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Early Quora Design Notes

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Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#21

Post by danilocampos »

jdp23 wrote: post #18
danilocampos wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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').

> unless they were consciously trying to brand it has 'intimidating to newcomers')

Haha, sure, that's true enough. I firmly believe that design isn't just something you can do at the end. Design has to happen from the ground up. Having a competent designer involved with real veto power might have helped to get some usable organization of content in there.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#22

Post by Tycho »

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?

It's a total mystery to me too. I can see the argument that he people/culture make it special, but why would those people go there in the first place? Is this just like when someone opens a new bar or nightclub and for a while it's 'the place to be' ? Are there any distinguishing features at all?

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#23

Post by jdp23 »

danilocampos wrote: post #21
jdp23 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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').

> unless they were consciously trying to brand it has 'intimidating to newcomers') Haha, sure, that's true enough. I firmly believe that design isn't just something you can do at the end. Design has to happen from the ground up. Having a competent designer involved with real veto power might have helped to get some usable organization of content in there.

Agreed. This post is from January 2010 and she had been there for six months. When did they start?

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#24

Post by pasbesoin »

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.…

Quora has the benefit of founders with a solid network, so the early adopters are heavy hitters with interesting things to say. It's a shame, then, that the user experience is just so... tepid.

I'm not really qualified to comment, as I've only encountered Quora via deep links, and sometimes some additional clicking around. But the above summarizes my impression, both from my own limited interaction and from the limited amount of "the buzz" [1] that enters my personal world. Quora became the next cool, limited, (temporarily?) high S/N place to be, after the previous one became too noisy.

--

1 Oops, no pun intended. Although, OT, I have been wondering whether Buzz is going to "make it", longer term, or whether it's already on or being considered for a near term hit list (e.g. Wave's fate (but without an open source spinoff that I can imagine)).

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#25

Post by antidaily »

smartydrapers wrote: post #6

Why does everyone hang on Rebekah's every word? Quora has incredible engineering talent, but design remains a weakness that clearly hinders growth of the business: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/quora-raises-quest... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870395400457609...

You created a fake account just to attack her?

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#26

Post by gojomo »

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.…

Having it look different to every user, with no 'canonical' view or hierarchy, is an actual design tactic, inherited from Facebook, which makes the site more inviting to certain kinds of exploration and growth.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#27

Post by gojomo »

jdp23 wrote: post #20
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 m…

What if Quora doesn't yet want/need casual users who are unfamiliar with their central social (voting/tagging/following/constrained-searching) mechanisms?

Also, familiar/orderly interactions are hard to iterate rapidly: expectations are already set. Throwing new ideas out there, and seeing if people figure them out (or use them in unexpected ways) generates more knowledge and upside potential.

The mainstream will be trained-up on these interactions, by lots of other sites which settle on the same winning arrangements, in a couple years. Then, Quora will seem familiar.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#28

Post by danilocampos »

gojomo wrote: post #26
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.…

Having it look different to every user, with no 'canonical' view or hierarchy, is an actual design tactic, inherited from Facebook, which makes the site more inviting to certain kinds of exploration and growth.

Facebook does have a very clear, distinct hierarchy. It's user centric, and oriented around relationships.

-Homepage: Big wall of stuff

--User page, another wall

---Info

---Pictures

--Your profile

---Pictures

etc

At no point do ever look around in Facebook and think "where am I? How do I go somewhere else?" Other users exist on Facebook. Discovering them is straightforward. If I want more friends, I know how to get them.

Tailoring the experience to your personal profile is the correct choice. Quora just isn't doing it correctly. What you're saying makes a lot of sense, though, in that Quora is treating questions and topics like people. It seems like using a screwdriver to make an omelet.

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#29

Post by richcollins »

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.…

It's amazing how many web ui's fail at navigation hierarchy when its a solved problem (see Apple UIs like the Finder, iPhone and iPad).

Re: Early Quora Design Notes

#30

Post by jdp23 »

gojomo wrote: post #27
jdp23 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

What if Quora doesn't yet want/need casual users who are unfamiliar with their central social (voting/tagging/following/constrained-searching) mechanisms? Also, familiar/orderly interactions are hard to iterate rapidly: expectations are already set. Throwing new ideas out there, and seeing if people figure them out (or use them in unexpected ways) generates more knowledge and upside potential. The mainstream will be…

Well, their CEO has been telling people since November (if not longer) that their challenge is to broaden their user base, so that's the metric they're being judged by. And it's possible that all the other sites will also settle on the same "winning" arrangement of not wanting/needing casual users but they shouldn't count on it.
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