Satyam Shekhar Sinha

Reimagining Polls

Designing for Engagement

INTRODUCTION

Polls are designed in the Hubilo platform as one of the engagement tools for asking certain questions to the attendees to keep them engaged in the event. Polls are a fun way to interact with the attendees and it’s easy to use as they only require a couple of clicks to participate in it. Over time, its user base evolved and the existing experience couldn't handle the emerging use-cases. we set out to redesign the Polls and add new concepts to make it a delightful, that works equally well for everyone.

MY ROLE

Responsible for research, conceptualisation, design, Prototyping, user testing and delivery of key feature areas.

THE TEAM

02 designers, 02 product managers and 10+ engineers.

TIMELINE

Jul 2022— Aug 2022

Why Polls are important?

Polls were already in our platform, it has the best adoption rate among different engagement features.

Polls increase engagement

Polls and questions are great for engagement. They demand minimal effort from your audience which makes the chance of a reaction higher. It barely takes a second to answer a poll with a single click. This makes polls both attractive and effective.

It helps to generate leads

Polls open gates to lead generation without making audiences wary. The engaging experience of a social poll creates value for both you and your audience. And, when you provide value, people become more comfortable sharing information with you. In fact, attaching a lead form to send results or special offers can make the interaction feel even more natural.

Free product and market research

Direct insights from your audience can be a brilliant opportunity to identify issues and improve your product offering or campaigns.

Brand positioning and research

Which brand wouldn’t want happy customers to spread kind words about its community and product? Polls have a unique way of making customers feel like they are a stakeholder in a brand. Seeking customer input not only shows that communication isn’t a one-way street, but it also shows that you are listening.

Better lead segmentation and scoring

Aston Martin, a luxury car brand, used a question poll in its Instagram story to understand the geography and demography of the audience it caters to.

How polls translate into event engagement?

Interactivity

With real-time polls, participants can share their thoughts or opinions and your audience gets to take an active role. This makes the experience even more dynamic because everyone can answer the poll questions anonymously while also learning more about their peers.

Stimulation

Once you conduct a live poll, you’ve trained your audience to pay attention. It signals to them that their thoughts matter and will be a part of the conversation. So, they’re more likely to continue tuning in so they’re ready for the next poll, Q&A session

Alignment

What they know by testing their knowledge: This can reveal what areas they’re already well-versed in and where they have knowledge gaps you can help fill.

What their pain points are: Whether you’re presenting to employees or customers, the more you know about their concerns and challenges, the better equipped you are to tailor webinar content around their needs.

What their goals are: What do they want to learn? What are they trying to achieve in their life or in their job? With well-crafted poll questions, you can collect this info. Then, you can ensure your future events are helping your audience get closer to their goals.

We divided it into two separate tasks to be worked upon

Enhancement of current options poll
Creating new polls concept

Enhancement of current poll

Framing the Problem

Fundamentally unpleasant user experience - The current polls had numerous issues which induced friction and hindered usability. Amongst the numerous, these were the top ones :

Visibility of text fields

Many a time users are ended up writing their questions in the options text field.

Differentiation between states (Visibility of system status)

While creating a poll it was not clear if the text field is active or not.

Reducing the complexity of adding a new option (Error prevention)

Users are ended up adding unwanted options in the poll because newly added options are not visible upfront.

Multiple answers are biased (Match between system and real-world)

While logging the answer in the multiple- choice questions, the results are displayed by clicking on a single option only which leads to a biased poll.

A stronger aesthetic which Hubilo offers throughout the platform

The current polls have very less branding characteristics and it needs to match the capabilities that Hubilo offers.

Identifying the opportunity

The goal is to make the current polling feature smooth and intuitive for our users.The focus areas of the redesign are:

Flexibility

Polls should seamlessly adapt to variable levels of information density.

Simplicity

It should supercharge efficiency and learnability.

Aesthetics

Adding the capability to align with the branding part of the platform.

Final Outcome : Highlights

Each highlight captures an aspect of the new polls experience. It calls what user scenario or problem it's solving, and what the solution is.

Creating a poll

Visibility of text fields

In the old experience, the intutiveness of the text field was very low, users are ended up typing their questions in the options text field.

Solution

We made the text field consistent all over the polling feature. We covered
Inactive state
Hover state
Active state

Adding options in the poll

Reducing the complexity in adding a new option

Currently, adding an option to a poll is quite a confusing experience, users are ended up adding too many options without knowing it because the actions were not visible upfront.
They don’t have the flexibility to remove an unused options field,
Currently, the default option present in the options poll is one, but it is obvious that to conduct a poll you need at least two options.

Solution

We catered to all the use cases of adding an option.
Two options will be given to the users as default while creating a poll, Users will have the flexibility to add or remove any options.
If they add more than 4 options, a scroll behaviour will be introduced, but add option CTA will be always visible.

Multiple options poll

Fixing the biased multiple options poll

Currently, once a poll appeared in the side panel there was no signifier that this is a multiple option poll.
Users may click on a single answer and just scroll to the next one.
Even if they figured out that this is a multiple option poll, they will click on an option and the results will be displayed, which leads to a biased result because they may choose the majority side.

Solution

We framed the whole multiple options poll in a progressive disclosure manner. We did it because :
Check mark will be visible upfront, it will signify that users that more than one option to be selected.
They can easily recheck their answer before logging their answers which will prevent errors.
Once they will submit their answer then only the answers will be visible to them, which will tackle the biases of the result.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the design project on polls in a virtual and hybrid event platform was a rewarding and enlightening experience. As a self-initiated project from the design team, it allowed me to dive into the complexities of creating an intuitive and effective poll system for a virtual and hybrid event platform. The design audit and heuristics usability evaluation were crucial steps in this process, allowing me to gain valuable insights into user behaviour and identify areas for improvement. I am proud to say that the project received positive feedback from stakeholders, demonstrating the value of user-centred design and the impact it can have on a product's success. This project has further solidified my belief in the importance of applying these principles in my future design projects.

This design project is currently in the works for different concepts of polls and details are confidential, reach out for further information. ✉️

Designed with Love ❤️