Commenting Systems
Let’s not forget about what works
I use two product daily.
Medium and Twitter.
Both let us write and post whatever we want to. Both have dealt with the writing experience in their own styles. I love both of them.
While Medium’s writing experience has always been beautiful and noteworthy, Twitter has been slow in iterating on its writing experience.
(In fact, Medium just made it’s writing experience even more beautiful, convenient, and inclusive.)
But, overall, I love the writing aspect of both the products.
Besides the content we feed into these networks, our daily experience using these products is dynamically defined by what people on these networks say.
The comments that other people post in these two networks form a very major part of the product value and experience. Tweets and responses get conversations going and help us react to ideas and build online relationships.
Twitter might be very close to becoming a textbook example of what not to do in designing commenting systems.
Medium, on the other hand, might be a case study of how to get the commenting systems right.
It is very easy to dismiss systems and design that just work. If something just works well, it’s easy to not appreciate it. It’s tempting to just take it for granted. It’s easy to dismiss it as a normal way of doing things.
For instance, Apple’s Messages product just works. Blue bubbles. Green bubbles. Who cares? I am pretty embarrassed by the sheer number of people I know who can’t tell the difference between those two differently colored bubbles. Pocket is another example how simple and powerful design just works.
There are so many nuances that make complex systems look and feel simple.
Negative experiences are always more powerful than positive experiences. If something clearly does not work, most of us jump to conclusions. We complain. We blame the designers. We stop using the product.
Think about how people complain about how Twitter is not handling abuse. Not one day goes by where I don’t see a tweet about how Twitter is not handling trolls and abuse. The press is all over it as well.
While it is important to pay attention to systems that don’t work, it is even more important to appreciate the systems that do work and learn from them as much as possible. I think it’s very interesting to deconstruct “simple” systems that works and appreciate the nuances.
If you have used Medium a bunch of times, I’m sure you have come across the resposes section at the end of each piece.
At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss it as a very simple and obvious part of a publishing and story-telling platform. It looks so simple. People comment on pieces. The author can recommend the responses individually. Other users can read those responses. Nothing fancy, right?
Think again. Deeply, this time.
Medium has made very subtle but effective design choices in that responses section. Medium does not show you all the responses on every piece you read.
A response written or recommended by someone we follow is displayed. This is a very thoughtful design decision. Medium shows us what people we follow think about the pieces we read. We follow people on Medium because we are interested in what they have to say and write about. This filtering criteria displays the responses that are very relevant to us.
Medium’s thoughtfulness does not stop here. They also want us to not miss out on those responses that the author thought were worth sharing. So, the set of responses that are recommended by the author get displayed for others to read.
Such thoughtful design ensures a high quality and relevancy bar for everything we see.
Moreover, it groups up all the remaining responses under the label “Responses outside your network”. We can still read them. But, that involves making a conscious effort. This keeps all the trolls out of our experience.
Medium has also taken care of the situation wherein an author does not want anyone else to be able to read responses. Here’s how simple the process is —
I am constantly amazed by how thoughtful companies like Slack, Pocket, Intercom and Medium are in designing their products.
If one is paying some attention, it is incredibly difficult to not step back and take a minute to appreciate their work and learn from them to get better at designing products.
Some of my older pieces on these products —
