As we wrap up the year, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who attended the office hours sessions for the forums redesign. Your feedback has been valuable in driving design improvements and continues to influence our product strategy moving forward.
Office Hours Recap – December 19, 2024
White Space
We’ve previously discussed our efforts to reduce clutter in the activity stream list. However, I personally acknowledge that the current design introduces more white space than the industry standard, and I hear your concerns about this. Suggestions like independent scrolling or stickiness of the side rails are noted as potential solutions. Also, some of you said that the increase of the lines on the activity stream may have contributed to the spacing issue. We will prioritize addressing these gaps in the new year.
Pinned Posts
The introduction of the pinned post redesign was aimed to declutter the activity stream by removing multiple pinned posts. However, we recognize that this has created a new challenge with visibility. Some of you suggested operational solutions, such as reducing the number of pinned posts and unpinning older topics. You also noted that adding post types (e.g. "announcements" or "introductions") to the title sometimes creates confusion, as they stop appearing like regular posts from administrators. Your feedback is valuable, and we will continue to iterate on this feature.
Top Contributors
For those interested, please refer to our previous post on this topic. While some of you visited the Top Contributors section occasionally, it was not a top priority for most people. I want to assure you that we are committed to finding better ways to highlight and support our advocates beyond the leaderboard.
"W"-Shaped Reading
You mentioned that the new design feels like a “W” shape compared to the linear layout of the previous design, causing your eyes to move up and down frequently. We want to explore this further and encourage you to share more insights with our community managers on the forums.
New Activity Author Name in Bold
The inclusion of the author’s name in bold for new activity on the topics was pointed out as a concern. We will review this for potential improvement.
Related Tags Section
As we stated during the call, this section will be refined in the coming months. In its future state, this section will provide useful filters for content discoverability, completely different from what you see now. Some of you also shared that associating predefined tags with posts can be challenging. We’ll investigate ways to improve this process to make tagging more useful and seamless.
Topic Page and Navigation
You highlighted that scrolling to the end of a long topic page causes the breadcrumbs to disappear, making navigation to previous pages or other section difficult. This is something we’ll address in future iterations. Stay tuned!
Top Navigation
The top navigation has been described as overwhelming, with too many choices making it unclear for finding resources. Many of you rely on Google to locate Autodesk pages. While I personally think relying on search engines for navigation is a common behaviour in today’s world, we clearly see an opportunity to improve the search and navigation functionalities on our own pages to make them more helpful and intuitive.
Cross-Board Search
A concern was raised about how searching for content within a board sometimes brings up results for another product, especially for related products like Civil 3D and AutoCAD. We understand how this can cause confusion, and we are currently reviewing this issue. We’ll provide updates as we work toward a resolution.
Moving with the times
An interesting observation was raised about infusing more visual content into our Forum pages as video-based learning is highly effective on other platforms and resonates with people in the younger generation. We’re excited to share that we have plans to introduce more visual content to enhance the learning experience on Forums. Stay tuned!
The recording for this office hours session is available on it's event page.
The Bigger Picture
Ultimately, we aim to answer this question: How can we retain the primary information that our community members care about on the activity stream while addressing space clutter, competing colors, and uplifting the most relevant content without making the forums board feel like an FAQ?
This is a delicate balance, and as noted during the call, we’re taking up this challenge to make the forums a more useful and engaging space for all.
As we head into the holidays, I want to wish you all a wonderful and restful season. We will share updates about the plan for the office hours in the upcoming month.
Happy Holidays!
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