Looks like it’s $5/user each month. Unless we could use free for everyone we’re going to struggle as we plan to have a million plus users 24months after launch
I think it’s debates like the ones you are referencing that may be one source of many disconnections between teams.
The notion of a dev team being the only voice in a debate over what might be more or less confusing can almost feel comical. I’m imagining a chat between brilliant minds who revel in the complexity of problem solving in, so much so that they have the patience to learn such an amazingly difficult skill in development!
I don’t say comical in a deprecating way, because what a team uniquely brings to the table is what makes collab beautiful… and exist in the first place.
However, a few things seem clear:
- The design of the site thus far has not proven to be understandable. That is to say, I think we should bring different perspectives into the debate on what makes something more or less confusing. I think the UX perspective would loudly say that the current discourse environment makes our work very needlessly confusing
This brings me to my next point, which is more of an unsure understanding:
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What exactly are we designing here? At one time, I thought we were designing an interface of a website that enables individual heros across the globe to better conquer their challenges of community disconnect and collectively gather to improve social engagement. This understanding is evolving to be a more functional view of how we believe our users are best assisted by software (they must be able to locate other members on a map, so lets build a map! etc) which still makes sense.
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I do feel that the separate work we have been doing in terms of hammering out kinks in discourse usability, simply so that we can quickly and effectively collaborate to produce this website is more of a handicap or distraction than it is a necessary design process.
I just worry we’re unnessecarily encumbered by this meta-work that is definitely stemming from an understandable intention:
- I totally respect and can see the merit in designing for actual use! It’s so often that people will build something because it made sense to build but not ever ask what the people want!
it’s noble and idealistic, but how well is it serving us at the moment? and what is this site’s intended use?
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This is probably my biggest head-scratcher right now. Because effectively, we are working on figuring out how to meta-design a website. We’re trying to map project management software functions onto a website that didn’t strike me as solely intended for just PM, but also social networking, spreading news, and facilitating events in communities and opportunities to connect resources with needs on a global scale.
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That is a huge undertaking and requires prioritzation. We’re burning time/resources trying to design a tool using discourse’s current limitations when similar tools have been successfully designed by many companies in the past, tools that are very usable and work well for software development and project management.
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What would be the ultimate harm in having our currently active developers on an established platform such as asana/slack/nuclino etc etc just until we can get some progress done on the actual product that we hope to provide the world? I think this current blurring of the lines between developers and users (while very well intentioned and inclusive) is causing needless confusion and attrition in new teammates trying to jump in and get to work.
I’m really bad at writing concisely, and I swear I will edit this down to the essentials after I finish eating my dinner!
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We did this because there were no UX specialists around at that time. The community is designed around agile principles, where anyone can fill any role as needed. This is because stability in a volunteering community is very hard to achieve, and in 8 years we’ve never had it. So the person who is best able to solve an issue at that time, takes it on. Ideally that would be a UX expert, but if we don’t have one the decision is made by the next most able person. Building out our documentation will make this more efficient
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What exactly are we designing here?
You are correct with everything there. The underlying theme had always been ‘community building’ as a primary consideration. That’s why we chose Discourse for discussions as it is the number one opensource community building platform on the net.
That was entirely to accommodate your desire to communicate via slack. It is a feature others have wanted before, so it was on the pipeline. I thought it could be done in a few days, but sometimes we get slow spells in the build when energy dips.
None, really. It felt like it was better to have the UX team using the platform which needs improving, so you can see all of the kinks and work to make the space better for yourselves as that will directly benefit other users.
The only functional difference I see between this forum and Slack is that one is dynamic and one fixed. I can change that if it would help, it does the come at the expense of community building, and so we’d then be using a different platform than we’re building for users
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@danyalamriben I updated the top post with core components and secondary ones.
Core components we have to build around as they are the basis of years of work
Secondary ones can/will be replaced
Your mission is to build coherence into the systems, ideally by using them and improving them. If you won’t use them then neither will users or other teams
I also created a basic design considerations page where you are welcome to ask questions and I’ll expand
I’ll make a site architecture heirachy diagram too
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Okay this is good. I can understand the core component when you frame it as the interaction between discourse as a way to further discuss items that are located on the site page. That is something I can work from.
I think we should identify our key intentions of the discourse forum. Building community =/= building a website. Of course we must test the builds at every stage. However, I think that can be coordinated better through a more nimble platform for us to work through
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Sure. Discourse shadows the website. Anywhere a user is there should be a nearby link to engage with the content which opens up the forum in a sidebar so they can:
a) comment/discuss
b) make suggestions for a vote
c) participate in a vote already on that page
The structure also shadows the website, so most users will access discourse primarily via the main website. For example, i see a project that interests me in the action center so i click on it and it opens up the category for that project and i can see/join all discussions going on.
Discourse is to handle the community building and communication aspect of the website (and can operate across multiple platforms). As an added bonus it has the most powerful backend i’ve ever seen which we’ve essentially bootstrapped onto our website, so our admins will have incredible tools to work with. Plus a pretty strong plugin library (like user voting), great support and excellent security.
The slight drawback is that we lose the ability to display comments directly in the main site, but we the bonuses are incredible and we could build a plugin to restore that in the future if needed. I believe that after a short time on our website a user will intuitively expect the forum to open anytime they want to engage with the rest of community
From a technical point of view, right now we pull Discourse features into our platform via API. V2 inserts our platform into Discourse, so all of those tools and features are right there sitting on top of our site.
I know you provided an example, but I will admit this isn’t fully making sense to me. Do you have an example of another website that deploys this? Sometimes that makes it click instantly for me!
This should be pinned somewhere, simple, but really worth making explicit.
Losing the ability to directly display comments is a symptom of a bigger issue which is our consistency in visual interfaces.
Inconsistency is a huge trap for website designs because it communicates so much to a new user. “Do these people know what theyre doing? Why did it just take me to a different website? What the heck is this? I didnt want a forum, I wanted to just vote, or read more about X, etc”
I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is actually pretty jarring the first time, and I would bet that some analytics would show that users do not spend much time on the page before hitting back or abandoning altogether. a takeway from this would be to reiterate a priority of formatting discourse to reflect the webpage’s as closely as possible, to reassure users that they’ve landed in the right spot
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no, the software doesnt exist. with Syl we created it 
1st time, sure. so we can make the 1st time opening a welcome message by clicking on their user profile icon, which will open the forum. i think the system is pretty intuitive after the 1st time. it always does the same thing, and it does it everywhere across our site
i’m working on a website diagram to visualise, but it wont be ready today
We could use more people in general likely, but they don’t need to be UX necessarily since the testing protocol can be laid out for something like card sorting at least. Other research it might be more helpful, but even here when doing like a user interview for instance it’s more how skilled of an interviewer you are which can be due to all sorts of backgrounds. When it comes to user testing there might be a time when we need to move things online. This often requires money, as does one person doing all the research for say card sorting because you’ll need to advertise for participants and those people will need to get paid for their time.
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@danyalamriben @AndyatFocallocal
I’m going to reiterate some things Dani has mentioned.
We have three walled gardens here, connected by paths:
- The website without login
- Website logged in
- Internal development
These three are conceptually differentiated, and it’s critical that they:
- Are approached consistently, a fundamental aspect of UX
- Don’t overwork user’s cognitive load (how much they have to think)
Getting Started
I’m going to suggest a compromise here:
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Let Dani and I come up with a way to move forward with the UX organisation so we can get on with it.
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I understand there might be some concerns about making sure the work is always accessible, including if someone drops out, so we can take steps to ensure that’s not an issue
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Possible cost considerations, we’ll take a look at that too
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Making sure what’s happening is disseminated on the board, what I’m talking about and integration with the discussion board and story board aren’t mutually exclusive.
I’m excited to be a part of what’s happening here, but there’s a lot of work to be done and hurdles to that should be minimal.
As an aside, just to you know, complicate things further, I’ve been thinking about social neuroscience and psych regarding empathy, and we could possibly bring that into the mix. It will take me some time to look into that.
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Right now we’re still operating on our freegan model of the past 8 years, so all volunteers and no budget. I cover hosting myself (and live in a van so I can contribute nearly full time). This could change with the token launch, but I don’t want to advertise that yet as building a community who expect a financial return would quickly turn toxic of that doesn’t happen. I’ve not been able to put volunteer ads out lately, but I think I can begin again from tomorrow. The token is designed to improve the site regardless of whether it has value (internet points and statistical feedback on energy put in )
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Is a perfect fit. Perhaps you should look at where that could fit in the Whitepaper, as that is becoming the vision statement for the project
I hear you. Diana and I will come up with a plan that has zero cost insofar as us getting our work done and making it as scaleable as possible and making sure it’s always accessible and disseminated.
Is this okay? We really need this to get the work done.
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I’d be more than happy to look at that. Here’s a recent reddit post that might whet your appetite:
@danyalamriben
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bud7iq/askscience_ama_series_i_am_jamil_zaki_professor/
If we really get into the nitty gritty of this I might be able to talk to some professors involved in this line of work (maybe). My alumni has a department that deals with this. They currently use VR to help people with autism.
As I’ve mentioned, for the UX work we’ll also need to visit the messaging, and this will happen sooner rather than later.
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@NJUX that Reddit pretty is exactly the foundations for our project and community. Also why we resist calling ourselves ‘a tribe’ which is so in vogue right now. It’s not about building something for ‘our people’. It’s about ‘people’. Everything is focused outwards on engaging and interacting our wider society