I am disappointed in the new website design for the Autodesk forum.
As I see it there are three types of visitors to the Forum sites:
- A user who is looking for the answer to a product question.
- A user who is looking to see if there is a posted question that they could help to answer.’
- Everyone else. This may be someone who is curious about what sorts of questions are being asked, someone who may want to expand their general product knowledge by looking at posted solutions, etc.
I place myself in category #2. I am an experience CAD user who has posted many solutions and tips on the AutoCAD and 3ds Max forums.
What are the Forum needs for these three types of users?
Forum user type #1 will most likely use a search function to first find out if their question has already been asked. This search will most likely take place outside of an Autodesk site where the search results may point them to an Autodesk forum. For this user, the listing of current active questions at the Forum is not relevant. They do not care what other questions have been asked. They are only concerned with their immediate question.
Forum user type #2 wants to do a quick check of all current questions to see if any user might benefit from their expertise. For this user it is important to be able to see as large a list as feasible of current question topics. The question subject should be short and stand out. Other information such as date and who posted the question should be less prominent and indented so the list of questions can be easily scanned. The excessive line spacing of the new format makes scanning the list of questions more difficult than the old format.
I access the Forum from my PC and iPad. When using the PC it is easy and fairly quick to get additional information about a question or user by just dwelling the mouse over the question or username. I often checkout the Forum from my iPad while watching TV. With the iPad it is slow and awkward to get this additional information. After touching the question twice on the iPad (once isn’t enough) there’s a delay and then three inches of header (AutoCAD logo, etc.) is displayed and you must scroll to see the full question. Very awkward.
Forum user type #3 wants to see a list of questions that is easily scanned to see what may be of interest to them. Again, the verbose and excessive white space of the new layout is not conductive to this type of user.
Stats
It was nice to see the stats of various posters. In addition to providing a indication of the level of experience of a poster it is also a motivational tool. I’ll have to admit I take pleasure in seeing my kudos and solution counts increase. Although this information is still available it takes an additional action (and time) to access.
Recommendation
Since I imagine a lot of effort have been expended for the new website format and implementation it is probably unrealistic to go back to the old format. I suggest that some tightening of the layout for the new format should be done with a minimal effort. Get rid of the excessive white space for the both the list-of-questions page and the response pages, put question post date and last response date on the same line. If Autodesk is open to improving the layout I am willing to provide more detailed recommendations.
Lee Minardi
lee.minardi