A new feature idea for Twitter Polls after seeing how the community uses the product: Show me the damn results as an option in a poll.

There are 2 ways of designing the Poll product

  • Show results upfront
  • Don’t show results upfront

I think Facebook shows the results upfront while Twitter does not. Slack also shows the results upfront.

Showing results upfront drives bias. Example. In a workplace setting, your boss has shared a poll with 2 designs of a CTA button. You know which one he likes.

There is a high chance you will go with the one your boss chose if you know he is confrontational and he is just doing the poll to seek confirmation bias.

Or you will just want to see the results upfront and not take part in the poll.

Same issue with Facebook (even though the stakes are lower).

On Twitter, you cant see the results without clicking on one of the option.

But what if you wanted to just see the results without influencing the decision?

The best UX is to let the user see the result by:

  • Auto-populating one of the choices as ‘Show me the damn result’. Most of the popular users are already adding it as one of the option. So you can just choose that to see the result
  • Or have a separate button below somewhere

Do not show the result upfront under any circumstance.