What About “Maybe”?

blog.coordinatr.com

13 points·drm237··7 comments

I'd be more interested in a horizontal slider, labeled "probability you'll attend." It wouldn't be very accurate for a single person, but you could get some more meaningful group statistics (such as "probable party size" as referred to in the article.)

Isn't it like estimating the length of the Emperor's nose?

Startups (and 37 signals :-P) take note:

This is how to properly communicate contentious design decisions to your users. For that reason alone I'm voting it up.

I think this is a good example of deliberate design of the right details.

Another interesting take could be to add an optional "If|Unless..." clause to the Attending and Not Attending buttons, for people to clarify their intentions.

I would probably have added an "allow maybe" checkbox to the event creation dialog, but "maybe" doing the polarising thing is actually better.

Our goal all along has been to make the site as intuitive and easy to use as possible so that users can create events without being slowed down by a multitude of features. We agree that there are a lot of little features that people would like, but if we added all of them, the usability of the interface would definitely diminish...something we've been working hard against.

In that regard, we've taken a page from 37signals' book "Getting Real":

"The best software has a vision. The best software takes sides. When someone uses software, they're not just looking for features, they're looking for an approach. They're looking for a vision. Decide what your vision is and run with it."

Hope that kind of explains where we're coming from and why we haven't given creator's the choice of response types.

I completely understand, I actually hate having too many options in software.

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