Polls UX: Problems and solutions

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

It’s also a regression from

• button-based UI

to

• checkbox and radio UI

Really, even worse, it’s a hybrid of both: buttons with checkboxes and radio buttons on them.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@sam

Is there anything about our HTML structure that stops you from achieving the changes you want on your forum?

I agree with this, perhaps this is the best outcome, @claas you can use CSS rules to style the poll rows as you see fit; if the HTML classes are not there let us know what we can do to add them.

[anon20391312]

@codinghorror

TL;DR if you wish to continue this discussion, stop talking and start pasting in images. Find someplace that builds polls as a product they sell, and cite that design by screenshotting it and cropping it into a reply here as an example. You are proposing we redesign polls from scratch, so be aware that it may take many months to get to.

Facebook, single choice:

Facebook, multiple choice:

Polls on Facebook automatically do a postback when a radio button or checkbox is ticket, hence the complete omission of a checkbox.

Google Forms, single choice:

Google Forms, multiple choice:

Surveymonkey, single choice:

Surveymonkey, multiple choice:

Do you see the common theme in these examples? It’s and !

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

All of those examples are significantly better than the proposed mockup, the huge issue I have with that mockup is that it tries to be both “buttons” and “radio boxes”, pleasing both ends up pleasing neither.

Take a look at Twitter as well

Personally I am fine with a “modernized” list of radio boxes or check boxes. I am against an un-themed form, I think it would look horrible.

I am also totally for changing the markup to use a FORM with INPUTs as opposed to the UL / LI scheme we are using now. It seems much more correct.

I get the complaint here just very much dislike the UX of the proposed changes in the OP.

I think the Twitter styling is fine, modern and definitely something I think we could emulate.

[Fabio_Machado_de_Oli (Fábio Machado De Oliveira)]

try.discourse.org polls look normal to me, testing it here:

• option a
• option b

[Fabio_Machado_de_Oli (Fábio Machado De Oliveira)]

I can only assume people got confused because they aren’t used to forums having polls, no UI would help that.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

After giving this more thought, I agree that:

@sam

the huge issue I have with that mockup is that it tries to be both “buttons” and “radio boxes”, pleasing both ends up pleasing neither.

However I do not agree that using platform native controls is a good idea here. That’s like using platform native emoji, which leads to weirdness in interpretation and style.

So if we remove the button style entirely – which also has the huge advantage of doing away with that ugly, hacky “a green button means it is selected” style – and transition to the font awesome glyphs for radio and check, that’s a change I can support, and I no longer disagree with the rationale @claas.

The behavior will still be button, e.g. clicking anywhere on that line will trigger a check or radio. Just the visual style of button is removed completely in favor of the glyphs.

@tgxworld will be working on the essential change to de-button polls for 1.6.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

So just to summarize some other poll tweaks we’re doing (not all this will be in 1.6 but we’ll slip in the low risk / easy ones)

• Abandon button style in favor of more traditional glyphs for checkbox and radio (the whole area can still be a de-facto button, but does not need to have button styles or the green highlight)

• Always show your avatar first, for the ones you voted for

• When showing results, order by winners at top

• “Vote Now!” should show in primary blue color once you select any option, e.g. incite the user to actually cast their vote.

• use full body width for poll