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"The visual design, the interaction design, the writing and reading experiences, the social incentives, the notification system: all of it is top notch." I SO
by webwright 12y ago
"The visual design, the interaction design, the writing and reading experiences, the social incentives, the notification system: all of it is top notch."
I SO disagree here. It's a mess. It's 10x more complex than it needs to be. And it's horribly unapproachable for new/non-geeky users. I've had non-technical relatives sit down and try to use it who were positively baffled by the user-experience.
I think Quora is an example of what happens if you listen exclusively to your most active users, when you should be tempering that with conversations with new and drive-by users. The Curse of Knowledge is deadly for product designers (http://hbr.org/2006/12/the-curse-of-knowledge/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2006/12/the-curse-of-knowledge/ar/1).
- techwatching 12y agoAgreed. Its always felt spammy to me - "Register to see more than the first answer." Why??
- Smudge 12y agoGrowth. It's spammy, but it works.
- techwatching 12y agoI guess. I would have agreed, except that Stack Overflow pointed the way. Quora feels like freaking Experts Exchange to me.
- gagaga 12y agoDefinitely agree. Some of the stuff is just terribly confusing and very visually dense.
- Detrus 12y agoAs a power user I really liked the early iterations of the UI. But it went downhill for me around the time they added posts. They added a lot of spammy follow crap too. The quality of content is hard to manage. There's no granularity in rating content, but when the content persists, isn't meant to be forgotten like HN comments, that's a serious flaw. Answers and wikis should be gradually improved, voted on per edit, etc. I agree that when you're not in editor/contributor mode there is too much going on. There should be a separate browsing and contributing UX. Simplifying all UIs for the lowest common denominator is not the way. Bicycles vs tricycles argument of Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay.
- wpietri 12y agoI think one's opinions on the UI depend a lot on what the perceived audience is. If they're really after random internet users, then yes, I think it's too complex. But I think their initial play has been for that small slice of people who contribute content, vote extensively, and comment usefully. Because those are the people you need to generate a very large base of content, which is necessary to draw in the people who are going to do the ad-clicking to pay for it.