Day: April 14, 2017

MVW. RIP. (Unless that’s a bug, not a feature.)

• Day before yesterday, MVW badges were gone for McKayla, but not yesterday.
• Yesterday, MVW badges were gone for me.
• Today, MVW badges are back.

Let’s just pause a bit, shall we?

We are on a platform whose UX changes weekly. We have no idea whether changes on the UX are intentional or not. We surmise that certain features are not in favour by the designers, because of related changes. When features disappear from the UX, we are genuinely—genuinely—baffled as to whether they are bugs, deliberate features, or A/B trial balloons. We assume deliberate change, because we decide that certain features are under a cloud. And right now, I still don’t know whether the badges are back for good, or whether I’m in some A/B game of Nomic.

Guys?

Design Offsite: What Makes for a Good 2017? by Quora on Life at Quora

Yeah, you guys. Remember us? The users?

Do you think we’re being well served by this?

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David Cole’s answer to What is the role of a product designer at Quora? (David Cole, Director of Design at Quora; I think he’s the guy in red in the photo.)

Like all software product design teams, we are responsible for Quora’s user interface. We’re actively building out and unifying our design system, focusing heavily on typography and the core reading interactions. We primarily concern ourselves with clarity over cleverness, seeing UI innovation as a means to an end and not something to pursue for its own sake.

(Emphasis mine)

This has been an issue of contention between me and my wife. My wife would rather be in a traffic jam for 2 hours, than catch the train. I’ve been an annoyed passenger on such occasions.

None of the other reasons brought up by respondents applies. So long as you are heading to the CBD, Melbourne’s train service is excellent, although it is unpleasantly congested at peak time. It is more affordable than driving and parking. My wife’s work at the time was a fairly direct route, although she would have had to hop off the train and onto a tram.

The main reason, really, was cultural. I caught the train to school in high school, and I have been a train commuter for 30 years. My wife has never had to depend on public transport, and has not felt the need to.

As for incentives, price is a powerful motivator. When petrol prices went up a couple of years ago, train patronage went up 7%. It actually posed a challenge to the train network capacity.