Design, Layout and UX (User Experience)

I don’t feel there would be value in having any type of ‘award’ system.

when I think of ‘award’ system I am reminded of when I was employed and there was similar to employee of the month award based on performance. It became a competition between people.

personally, I would prefer to have emoji options above text content box for posts.

to have option to easily choose to add appropriate emoji as part of the post. Ie when person has been supportive / encouraging etc in a reply, to have option to include emoji. Not all devices easily allow for people to access emoji’s

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@RachSANECEO wrote:
Do you think it would be helpful if there was some variance in colour scheme/visual depending on where you are in the forums?

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Like, you mean between the lived experiance side and the carers side? I don't know. I just stick to the lived experiance area.

In terms of the various subdivisions of the lived experiance side, I can't see that it'd be useful, to be honest. Conversations tend to be fairly fluid on the forums. Often you might get a thread that rightly started out in one section of the forums, but then when you look at how the conversation as whole ended up morphing over time, the thread as a whole probably belongs in a completely differant section of the forums.

Often, when you want to start a thread, it's not entirely clear where you should be starting it, anyway. Some topics just don't fit neatly into a group, you know?

TBH, aside from when I'm starting a topic, I don't really pay much attention to what section of the forums a conversation is in.

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@Former-Member wrote:

I don’t feel there would be value in having any type of ‘award’ system.

when I think of ‘award’ system I am reminded of when I was employed and there was similar to employee of the month award based on performance. It became a competition between people.

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Yeah, I completely agree. I think awards would cheapen the experiance and make the forums less authentic.

Why do you have such a complex and difficult layout? I am trying to respond to a notice from 'tyme'. I can't find the source of this notice. I assume that my name was mentioned in passing.

Hey @Louiswalker , I've received your message. Do you have any suggestions for an easier/simpler layout? I'm keen to hear about it. e.g. any example forums/platforms you know of?

I’m fairly tech savvy so after a play around I can generally work my way around most systems and programs. But there is certainly for improvement.

- I’m not fussy by the colour of design. I like it. But that’s just me.

- I agree with what @Zoe7 said about the annoyance around new notifications. Once you’ve checked on new link, all the other links are unchecked and you don’t know which ones you’ve actually looked at. Having the ability for them to all remained as ‘NEW’ until you’ve actually clicked on them would be good. But also having the option to ‘mark all as read’ would be vital too!! I know some people are ok with having the little red notification on all their apps, but I am not one of them people!

And the same issue, that once your in new notifications, there is no easy way to get back to forums.

-drop down menus would be amazing to help navigate the forums. It would be so much easier.

And an app. Even better!

oh I also forgot to add… this is where I generally access all parts of the forum from. It’s a lot of scrolling to get down to this. That’s why drop down menus would be so much more convenient.

And…. When I go to say, latest posts, and I want to view beyond the 5or 6 that drop down, I click on ‘all latest post’. When you open a thread from there, it always opens from the beginning- the first posts.

I’m not a fan of the award system. As I believe it could possibly take away the purpose of the forum. People may just try to ‘win’ instead of being there to really support each other. I myself don’t care to receive awards. I’m here for support with people that understand and to support others, not for accolades.

Nominating someone for achieving a goal, I think, would make that member feel acknowledge. However how would they then feel if they fell a step or two back? Would it hinder their ability to seek help as the may feel like that have failed? Failure is an intense feeling that can happen with MH.

Also some members don’t know a lot of the other members, such as I have never ‘met’ @Zoe7 before.

As for the badges, I’m not really sure.

Maybe a length of continuous membership could see a new badge over senior contributor? I don’t really know though?

@Snaffle-Admin see the question below about drop downs and the menu @Bow mentions that is useful but takes a lot of scrolling to find - can we chat offline about this and what is possible?

Hi @RachSANECEO, yes of course, we can certainly build that in.

There used to actually be a top level Forums item in the header dropdown menu at the top of the page, which at least had direct links off to the Lived Experience and Carers forums, but it I think it would be better to look at an option outside of that with more navigation options which works well with Partner instances of the forums too.