Quora App Re-designed(Android)!
What made me chose Quora?
“To learn something, you need to first imitate and then get your hands dirty.”
‘Quora’ is a platform which is used by around 190 million people all over the globe, where 20.6% people are from India. Moreover, it is my favourite application. Hence, re-creating and re-designing an app you love, is in itself a challenging task. So, I took Quora for my exploration to see how far I could stretch the domain of my creativity and solve a few problems that Quorans face with their favorite app.
My Target during this voyage!
Some of the goals that I had in mind were to:
- conduct User research, create personas and understand the psychology behind their thinking
- build wireframes, flow charts and prototypes
- apply the knowledge I had gained into a practical project
- start and complete my first design project
- find the problems that the users are facing while using the app
- find the solutions of the problems encountered
What is all this buzz about ‘Quora’?
‘Quora’ is a platform for sharing ideas in the form of questions and answers. It is a place where ‘people who need knowledge’ connect with those ‘who have knowledge’ and share that publically so that others with the same need can get their share of answers. Quora is not just another social media platform but a knowledge-sharing platform whose mission is to grow the world’s knowledge.
User Research
Before diving and getting stuck into those wireframes, I did a lot of research on the followers of this religion, Quora. I interviewed and surveyed around 15 people to get a better understanding of what Quora is for them. How do they use it or how often do they use it? How long have they been using it? What features do they like or dislike?
Target Audience Demographics:
Out of 15 people I interviewed, 8 were males and 7 females. The age of the users ranged from 16 to 26 years. Most of them were students who used Quora more often than others. As per a survey, 45% people who use Quora fall in the range of 18–25 years. Around 53.3% people I interviewed, used Quora almost daily.
Only 66.6% people I interviewed had ever published an answer on Quora. While 86.6% people had never or rarely downvoted an answer.
When asked, what is Quora as per their experience, most of them answered enlightening and knowledgeable.
Personas
- ABC is a 20 year old student pursuing Engineering.
- He dreams of becoming a innovator.
- He loves watching cartoons.
- His curiosity to learn has made him to try a lot of educational apps.
- He usually browses his interests during break from studies or in his free time.
- He loves reading about Science and Innovations.
Now that we know, what our personas are looking for in the app, we can now Get Started!
This is how the current design of Quora looks like.
Problem 1: Downvote vs Thank
Whenever you read an answer, you have two choices visible, Upvote and Downvote. Most people tend to upvote the answer if they like it. But rarely anyone downvotes an answer. People just don’t feel right to downvote an answer as it just doesn’t feel morally right for most people and it’s discouraging for others. So, they don’t want themselves to be trapped in the web of guilt.
But there is a ‘Thank’ button hidden behind those three little dots, which people like more than the downvote button. But since, it is hidden people hardly go for it. As Julie Zhuo said, ‘What you see is, what you use’. Same goes for Quora.
Solution
I tried to interchange the Thank and Downvote buttons to give users what they actually need. ‘Thank’ button will help compliment the authors and help them motivate to write more of such answers.
‘Thank’ button is placed next to the ‘Upvote’ button so that it is easier for people to compliment people on the go using ‘Thank’ button and help build a better community for sharing knowledge.
As soon as you click the Thank button, you receive a message saying, “Thank You for encouraging”. The click of the button gives a compliment to the author for his contribution while the message displayed gives the reader a sense of proud for encouraging and praising someone.
Problem 2 : No idea where the message section is!
By looking at the front page that loads, one cannot really know where that message section would be residing.
The first screen that loads up when you open the app(L) doesn’t show anywhere where the ‘message’ section is. Let’s look at the profile screen, can you find the ‘messages’ section now? Still finding? Well, it is right up there next to the ‘followers’ faded button. Yeah, that tiny text is what will take you up to the messages.
It makes sense to not keep the ‘messages’ on the front page because Quora is not a social media platform but a knowledge sharing platform but it also doesn’t make sense to keep it on the ‘My Profile’ page.
Solution
I came out with an idea to introduce a ‘hamburger’ flyout menu with several links which otherwise are hard to find on the current layout of the app. Moreover, if you notice the ‘search’ button which was initially in the top-left corner has been introduced into the bottom nav bar. I will be talking about the ‘search’ button at the latter stage.
Problem 3: The Irritating Notification
Irritating notification? Did something strike? No? No problem. Find it below.
We are always tempted to click that notification icon when it pops up with a few numbers. Expecting that someone upvoted our answer or maybe someone followed us we click it, only to find that half of the notifications are something like ‘Someone upvoted this after seeing your upvote: Blah’s answer to Blah Blah’. It has happened with everyone. Yes, Everyone.
Let’ show you some stats: 86.6% people I interviewed mentioned this as the worst feature they find on Quora. It is worthless and doesn’t really help anyone.
Solution
It was a bit difficult to come up with a solution to eradicate this problem using designing but after brainstorming a lot, I finally came up with this.
I came up with a ‘cross’ button which would not show that ‘type’ of notification again in the future.
On clicking the cross, a dialogue box appears which shows a message, ‘You’ll never see this type of notification again!’.
Hence, once you choose this you won’t see that irritating notification again in the future. So, a little peace for you!
Problem 4 : Drafts are lost somewhere!
Another problem that people I interviewed faced was that sometimes while writing an answer they didn’t publish it and the answer got saved as a draft. But they faced a lot of difficulty in finding the draft. Sometimes they even had to search the same question to find it, which was annoying.
This is the current layout of the app which shows ‘Your Content’ tab. This is the screen where all the answers that I have published are mentioned here but nowhere on the screen, you can find the drafts that have been saved. Instead, you can find them by clicking on the ‘answer’ button in the bottom nav bar and then swiping left a couple of times to reach there. Whoa. That was a hell lot of movement, wasn’t it?
Solution
To find the solution, I had to look for the clicking habits of the users, so I asked some of them to work on the app and gave them some tasks to perform such as find me where did I save the drafts or compose a message. Most of them reached the ‘Your Content’ tab to find the drafts.
So, I created two sections on the ‘My Content’ (‘Your content’)tab, Drafts and Published.
When you click on drafts, all the drafts can be found while to get the published answers, one can click on ‘published’.
You can also filter your results by clicking on the filter button. So, it reduced the time taken to reach from Home screen to Drafts.
Additional Design Features implemented!
Search bar has been moved to a more comfortable place, i.e, the bottom nav bar. This position makes the user comfortable in searching with one hand.
The image on the left shows different zones depending on the difficulty of using the smartphone with one hand.
Bookmarks icon has been moved to the bottom navigation bar for better mobility to the favorites saved by the users.
Now with a single click, one can find the bookmarked answers saved by them.
Sketching and Wireframing
All the wireframes were created using Adobe Illustrator and the prototypes were made using Justinmind and InVision.
A quick walkthrough this journey!
From the User Research to the Prototyping, it has been a great learning journey. Before diving in, I knew it would be a great opportunity for me to hone my design skills and learn the basics of UX Design. During this project, I read a lot of articles and did a few courses to improve my design skills and problem solving ability. This project also helped me to understand the psychology behind the decisions of the users and also came across various design laws such as Fitt’s law and Hick’s law. Altogether, it was a wonderful journey where I failed, learned and then succeeded.
P.S- I would like to Thank Deeksha, Sakshi, Neha, Karan, Gaurav, Kavya, Atishay, Charu, Tarika, Nisha Di, Ojaswini Di, Parth, Rohit, Rahul, Sachin, Nitesh, Prabhjot and Pooja.