Quora “Ask Live” Feature

Project Overview
I worked in a group in a group to explore the implementation of a “AMA” (Ask Me Anything) live video feature to the Quora App. This functionality will allow users to watch premium and user-created streams and “upvote” submitted questions that the streamer can then choose to answer live. Users can also create their own streams in which they can select questions to answer on air that have desired by the viewing community. Following the need to monetize the feature, the first question submitted to each stream is free with the rest of the questions taken from a pool of “asks” that users can pay to gain more of.
My role
Collaborating UX Designer
Timeframe
2 Weeks
Initial Problem Statement
I was given two weeks to collaborate with two other people to explore and implement a new feature into the Quora App.
Initially, we were unsure of this feature, as many people were unfamiliar with Quora. Our problem statement initially read:
How might we deliver profitable AMA content?
User Interviews
I was given two weeks to collaborate with two other people to explore and implement a new feature into the Quora App. We started out by conducting six interviews. We gathered our users buy utilizing a screener to find users of Quora or users of AMA content. In these interviews, we asked about how people find information online and how people consumed AMA or live-streaming content. We used affinity mapping to synthesize our results
Based on this information, our team created two personas to shape our perception of our users, one primary and one secondary.
Our primary persona, Jack, was based on the traits of the mindless browser. To him, all content on the internet is free, so why would he try that hard? Jack is busy at work, but when he gets home, he just wants to consume large amounts of varied, fun content easily. Jack wants to participate in online communities, but without large amounts of investment.
Jill, our secondary persona, is a curious academic. She cares about creating a curated online community where different informed opnions can be shared. Citations and accuracy is very important for her, and is willing to invest more to recieve higher quality content.
Our interviewee’s consisted of people who both traits from Jill and Jack, but Jack-like aspects were significantly more present.
Re-defining the Problem
Upon finishing user interviews, we had a stronger idea of how to proceed. We re-shaped our problem statement based on focusing on user needs instead of business needs, and followed that trends we found in research. We formulated our problem statement:
The internet is full of funny, interesting, and sometimes even bizarre content. Jack wants a space to engage in real time and in an entertaining way, but without much commitment.
How might we deliver high-quality, engaging “AMA” style live videos to Quora Users?
Designing the solution
Our team then got to work designing our solution. We performed four rounds of a design studio as we tried to build off each other’s ideas. We started out simple (Liking other questions, Toggling view options) but tried to create more outlandish ideas as we went along (like an Animoji interview).

We then formulated our feature prioritization matrix, and a MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have) Map to organize what we thought would be essential features. Our iterations led us to the “Ask Live” Feature.
Ask Live is a video feature where users can scroll through live streams on the Quora App. Opening a stream allows the user to upvote comments posted so they can gain more visibility to the streamer, who can choose to answer some of these questions on air. The first question submitted is free, but users then spend “asks” from a pool that can be increased via purchases. An ask is only decreased if the streamer chooses to answer their question.

Users can also start their own streams, where they can choose to answer questions submitted. The streamers can also choose to hide questions they do not wish to answer, which operates in a “shadowban” effect. Users are not aware if their questions are hidden from the stream.

Usability Tests and Resulting Iterations

We then attempted to modify our designs based on user testing. We performed two rounds of user testing, with five user tests each round. On the first round, we tested five tasks:

- Open up the stream, purchase a question, and post a question
- Open full screen viewing
- See previous answered questions
- Enable notifications on a user profile to know when the next stream occurs
- Open your own stream and answer a question
On the second round of testing, we realized it may be simpler to divide the first task into three seperate tasks, so our second round have seven tasks instead.
Our initial testing found that users had a hard time finding features like the “past questions” option and wished to have alternate routes of navigating, like clicking a name to get to a profile.
We added changes and brought the prototype to a high fidelty. However, we would soon realize that the Quora features we added to integrate the app more realistically would further confuse users.
In our second round of testing we ran into more problems with the addition of the Quora header and tab bar. Users wanted to click on these features innate to the Quora app to navigate through the Ask Live feature, instead of what we had added. This created a difficult question for our team for how to integrate this feature without the ability to substantially change any part of the current Quora app experience.
Furthermore, people did not like having any payment scheme into this app, regardless of how it functioned. Considering how a payment option was critical to the business goals of this project. It was unclear how to solve this problem without more testing.
Prototype https://invis.io/YSNUACBKF95
Reflection
As a whole, the project was an interesting experiment into feature integration into an existing platform. For further iterations, our team created an easier button to start a user’s own stream below the Quora header. We also are in need of a different business model that offers more content without charging users.
But the most critical issue lay with user perceptions of Quora. Most users of Quora navigated unintentially to the webstie and had a mixed opinion of Quora. It existed in an in-between space: it was not reputable or accurate enough for serious answers, but it was not quite fun or interesting enough to provide serious entertainment in the community. In a sense, it existed between our two personas, meeting the needs of neither.
As a whole, our group would recommend agaisnt the implementation of this feature, but this project was an enlightening experiment into how users operate in respect to “Question and Answer” sites, AMA content, and live internet streaming.
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