Small« an older post
a newer one »Silver lining

Suggest

Blog

When attempting to post a question to a site's forum, I was met with this screen:

The site wanted to be helpful, and efficient. Rather than my asking a question that had already been answered, it took my question, extracted key words, searched for those results and suggested them to me. Maybe one of those questions with answers has already answered my question.

This is great. I highly encourage such ideas and suggestions. Maybe my question has already been answered. In my case, I can't be upset they were suggesting other answers, even though in my case I had already clicked through the links they had suggested (yes, I clicked through the ones I could actually see, even with scrolling). Some people won't search, they just ask again instead of being resourceful. I understand this, so like that the suggestions were provided.

But only when done well and don't block me from the workflow that I want.

This example was not done well. Worse, I don't know if they realize it.

I can't scroll to the bottom of that modal box and click the "Post Anyway" button. Can you even tell where the button is? I'm guessing at the bottom. Can you see it? I can't. Not even without scrolling.

Being a web developer, I was able to open the inspector, find the elements containing the garbled links, add a style="display: none;" to the parent element, and voila!

NOW I can post my question. Which I did.

How could this be improved? Have it work correctly tops the list of improvements, of course. Maybe having the "Post Your Question" button at the top of the modal would work, though it wouldn't encourage the user to read all the suggestions.

Add new comment