(1) Design Quora (Web2.0 Expo Presentat... by Rebekah Cox - Quora

So, I'm going to go against the grain here...

I think there is a lot of great stuff about Quora. Design isn't one of them, here is why:

The site and its team have shown a specific arrogance over voices of dissension about their design. Visually there are aspects of the design that make it difficult for people to use - the choice of colors for the text, the size of the fonts, and the contrast make it tough to quickly sort the information provided.

Their topic management system is difficult to use. The search box hijacks what you're typing and provides no easy way to get the cursor back.

The topics and threading of comments has issues as well. Topics lump a large number of content into a singular bucket, and though you can apply multiple topics to a question, you cannot filter responses in a given topic.

Commenting is limited to singular responses, non threaded conversations and are far too easily buried.

Architecturally the site suffers from sever performance problems when there are a large number of answers to a give question. See this post on companies hiring in the SF Bay, which on many machines will crash the browser.

http://www.quora.com/Which-startups-are-hiring-in-the-San-Fr...?

Typical browser behavior gets hijacked/broken as well - HOME and END keys no longer work, and at times, scrolling seems to break.

The Quora Search Bar, though, does provide good snappy returns of questions that have been asked from all topics that contain the words you enter. So I like that feature.

Overall though, I don't know what gasses fill the echo-chamber these folks design in, but I surely think they are high if thy think the site is stellar.

Further, why do the facebook alum feel like facebook blue is the best color to use? I hate it - and simply adopting design elements from your previous employer doesn't show me that you're a great designer.

Also, in this presentation she says "Concentrate on what matters most: purpose and goals" yet they seem to shoot down any criticism of their design decisions as quickly as possible, as opposed to hearing what others think. So, if the purpose and goal is to make a site that is instantly useful, responsive and navigable - isn't it a good idea to see what users are saying about it and take criticism?

I really like Quora, but it is in its infancy - I refuse to jump on the bandwagon that believes this thing came out of the gate mature and tested over the years.

You want to see a site that has an unbelievably good user experience? Spend some time on Reddit. Damn good design -- oh and guess what, they implement pretty much every great UI/UX idea that users submit -- for example, submitter highlighting in the comments thread is just one.