design, poor user experience, whatever you want to call it. These issues are structural, not visual or aesthetic. Slapping on a new paint job whenever they get around to it isn't going to fix the problem.

It's a classic engineer's special, and that quote is a rationalization for this truth.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#18

Post by jdp23 »

danilocampos wrote: post #17
jdp23 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tepidness is a direct result of the approach they took: "Really early on I decided to focus only on the product design and would forgo any time spent on things like visual design and, to some extent, branding."

Hmm, but none of the tepidness is a result of the visual design. craigslist continues to look like shit but it works well . Quora doesn't. It's just bad product design , poor user experience, whatever you want to call it. These issues are structural, not visual or aesthetic. Slapping on a new paint job whenever they get around to it isn't going to fix the problem. It's a classic engineer's special, and that quote is…

At least to me, it's a poor user experience ''and'' a tepid visual design. Incorporating visual design and branding from the beginning certainly would have helped address the tepidness, and might have helped with usability as well (unless they were consciously trying to brand it has 'intimidating to newcomers').

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#19

Post by ryanglasgow »

The problem is that Quora's design is not aligned with the companies motives:

"Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question." - from Quora's About page

A Question and it's related answers can be archivable (Who invented the atomic bomb?), temporal (What is the current status of Zynga's zLive?), or anywhere in between (Who is the lead UI designer for Mac OS X?). The design is ONLY composed of real-time design patterns, mostly taken from Facebook and Twitter: mandatory account registration, asymmetrical following, news feed, real-time notifications, user messaging system, etc.

There is NO focus on archivable questions. The website is based around questions and answers happening right now, which isn't what Q/A is all about.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#20

Post by jdp23 »

rdl wrote: post #14

Quora has evolved in a lot of ways since this (a year ago?), but remains one of the cleanest and best realtime UI/UX I've seen. The biggest flaw seems to be that if you're not already very familiar with how FB, other near-realtime UIs, etc. work, the Quora UI is somewhat difficult to understand. It's definitely built for "power users" at the cost of being obvious to some new users. The key thing to understand is that…

If it's so hard for casual and new user, how good is it? As well as the confusing search/post box (which leads to a lot of questions getting posted by mistake), there's also the lack of categories when you create a question (which leads to a lot of orphaned questions) and the way you have to do a lot of editing of tweets to get them to be useful. Plus there's no way to move an answer to be a comment, so when people make a mistake it's a pain to recover. etc. Maybe it's all intentional to keep people out but with everybody highlighting how their business challenge is to attract users who aren't techies, that doesn't seem like the right approach to me.
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