Is the Stack Overflow homepage "too confusing" or "too complicated"?

Question

Elaborating on feedback from the Hanselminutes podcast with regards to

a UI that works for programmers may not work for SE2.0’s world domination plans

I personally think the average UI for phpBB is incredibly dense and complex.

Also, the fixation on the front page is a bit strange if you consider that any real user will start on a question page (from a web search) and spend most of their time on question pages.

Kind of a red herring overall.

Let's compare the homepage of Server Fault to the homepage of the average web bulletin board software, in this case, vBulletin

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/8304/homepagesvbulletinvssta.png

(click through to see larger)

Which one is more "incredibly dense" to you? I know which one I'd pick as the complicated one.

I maintain that our homepage is not any less "confusing" or "complicated" than the average web-based bulletin board homepage.

Answer 1

Not only is the vBulletin more dense and noisy, but you haven't even reached any information, yet. Good luck trying to figure out which "Forum" has the information you need. The Server Fault home page lays it right out there, easy to read.

But I think the preeminent view of the trilogy is this one (below).

I prefer the the expanded question summaries and the "block of stats" to the left. The questions are nicely spaced out with enough text to see if the content is interesting. Yet, the layout lets my eye easily scan through any piece of meta data I'm interested in (votes, answers, views) without cluttering the interface.

I always felt that the "question" page would make a better home page, with a checkbox to hide the question text, if you want. The information could certainly be combined into one view. Just a thought.

Answer 2

The tag cloud makes SO/SE look more complicated and messy than it really is. It's not the worst thing in the world, but if it were entirely up to me (which it obviously isn't), that would be the first thing to go for a non-programmer-oriented site.

The phpBB (and really any BB) style gives the appearance of being easier to use because it's organized into a hierarchy. But ultimately this makes the site less usable. I know - I've posted and still post on a number of different forums - and there are always problems with off-topic discussion and topics being posted to the wrong place. Inevitably they all become completely unusable for looking up information.

The forum approach is fine for socializing. It's not very good for Q&A. And if you don't have either a list of sub-forums or a list of questions on the front page, what would you have? The alternatives - splash screens and that sort of crap - would be unusable.

Just because Scott Hanselman said something doesn't make it 100% true. There may be some stylistic changes that would make the SE front page seem less "busy", but overall I think it's just fine. Remember that a lot of the users on Stack Overflow aren't exactly hardcore programmers or even tech geeks, they're line-of-business folks or hobbyists. If they don't find it too difficult to use, then it's probably OK.

Answer 3

I've just had an idea which may be awful, or may be helpful. I'm quite prepared to be downvoted to smithereens.

Should the home page actually be representative of the site at all? Who sees the home page, anyway? Do any regulars really go there rather than the questions page?

Why not have a home page which is almost entirely different to the questions page? In particular, there's nothing on the home page which says, "This is what the site is for. Here's why you might want to use it. Here's how you can use it." Something closer to the "about" page in some respects - but more focused on the newcomer than on the SO team and moderators.

There should be "quick exits" to the questions page, user registration etc - and it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a short sample of recent questions there... possibly even with freehand circles overlaid to show what each of the bits is about.

In short: consider changing the home page to simply be an entry point for new users, rather than something which is meant to be immediately useful to existing users. (If you wanted to do make sure the home page is useful for existing users, you could always display the questions page if you detect that the user is logged in...)

I completely agree that the UI for phpBB is awful. But being "better than awful" isn't a high enough bar to set yourself :)

EDIT: Yes, I know there's the top bar for first time visitors - but the rest of the page is still very busy (with information which is entirely useful for non-first time visitors, yes) and you have to click to get at the basic premise of the site. When I go to the home page of a new site, I don't want to have to navigate to a FAQ to get the general idea.

If regular users do genuinely still use the home page (and I'm obviously not the only one who goes straight to the Questions page - see Software Monkey's comment) and want it to show questions rather than a general intro, then I seriously suggest that the home page shows two radically different views based on whether the user is known or not. Don't just put a title bar up - change the entire contents. Yes, show some questions to give a sampling of what's on offer - but within a context which is more useful for a first time user.

I would suggest that if you were designing the ideal landing page for a first time user, the current home page is not what you'd come up with. So why not design that ideal page?

Answer 4

I think the SO interface is very clean and effective, I just wish I could get that homepage look on the questions page also, as per this request.

Though looking a little closer, I wonder how useful the tag cloud is.

Answer 5

I maintain that our homepage is not any less "confusing" or "complicated" than the average web-based bulletin board homepage.

But while that might well be true, the issue at hand was

SE2.0’s world domination plans

It's not enough to beat the current incumbent, if the current incumbent hasn't actually got the crown you want!

Answer 6

StackOverflow certainly has the cleaner home page in that example, but since when do you stop there? You can do better.

For the broader audience you're looking for, remove the list of questions, and the Ignored and Interesting tag lists. Shrink or remove the Recent Tags and Recent Badges lists.

It's worth getting even cleaner than that. Think back to what Google's home page looked like 5 years ago, and how that was such a selling point.

It's hard to remove features from software when you've put so much love in to creating those features, but it's usually a win for everyone. So, get some courage and clean up your home page!

Answer 7

Most definitely vBulletin. The Stack Overflow interface is nice, clean, simple, and presents it on a clean, white background...Personally, I love it!

Answer 8

The SO homepage doesn't show any unimportant information. If you "simplified" it, you'd be making the site harder to use for dedicated people, without making it significantly simpler for the casual user.

Answer 9

There is a lot going on on the homepage:

• The list of questions, each of which is a link and has several tags which are links and there may be a tooltip on the answer count.
• The account or login bar (four or more active bits)
• The search box
• The logo and the main buttons (all of which are active)
• The tabs (active)
• The "Looking for more" line with three links
• The bottom permalinks
• Ads
• Recent tags and badges
• The RSS feed icon link

No one is going to "get it" all at once.

I think that the use of whitespace is pretty good and discoverability is also pretty good, but we shouldn't imagine that it is a simple interface. Compare to the google frontpage. Even the modern one with all the little links.

That said, it certainly compares well in your images, and I think it does what you want it to do.

Answer 10

The explicit Q and A format is key to user engagement and making the service useful and on topic. I liken it to the requirements for participants in a court case to have "standing", ie skin in the game. Also questions lead to engagement and learning. It worked for Socrates.

As for the design, the BB forum doesn't get to the meat, and distracts with all that stuff. Just a mess, unclear, doesn't commit to the site's purpose.

The SO design could use some polish, no site is ever "done". But it does a good job of getting to the meat and telling users what the site is about.

As for "will SO's design work for regular non-techie people", the design as-is adequate, just adjust it over time based on testing, user feedback, and insight from designers.

Hanselman specifically mentioned "too many stats" but I don't think it's a problem. I visually ignore them, going right to the questions column. Users quickly learn to find what's most relevant, assuming good visual hierarchy.

Anyway, the most important thing is that the SE sites are useful, delivering value up front. Wikipedia is a triumph of utility, not design.

Answer 11

I've knocked up what I think is a "more approachable" home page design. Maybe it's not right for Stack Overflow, but it could work for the "Joe Moustache" style sites that Scott talked about on the latest Hanselminutes.

The idea is to grab the list of "hot" questions but categorize them by common tags, so that it's not a flat list of questions with lots of statistics. Even the username and reputation could be omitted if you wanted a cleaner look.

I've included some freehand circles and some comic sans to appease the gods of meta.

Answer 12

I think that the most confusing part of the homepage is that it is very similar to "questions" page. The posts also show a part of the body there, but tabs are nearly the same. I think this is rather confusing.

Of course it will only confuse anyone who explores the site, navigates somewhere and then wonders why everything looks subtly different than on the page where he started. (There is no path back to the homepage besides clicking the logo, but the questions page is similar enough to be confused with the home page. A new user then wonders why there are two slightly different versions of the same page.)

So I have no complains about the home page itself, I just think that it's slightly confusing to anyone who starts to explore the site. But then again this might encourage people to explore the site further, trying to find out why there are these little differences.

Answer 13

I think the Interface could be a lot more clean if we got rid of the tag cloud and the recent badges bit. It could be placed somewhere else other than the home page, but I for one never click through on tag clouds, but I do click through on the tags of questions. And the recent badges section. That's nice, but I don't care about badges.

Answer 14

Stackoverflow have a clean good looking layout, i dont have any problem with her control and i think the most users say same as me about this topic.

Answer 15

On vBulletin homepage are too many useless information for anybody, like "last post" in thread.

Answer 16

vB4 is horribly bloated anyway. vB3 versus SO would have been a fairer comparison. IMO for the Q&A format, SO is far superior, but for a discussion forum, vB3 actually does its job quite well.

Answer 17

I like the homepage as it is, but I would prefer one small modification: remove the "views" column.

I don't generally find the number of views to be very interesting information when looking at the page; certainly not enough to warrant equal screen space with number of votes. If you want to keep it on the homepage then why not move it to small text (as it is on the Questions list pages) but put it with the "8m ago" area?

Fewer questions would have the title forced to wrap, as well, which would also streamline the page in my opinion.

Answer 18

Well, one thing that might count in favor of vBulletin is this:

When I look at the screenshot of vBulletin, I see text.

When I look at the screenshot of StackOverflow, I see numbers. Ratings, votes, rep count and all that.

How obvious is it to a non-technical person unfamiliar with the site what these numbers mean? They're very prominent, which might just make some feel it is "too complicated". (of course, in that case, a simple fix would be to make the numbers a bit less prominent. Perhaps put the question text first, and the vote count after it, to the right?

Another factor might be as simple as familiarity. More people are familiar with the vBulletin format, even though it sucks.

I think the SO layout is basically very good, and much cleaner than the alternatives. But for non-technical audiences, there might still be improvements to make.