Voting Button User Interface

[jbnz]

Aside - I have entered this post in the HTML forum, but it is more of a UI/UX question, however I couldn't find a more suitable forum?

I have a website where visitors can vote on 'widgets'. The current voting system is a star system of between 1 to 5 stars. 5 stars are displayed and the user selects one. So in terms of user interaction, the stars react to mouse hover and then a mouse click selects the star rating.

This is fine for desktop users but a little difficult for mobile users.

I am thinking of switching to a two option voting system, vote up/down, hot or not if you like.

I was just wondering if anyone had had similar design issues and wanted to share their thoughts on it. Or just anyone have thoughts about this.

One thing that does encourage me to change (apart from a simplified UI) is that I believe offering less choices (going from 5 stars to a simple up/down option) would encourage more users to vote.

Thoughts anyone?

[NickMNS]

I am also working on something similar and have given this a lot of thought. I use a slider, for ratings between 1 and 5. I find the slider is good interface for both desktop and mobile. But I have not yet deployed it so I have no user feedback.

I believe offering less choices (going from 5 stars to a simple up/down option) would encourage more users to vote.

I tend to agree with your statement, but I think you need to ask the question do you want quantity of quality. If something is too easy users may vote with little thought or commitment, the result may not be accurate. Example someone comes to the page sees a list of items with vote buttons, then simply goes done the list without reading them and "likes" them all. In my case I would like the user to be committed and actually take the time to think before voting. But this will be specific to what you are voting on. If what you are doing is more like reddit, then maybe in that case what you are proposing is a perfect fit.

Back to ui, I provide the slider to vote, but the aggregated result is shown as 5 outlined stars then back filled to show the score. For fractional values I partially fill the star.

[jbnz]

Thanks for that NickMNS, I'm just hand-drawing up some possible UIs and a slider sounds like a good option - as you say works well on both desktop and mobile.

With regard to quantity/quality - I was worrying about the lack of granularity, whilst a user may vote 'Like' for two widgets, they may actually prefer one over the other. Giving them more options allows for that quality. I shall have to think about that some more.

Thanks John