We’re testing a new Forums experience – feedback welcomed

[amanda.k]

Edit 1/13/2025 - Please see the latest news regarding the Community Redesign – Modernizing the Autodesk Forums in the linked post. 

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Hello Autodesk Community,  

We have launched an A/B test to explore a new and improved forums experience. This test will help us understand what works best for you and ensure that our forums remain an engaging place for everyone, and that you’re easily able to find relevant information for your needs.   

What This Means for You:  

Random Selection: Some users will continue to see the current layout (Group A), while other users will see the new forum layout (Group B).

No Action Needed: You don’t need to do anything differently. Just use the forums as you normally would.  

Valuable Feedback: Your interactions and feedback are incredibly important to us. They will guide us in making the best possible improvements. We welcome feedback in a reply to this post, or you can DM @amanda.k.   

Why Are We Doing This?  

Our goal is to enhance your experience by making the forums more user-friendly, intuitive, and enjoyable. By testing different layouts and features, we can identify what truly resonates with you. We’re also looking to make sure that you can find and see all the additional features and benefits we offer in the Community – such as Events and Blogs.    

  

How You Can Help:  

Engage and Explore: If you’re part of Group A, we encourage you to explore the new features and share your thoughts.  

Share Your Feedback: Whether you’re in Group A or Group B, your feedback is crucial. Let us know what you like, what you don’t, and any suggestions you have.  

  

Thank you for being a part of our community and helping us create the best forums experience possible. We’re excited to hear your thoughts and continue improving together!  

See you on the Community!  

@amanda.k 

Edited 12/12/24, 3:00PM PST to add:

Recordings of Office Hours

December 5, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 9, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 12, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 19, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

Blog Posts from the Product Team:

Week of 12/12/24 - Forum Redesign – New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week.

Week of 12/6/24 - Forum Redesign – New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week.

Week of 12/19/24 - Forum Redesign - New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week

Week of  1/10/2025 - Community Redesign – Modernizing the Autodesk Forums

FAQ - living FAQ document. We are still gathering questions and will be updating it reguarly. 

[Chad-Smith]

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:
... other than the search for specific forums defaults to the entire community, so you have to change that every time.

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I am also in support of this being reverted back to its previous functionality of automatically defaulting to the appropriate search level.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@ActivistInvestor 

See this link:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/what-do-you-think-of-the-new-autodesk-forum-interface/...

[j.palmeL29YX]

Assuming I were a software developer, I would ask myself the following questions before starting such an update (or would want to have these questions answered):
- what needs to be improved in the existing version, what is going wrong? What can/should remain as it is, what needs to be improved, what needs to be added)
- what legitimate criticisms of the existing version from users am I aware of
- what is the goal of developing a new update? (e.g. increase the speed of ..., improve the handling for the user, increase the stability, add new or improve existing functionality, ...)
- ... and much more

Perhaps you or one of the development team can tell us what the goal is in developing a new interface. What is the reason for this new update? What improvements for the user (satisfying the needs of the users should be the first priority of any new or further development) are intended?
What did you (the developers) want to achieve?
If you let us know what is your goal, perhaps we get another point of view to the new design.

my 2 ct.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@j.palmeL29YX , 

I asked much the same questions about the "why" of all this on another thread and got zero response to those questions.

Curtis wrote:

Maybe it would help to back up and try to better explain:

• what the original problems this test was attempting to solve were?
• why this test version was released in such a raw state?
• what the end goal or vision/scope of the improvements are meant to be?
• what assurances have been made that the changes being made will enhance and not detract from the user experience?

If someone could clarify some of these things with a bit more insight than has been offered thus far it would truly be appreciated. 

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Those questions were ignored.

I have started to wonder if anyone really has the broader answers about the "why", and the end goals at this point. Or if this project's requirements were just so general that the UX Dev team has lost sight of "why" this update project was created to start with, other than "we're going to update the community forums". And now the community management team is just doing the best they can to explain “the when, the how, and the what" of the A/B test plan.

I've not gotten the sense that anyone is addressing the concerns about the negative impacts to the user experience with this test version during this test, or that anyone is listening to the users of this community, other than to collect  data to feed back to the UX dev team... the team who spent an entire year developing the mess that we have been "asked" to test.

The plan and communication around it have come across as incomplete and extremely tone deaf. It really hasn't been much more than, "sit down and shut up, we're collecting data that we NEED, so you must comply or our plan won't work." 😑 

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@amanda.k or @o.briggs 

Can one or both of you speak directly to the Trending topics filter?

This has been mentioned and asked about over and over and over, and you have both been extremely consistent in not speaking to it at all... unless I've missed something, which is possible.

Also, if there is someone else we should be asking some of these things, please let us know.

[stdpattern]

The reply box has odd behavior. My typing scrolls below the bottom of the window, and can't be seen.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@stdpattern wrote:

The reply box has odd behavior. My typing scrolls below the bottom of the window, and can't be seen.

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@stdpattern, I think I read on a different forum that this was supposed to have been fixed. correction, they are in the midst of fixing it according to what I read

But it appears as though the reply box in the "old forum interface" is broken now as well.  Text ends up behind the Cancel Post bar at the bottom. 😕

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Oh my.... it's worse yet.

See the attached video, of what happens when trying to edit a post.

This is the original forum interface.... it seems that now the text editor is jacked up in that version.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Possibly related to the reply/post box issues above:

It errored out when attempting to embed a video using the Insert Video button like I normally would ... not sure if that's related to this or not???

To clarify, this is in the old version of the forums 

[matt.worland]

I use the Chrome/Edge flag that forces all websites to dark mode
Chrome
chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark

Edge
edge://flags/#enable-force-dark

It works great for most things; however, it's very difficult to determine what's read vs unread. Using StyleBot (extension) helped in the past but not in the current  test group.

[mat_hijs]

• As said multiple times before, "Trending" should not be the default tab, that should be "All".
• I don't like how when I go to a forum my whole screen at the beginning is everything but that forum. It's a lot of white space and links to blog posts. I think the forum posts should be the priority.
• When I'm in a specific forum like the Inventor forum, and I do a search, I expect to see only results from that forum. At least that should be the default behavior. Right now I'm on the Inventor forum, do a search and get only results from the AutoCAD and Revit forums.
• When replying, if your text exceeds the height of the text box it automatically scrolls back to the top making it so I can't see what I'm typing right now. It should scroll to where you're typing or it shouldn't scroll at all.

[pendean]

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@ActivistInvestor wrote:

... what appears to be a dark mode. Where is the switch for that?

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[amanda.k]

Hi @Curtis_Waguespack - regarding the trending topics filter:

Happy to discuss it, not trying to be cagey about it. I'm putting together a longer response over the goals, as well @j.palmeL29YX. I did not mean to ignore or not answer any questions - I read it, started a response, and then moved onto logging more urgent feedback from other threads/ replying. It was inadvertent and just a miss on my part. 

The trending tab feedback has been shared with our product and design teams, all of the sentiment around it (exact wording), each comment added onto the ticket for it.

 As with all improvements, no changes will be implemented until after the A/B test has been completed. Making changes to the design during the test would invalidate all of the data we are receiving. 

I can tell you that, at this moment, the trending tab feedback is at the top of the list for further investigation and validation with the data, but the trending tab will stay as it is until the A/B test has concluded. I don’t want anyone to think that we are not paying attention to the feedback because no changes have been immediately made.

Amanda

**edited 9:06PM PST, 11/22/24 to add - The longer response will come next week, I am collaborating with the teams involved in these changes to give you a thoughtful answer. I don't want you to think I am avoiding this question.  Thank you!

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Thank you @amanda.k, I feel like what this A/B test was going to feel and look like was not well communicated at the beginning, so it's still very difficult for many to have a sense of what is up and what is down with all of this.

There is probably an opportunity to add some clarity around "no changes will be implemented until after the A/B test has been completed" to the opening post of this and other threads about the A/B testing, as well as your ongoing replies to questions that arise.

I think we have weeks left of the A/B testing? That's a really, really long time for people to deal with some of these things that are just such obvious misses, and the natural expectation will be for them to be fixed sooner than later. So I would expect that you'll need to hear yourself say "no changes will be implemented until after the A/B test has been completed" more than you should need to or want to.

I appreciate the clear and direct response to this question. 

[Sean571]

Is there anyway that we can opt out of the new forum layout during testing? I suspect there isn't, but it's honestly hot garbage and I'd much rather have the old forum back, even if it's only temporary.

I write software occasionally and so I usually don't like to give completely negative feedback without anything positive, as a know a lot of people are trying their best to make a usable and useful product, but I truly have nothing good to say about this new forum layout. It feels as if no one thought about desktop users when designing it, which makes no sense, since Autodesk products are almost entirely desktop applications.

The new format looks as if it's trying to make it some modern social media site rather than something useful for technical professionals. The trending tab should not be the default, and as many others have said, there is way too much white space. I have a lot of other feedback, but I don't have the time to write it all down now. 

I just really want the old forum back, and I'm someone who is totally game for modern updates and change, as long as it is done well, and makes sense. This new forum isn't either of those things.

[rmoore3]

The Trending topics aren't even changing so evertytime you hit back you see the same thing (and without any idea of if it's been read), surely that can't be as designed. What are we supposed to be testing? It obviously doen't work well enough to test, much less use properly

[Chad-Smith]

Some other forums with very similar feedback to what is provided in this forum. The ADSK Community team are already across these.

• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-manufacture/what-happened-to-the-manufacture-forum/m-p/1314949...
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-manufacture/revert-to-chronological-feed-please/td-p/13152555
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-design-validate-document/anyone-noticed-strange-webpage-render...
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/powermill-forum/forum-changes-nov-2024/m-p/13162584
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-manufacture/something-changed-to-the-forums-overnight/m-p/1293...
• https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/navisworks-api/did-the-forum-user-interface-just-changed-for-the-wors...

It's only been a week and I am finding myself using the forums far less.

I really hope that this testing does not go on for too much longer, and that the top consistent problems that have been reported are addressed asap. The Trending tab is universally panned as a terrible idea, followed by the lack of mark as read.

[Chad-Smith]

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:

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@stdpattern wrote:

The reply box has odd behavior. My typing scrolls below the bottom of the window, and can't be seen.

---

@stdpattern, I think I read on a different forum that this was supposed to have been fixed. correction, they are in the midst of fixing it according to what I read

But it appears as though the reply box in the "old forum interface" is broken now as well.  Text ends up behind the Cancel Post bar at the bottom. 😕

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I am seeing this specifically on mobile. Also on mobile there is no Quote button, so I've had to type this on the desktop.

[Chad-Smith]

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@Chad-Smith wrote:

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:
... other than the search for specific forums defaults to the entire community, so you have to change that every time.

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I am also in support of this being reverted back to its previous functionality of automatically defaulting to the appropriate search level.

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Adding to this is that there is no option of the search level on mobile.

[stdpattern]

Another vote for page navigation at the top of the page