Quora Raises Questions

I suppose I see the tradeoff, but it sounds like an idea to me that went over well in a design meeting but never actually was user tested (I could be wrong?) There are other ways to ensure a user doesn't ask a duplicate question without having to convolute the search box with the "ask question" use case, which is certainly less common.

It was incredibly confusing to me, a software guy, so I can't imagine how confusing it must be to the average user.

For me, too often, it works the other way. I try to use it as a search box, but if I type in a phrase and hit return (as I'm accustomed to do with search boxes elsewhere), it instead tries to add a question. I wind up having to use the arrow keys to select something else in order to make it do a search.

(This is with Ubuntu Lucid's stock FF3 on Linux, if it matters.)

But keep in mind that all users are new users to begin with, so don't underestimate the value of optimizing design for them.

As far as the existing "solution" of conflating search and adding a question, I give it an F. It has tripped me up before. I suggest going back to the drawing board.

Except the way it's implemented, it's very easy to add a question without searching for it.

> This was an intentional choice. It attempts to fight duplicate questions by forcing users to see the search results for their question before asking it.

It fails.

When I type a word that matches a topic and hit "enter", it sometimes goes to that topic, and sometimes it goes to the "add question" pop-up.

When I type a word that does not match a topic but matches the body of some answers, it usually goes to the "add question" pop-up when I hit enter.

I have not been able to discern how it decides which of these it is going to do.

While I was experimenting with it, it got stuck in a state where it always went to the "add question" pop-up. I could only search by clicking on one of the suggested search results.

If they intended this thing to discourage asking questions before searching, then someone goofed, and their testers are non-existant or incompetent.

Why not call the box 'search', which is what new users should be doing at first anyway? If they find nothing then offer to help them formulate a question.

The very last thing I want to do is sign up all my facebook friends and then ask a dumb question as my first action. The odds that I have a great question at the point of registration are pretty low.

indeed. Yahoo! Answers accomplishes this. So does Naver in South Korea. It's not rocket science.

HN doesn't have to exit at a multiple of $86 million to generate returns for investors and so can afford to be a niche site carefully curated to be uninteresting to the mass market.

I'll preface this with a mention that I haven't taken the time to check out Quora yet. The only interaction I've had is to read the occasional answer someone links on twitter.

> Following questions and topics makes perfect sense to me.

But he didn't mention questions as a source of confusion. Those would be almost understandable (new message for new answer). As to topics, is it new questions, new answers? What type of events trigger a notification in my Quora stream? As to following users its the same question, what events trigger a notification?

For things like twitter its fairly straight forward to the point that normal people look at you funny. "Why would I want to know what someone had for breakfast?" is a perfect example of great UI (though, perhaps a deficit in marketing). The reason its great is that the entire system is easily and directly communicable to non-techies. The "What are you doing right now?" (which I just noticed is now "What's happening?") is such a simple thing that most people don't realize that its an example of genius UI.

I have just formulated a theory that technical folks are at a disadvantage for identifying and creating a great UI experience. A stereo type of technical folks is that they like to solve puzzles. So a UI that presents tiny puzzles in the form of "What do you suppose this does?" are like tiny injections of happy directly into the blood stream. So if the annoyances are unnoticeable they can be a good thing.

The fact that you switched from "confusing" to "innovative" means that while they may have a good idea hidden in that particular UI device, it is not good UI because it requires the user to figure it out. Good UI is not something you figure out. Good UI is "I know what this is and what it will do without ever having seen or used it before."

This is a really key insight: "They're afraid of breaking something..." is an attitude that Software People never understand but is deeply ingrained in most other people. "Click around until stuff starts to happen and see what sticks" is never a good UI interaction choice and Frontend Software devs need to test all their designs by running it past their (non-computer savvy) grand moms.

This behavior, I'm well aware of. The sentiment, I'm not sure I understand. People have been using the internet for at least a decade now.

My own annoyance tonight: I forgot my password and it wasn't in 1Password. I go to the login page…and there's no "forgot password" link. Anywhere.

I'm almost ready to give up when I just try submitting a blank password and a "forgot password" link appears.

Dumb.

Odd. While I found that there were lots of different kinds of pages, I found the site engaging. When I visit a Q&A site, I very rarely visit other questions, because when I go there for a question, I go there for the question. Once it's answered, I'm done.

But with Quora, I viewed question after question for fun.

Technically, they absolutely don't have to. They could create a perfectly valid account from your Facebook/Twitter/OpenID token.

I felt like I got duped into revealing my Facebook account for no reason. The page indicated that I'll 'save time' but as far as I can tell I didn't save any time at all.