Toaster. New responsive design and future plans

We are pleased to introduce a new responsive (responsive) design "Toaster" ! Now you can ask a question or give an answer with the same ease from any device that you have at hand at the moment.

When setting up a global redesign for “Toaster”, we set ourselves three goals:
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1. Availability So you can ask questions and give answers at any time of the day or night, wherever you are.
2. Comprehensibility An interface language without additional instructions should very quickly convey the meaning of the service and how to use it correctly.
3. Flexibility When adding new functions, there should be no obstacles in the interface for their quick and high-quality implementation.

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1. Responsive design

It is necessary to engage in self-development and help others in this, not only during study or working hours, but also at any opportunity that opens up. And this is nowadays directly related to the capabilities of those devices that we have at hand. What works well on a mobile phone, while we are traveling by train, we use it and develop it. This was the basic setup when we decided to adapt the "Toaster" for all devices.

We had a choice: to make several independent versions of the service - for a phone, tablet and computer - or to create one universal version that will adapt itself. We chose the second, it required much more effort from us at the first stage, but we believe that in the future it will pay off with interest. Relying on responsive design, we expect to quickly introduce new functions and maintain them in full on all major devices.

It does not make sense to talk about everything that was done for the responsiveness of the interface - it is better to look at the new “Toaster” by yourself and feel alive. We only note that the biggest difficulty in responsive design is to think in advance how each of the elements on different screens will look, and try to design the most universal form, which varies little depending on the available width. So, for the lists of users and tags, we came to the card form by chance.


We have not done a lot of things yet, have not optimized, something may fail, but the main thing is that the main functionality works! We will be grateful for the help in the refinement of all the nuances.

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2. Interface clarity

On a couple of examples we will show how we tried to make the interface more intuitive and “talking”. To whom it is interesting, you can see a brief presentation of the service about what and how it works, we will show it to our guests who first got to the service.

A list of questions

The list of questions is an interface from which for most registered users the interaction with the Toaster begins regularly. The task of such a list is to encourage a person to either write an answer, or go in and read other people's answers.

As it was. It was not clear what the numbers, which occupy the most prominent place in each block, mean why they turn out to be more important than the question itself. Information about whether the questions have the answers received is lost in other secondary and information.


As it became. We removed all unnecessary, clearly identified the main elements, built them visually into the hierarchy, leading the user’s view from the main to the secondary: the subject of the question, the question itself, the presence of answers and decisions, the number of people waiting for answers.

Single question page

The question page is the most important part of the service. On this page, the main interaction of users with each other takes place. About 80% of all visits go to this page. Most of the guests for the first time find themselves on the "Toaster", moving from a search here. It is very important for us that this page is not only convenient for registered users, but also reveals the meaning of the service for guests.

Here is how this page looked in the old design. For some reason, the sorter of answers was the most noticeable and bright element (which, by the way, we refused to use a new design). The wrong place is taken by tabs: the question is the subscribers is the history of changes. It is completely incomprehensible how to become the same subscriber. A change history should cause a newbie to be reverently awed (=


And so it became. We tried to focus the user's attention on the two most important actions that we expect from him on the question page, pushing all the others into the background. These actions are given through clearly visible buttons: “Subscribe to the question” and “Like the answer”. Commenting, sharing, editing and complaints are gone to the background.

Social profile

On the question-and-answer for IT-specialists service, it is important to understand that questions are asked by living people, not virtual characters, that experts in this field who take specific positions in various companies, and not random people without a clan or tribe, answer questions .

And we tried to demonstrate visually that specific people are waiting for the answer to the question, and there may be many of them. Agree, the more people want to know the answer, the more important it is to give such an answer, the more enthusiastic they will be. Also in the new “Toaster” we started to display real names instead of nicknames and added the ability to display a short signature “About Me” next to our name. See how the impression of the question and answer to it changes, as soon as instead of avatars and nicknames, community members show their real photos and names, and also write a brief description of "About Me". (Coincidence of names and photos with real participants - by chance).

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3. Plans for the future

Strategically, we are moving to ensure that as soon as you have an insoluble question from the field of IT, the answer to which you cannot quickly find with a search, you would immediately recall the Toaster, that there will always be people who know the answer.

Therefore, our main task is to attract to the “Toaster” a critical mass of qualified specialists from various IT fields: programmers, layout designers, designers, marketing specialists, analysts, managers, etc. So that in any IT-sphere, presented on the service, we would have our own active thematic community.

On the other hand, we strive to ensure that any question would be answered as soon as possible and more conscientiously. And this is a question of the internal organization of the community that we are building: we need to be able to quickly and accurately deliver questions to the right specialists, as well as motivate them to answer.

What concrete steps we plan to take in the short term to achieve our strategic goal.

1. Improve the tuning service for the interests of each participant

The uniqueness and strength of the "Toaster" is that all information is divided into thematic tags. It is enough to subscribe to those topics that you are interested in to receive only information that is directly related to you, without receiving anything superfluous.

Subscribing to the right tags is the hardest at the very beginning, right after registration. According to our statistics, at least one tag now subscribes to at least one tag. This means that the overwhelming majority of users did not set up the “Toaster” to suit their interests and did not receive any information about new issues according to their specialization, and therefore cannot give a prompt answer.

Therefore, the first thing we will do is try to convince a new user immediately after registering to subscribe at least 10 tags in their area of ​​expertise. Next, we will introduce unobtrusive background recommendations of tags that are close to those you have already subscribed to, so that you can regularly and slightly improve the setting of the "Toaster" for yourself.

2. Speed ​​up the delivery of questions to the right specialists.

If the user has carefully described his area of ​​expertise, subscribing to a variety of tags, this does not guarantee that he will regularly go to the service in search of new unanswered questions on these topics. We need to make sure that the new questions themselves find the right specialists. We have two ideas in this direction.

We are planning to introduce a “reinforced” tag subscription. If you increase the subscription to the tag, then all new questions on this tag will be sent directly to your email. This feature is especially important for those tags around which a regular community of experts has not yet formed.

The second thing we want is to give the opportunity to call the right specialists to the question, sending them a personal notice asking them to answer the question. For this, in each question we will recommend those users who previously showed themselves in the best way in the question tags.

3. Improve the quality and tagging of questions

I want to answer the "smart" questions. But practice shows that often the question seems stupid only because its author has poorly or illiterately formulated his thought. There are not many people among us who can speak smoothly and convincingly. Why not ask such people to help us?

We plan to introduce collective editing of questions. Following the example of how collective tag editing is already working with us. Instead of complaining about the meaning of the question or its grammar, thus sentencing the question to be deleted, everyone will have the opportunity to try to correct this question.

You can edit not only the essence and details of the question, but also tags. And this will allow us again to speed up the delivery of questions to the right specialists. After all, the person who asks the question often does not even know to which field of knowledge it is more correctly attributed to get the most attention.

4. Introduce a system of rewards for achievement

Each member of the community "Toaster" should receive a worthy recognition for their efforts. We already have such a concept as “contribution to the tag”, which shows quite well in which areas of knowledge each user is strong, for which the community values ​​him most. However, this is a rather abstract concept, which does not disclose all the details of the contribution, and also does not take into account many details that are not directly related to the answers to the question, but which nevertheless help these answers to be born.

Therefore, we need badges that we will be able to give out as awards for those achievements that we value. For example, for being the first to give answers, to respond to requests for help, to help correctly formulate questions, to give high-quality and useful answers, etc.

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