- You can ignore the profile icon. It used to be sync’d with the Discourse one, but that broke and is redundant once the new community forum is put in. The community forum creates a site wide menu (this is needed for some new functions built by Syl)
@AlecAaron I agree with everything and look forward to seeing it added into the plan that is forming here 
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We need to be very careful collecting user data as one of the needs leading to our platform creation was Facebook’s misuse of user data. So users will expect that we don’t collect, or sell to advertisers
Gotcha! Yeah, I think that the gather button and intention would make more sense if presented to users who will understand what’s up. So either they can tweak it when they’ve logged back in, or they are only presented with the feature once they’ve clicked through the layout deployed that will walk them from our splash page -> to our platform -> to finally understanding how they can contribute and become involved “gather”
Giving that feature without first giving users a solid grasp of what the site purpose is probably a factor working against our goal. I think I noticed a post from a while back mentioning visitors were reaching the site but then not actually converting to members, which would support that theory.
I’ll get to work on mapping out where we currently sit content-wise and then we can use that and circle back to the strategic placement of the gather action!
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i totally agree on the gather button. also as we are going to be having one menu across the site, i don’t think we want it there. In the news section for example, users aren’t going to expect the main action button to create an activity on the map
@danyalamriben Is there anything i can do now to help you with mapping?
@AlecAaron @danyalamriben @alvin @nweat @WhisperPntr Can you guys please review the mockups above and suggest/agree on a next step to advance them into a wireframe/mockup we can all contribute to and discuss improvements on each others designs. Is there a collaborative sandbox perhaps? (the next step after Diana’s mapping)
We have a basic voting system (we’ve yet to try out, for cases where we disagree).
I began with the mapping in just a text document which very well may be the most lean method for collaboration over this message board.
I will pull it back up on my laptop and see if I can just cut and paste. I also was going to ask if teammates thought it might be content audit -worthy. I have a template excel file that we can just hammer away at if we really want to know where we stand.
@AndyatFocallocal my biggest pain point when beginning that content map was not being sure of how many different websites/platforms we are currently working with, here. I’m sure there are many reasons why this project has grown in the way it has, and I’d love to understand better. I know there are plans of merging certain (forgive me if I’m misunderstanding) platforms and possibly having focallocal turn into a community within a bigger environment. Can you help me out with this? Links to sites and clearly unique entities probably should be taken into account. We can design our ideal outcome, but if, say, it doesn’t account for a particular message board that exists IRL, we’ll be dealing with loose ends and a bottomless pit of pages and content.
I think Figma would be a great tool for the mock-ups. I’ve been toying around with it and it’s like a lovely google docs for design!
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I’ve never heard of Figma but am happy to give it a go.
Our community is a volunteer community, so over the years different people began building things on different platforms. We’ve elected to shift everything to React, but that’s a fairly big job. The platform is very nearly ready to support our community again after the rebuild, so in platform terms just having a MVP is ok because the communities energy as it grows again will increase our capacity to tackle large projects.
I/we began building the maps when social media began shifting to a pay to play model. Realising the Focallocal community belonged to FB, not to it’s members, and FB were actively seeking to make it more difficult for an active community to coordinate action without paying - we’ve never had any funding.
We’re part of a global movement that began when people started exploring the new tools social media gave humanity to collaborate around innovative ideas to bring more peace and well-being into the world. That movement stalled and is a fraction of what it was 3-4 years ago due to the FB, the Twitter, etc, redesigning to subtlety reduce engagement unless groups were paying.
Seeing that the issue was wider than just up we shifted our plans to creating a platform for all those groups and to combine the energy of everyone working towards building that movement. Each group will be able to create their own page on the map, and suggest improvements to the site.
We’re also rebranding from Focallocal to The Public Happiness Movement, with Focallocal becoming just one group on the platform.
The current integration of the forum is switching in the next 2 weeks from discourse in an iframe on our site, to our site in an iframe on discourse
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This switch brings the incredible community features and backend of Discourse to the front of our site, so basically Discourse is powering our admin, discussions, stats and community building. We can then put buttons and links to open the forum anywhere we like across all platforms (currently it only works on the maps).This also means we’ll have just one menu bar for the whole site.
The overall plan is that all members of the site are owners of it and the site will evolve using a Decentralised governance model. Users earn higher voting rankings by getting active bringing happiness and well-being to the streets where they live, and building projects to tackle societal issues in a positive way
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I know that’s a lot to take in, but I got the idea you wanted a comprehensive overview.
To break it down, we’re designing the home page and user profile page to stop the site turning users away before they sign up.
Then we’ll onboard other communities and then look at improving other areas of the site.
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Oh, I was also thinking of introducing a Library section, as all activities are based on peer reviewed science. It would be nice to have a space where scollary users can post and tag studies they find and link them to activities, or use them to inspire new ones. That’s a new idea and might be better served by the forum, so don’t put too much thought into that
Thank you for all of that background! Let me synthesize some thoughts in response to specific parts that I need to clarify. I really appreciate what this team has set out to do, youve had to make all sorts of adaptations in response to these obstacles which isn’t easy, and it’s definitely a testament to the dedication of all volunteers to this mission.
So: we have a lot of moving parts here. Specifically
We have different desired actions on each area of the site. We’ve been considering each sub domain as a separate site, while being part of a wider mission to bring more peace and well-being into the world
- is this expected to carry into final builds of the website(s)?
I’ve never heard of Figma but am happy to give it a go.
Our community is a volunteer community, so over the years different people began building things on different platforms. We’ve elected to shift everything to React, but that’s a fairly big job. The platform is very nearly ready to support our community again after the rebuild, so in platform terms just having a MVP is ok because the communities energy as it grows again will increase our capacity to tackle large projects.
I/we began building the maps when social media began shifting to a pay to play model. Realising the Focallocal community belonged to FB, not to it’s members, and FB were actively seeking to make it more difficult for an active community to coordinate action without paying - we’ve never had any funding.
We’re part of a global movement that began when people started exploring the new tools social media gave humanity to collaborate around innovative ideas to bring more peace and well-being into the world. That movement stalled and is a fraction of what it was 3-4 years ago due to the FB, the Twitter, etc, redesigning to subtlety reduce engagement unless groups were paying.
Seeing that the issue was wider than just up we shifted our plans to creating a platform for all those groups and to combine the energy of everyone working towards building that movement.
- Is it fair to say this is a social platform, then? Specifically geared towards this intention of bringing peace and wellbeing into every corner of the world?
Each group will be able to create their own page on the map, and suggest improvements to the site.
- “Create their own page” can you tell me more about what this means? Like, a group profile page? Must all groups be rooted in a fixed location on the map?
We’re also rebranding from Focallocal to The Public Happiness Movement, with Focallocal becoming just one group on the platform.
- Groups are defined by what? Location? Focus?
The current integration of the forum is switching in the next 2 weeks from discourse in an iframe on our site, to our site in an iframe on discourse
- What exactly will this mean in terms of information architecture? Will website URLs be different? Will there be an increase or a decrease in pages? Forgive my naive question but I’m not very well versed in this area of development!
This switch brings the incredible community features and backend of Discourse to the front of our site, so basically Discourse is powering our admin, discussions, stats and community building. We can then put buttons and links to open the forum anywhere we like across all platforms (currently it only works on the maps).This also means we’ll have just one menu bar for the whole site.
- Ok. So am I understanding this correctly? We want all platforms to be on discourse which will contain the site specific navigation that enables our users to take desired actions? I won’t lie, I’m on my laptop right now and I cannot even find the maps that we were just referring to.
The overall plan is that all members of the site are owners of it and the site will evolve using a Decentralised governance model. Users earn higher voting rankings by getting active bringing happiness and well-being to the streets where they live, and building projects to tackle societal issues in a positive way
- I dig this, but I feel like I am obligated to give my point of view. From a UX standpoint, I see the forum as difficult on the eyes. How can we personalize or simplify what users see so they aren’t overwhelmed by a forum page of dense content that may or may not be related to what they are interested in? I think that a pretty homepage definitely is well deserved, but if the navigation and usability of this entire project doesn’t get the necessary spring-cleaning, I really worry that it will provide a barrier to gaining traction. People will not stay on the site unless highly motivated (which is awesome, but we want to make this accessible, right?)
- is this expected to carry into final
No, although we will launch before they are fully unified. Using this forum as a top layer should do a great job of creating an impression of a seamless experience
- Is it fair to say this is a social platform, then? Specifically geared towards this intention of bringing peace and wellbeing into every corner of the world?
Yes. A place with more powerful tools than current social media, and a place where everyone and every group who want to see that change can find each other, take action together, and combine our efforts
- “Create their own page” can you tell me more about what this means? Like, a group profile page? Must all groups be rooted in a fixed location on the map?
Yes. It’ll look very much like the current page when a user posts themselves on the map, but with a few enhanced community management tools. We plan to give them different coloured dots, and to place a link to their group in any activities their members create
- Groups are defined by what? Location? Focus?
I think you mean what makes them unique. They share a similar vision which fits with our community values statement. They have their own existing activities and communities, unless someone is creating a new group on our platform. Some are local, some have members globally.
- What exactly will this mean in terms…
The site will be exactly the same to begin with. The iframe loads our current site inside it, so the URL will appear to change for users. We should switch to Publichappinessmovement.com at some point soon, even though users can’t see the URL. It’s just good practice. Same number of pages, although I need to edit all mentions of Focallocal to explain what’s going on to users
- Ok. So am I understanding this correctly
Yes, that’s right. Discourse will be an invisible layer over the top of the site, which opens a forum when we want it to, displays notifications and allows messaging, etc.
The maps should be there if you close the green bar here
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Then enter a location, or click to use your current location
- I dig this, but I feel
If you post yourself on the map you can try it out. On your page you’ll find (slightly dorky) looking buttons. Give them a click and it opens a new forum thread.
We can add a link or icon on any aspect of the site, so users will open a specific and related forum thread when they click it (or create one). We’ll create a tutorial for new users, but once done one time, the idea that there is a community discussion/governance forum one click away
on most areas of the site, should become intuitive
here is a example of the new version created by @syl who you can ask questions directly relating to the forum sync. Our pages will function much more like this in around two weeks
I would need more context on the wall. I had a quick look at it and became curious about what information / goals support it.