4

I've noticed much of the best analysis and discussion of UX on other sites is not about applications one has designed themselves but rather popular, large market applicaitons, like this interesting piece about Google Circles and Path 2 solving the wrong problems.

I thought I'd ask since it seems like we're fairly stagnant on questions lately, but there's still plenty of interesting, good and bad UX decisions out there--I thought if our own personal projects weren't providing enough stimulating questions we should question other projects.

Sort of related is Patrick's question about questions about full products, but that's about a whole product; I find that much too broad. I'm talking about questions asking for reasonings behind specific details, such as Drop Box's lovely installation guide. I think that questions like that can provoke some answerable questions and maybe draw some attention to the site; a lot of attention is already focused on these popular products, if we could ask some interesting questions we could use that popularity to draw in people.

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

As long as a question meets most of the criteria in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective I don't think it matters whether the product was designed by the asker or someone else.

  1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.
  2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.
  3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.
  4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.
  5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.
  6. More than just mindless social fun.

One of the first questions I asked was about something that irritated me as a user of Redbox kiosks. It did pretty well and I got great answers, one of which definitively answered the question.

Another example is the Google Instant question, which I don't think was worded very well, but nonetheless attracted over 6,000 views and an answer from "the guy who did all the prototyping on Google Instant."

4
  • The google instant question is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to see more of (though it should have been more objective and asking something more specific). That's what draws attention
    – Ben Brocka
    Dec 9, 2011 at 13:59
  • BTW, is there a reason for "at least 5"? I don't recall that in the good subjective bad subjective post, I don't particularly oppose that figure though.
    – Ben Brocka
    Dec 10, 2011 at 22:29
  • Thought I had read that somewhere, but can't find it now.
    – Patrick McElhaney
    Dec 10, 2011 at 22:51
  • Robert's post (ironically) introduces the subjective scoring method "If the score is low, close it. If the score is high, vote it up." IMO a specific criteria shouldn't be required, though saying it meets "most" or "more than half" could be a better but still general cut-off for "good" subjective questions.
    – Ben Brocka
    Dec 10, 2011 at 22:57

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .