Design, Layout and UX (User Experience)

Hey @RachSANECEO I was aware of the history and the relevance of the present logo. I think one of the problems with all this is that the community here (overall) is not aware of both, and it certainly was not consulted with the re-branding (no need to apologise because that is gone and we need to move forward👍).

I do see SANE as uniquely placed in the overcrowded MH sector with the role played in advocacy - especially now with the emphasis on lived experience at the centre. So many other groups/organisations 'say' they are advocating on behalf of those with MH ill-health but either do not actually consult with their clients/members or they don't actually hear what is being said. There are always underlying agendas and often pre-determined outcomes that lie behind the scenes. SANE is breaking free of this and providing very real and inclusive avenues for it's members to be heard. SANE is leading the way with Lived Experience at the heart of the organisation with both your role and others being those with Lived Experience. The LEAC is unique in the MH field and SANE is the first to pass the National Standards for digital mental health (a massive achievement).

I do think there needs to be some 'softening' on the actual forums. The logo remains - fair enough but the colours and layout are too much. Maybe we could do some of that 'softening' within the forums themselves. I don't mind the obviously bold colour on other parts of the SANE site but the logo gets lost in amongst everything. Something to think about - how can we make it stand out and visible so everyone knows EXACTLY what site they are on. Maybe it is something as simple as a border around the logo to draw the viewer's eyes in???? The downfall there would be that some people may see a border as a constriction ie. enclosing MH within??? putting MH in a box??? etc.

Looking at organisations that support SANE and future funding – I get your point completely. We need ‘big business’ to help but also those aligned with our values and culture. We certainly do not want to be aligned with anyone that contradicts what SANE stands so for so let me put my thinking cap on here and I will get back to you.

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to this, but has anyone thought of something like a discord server or something similar? something that a link can be provided to a small group, who can voice chat in a safe space with a mod in the room?

I know some people find it hard to express themselves in written form, this could make it easier. and if it was done as voice chat without video, you still have the privacy.

Hearing a voice gives this process more warmth and an understanding of the emotion someone is feeling.

I posted this on an other thread and was asked if i could post it here 🙂 I have just finished reading this thread can I say that I didn't know/ had heard anything about SANE until I was almost pushed to breaking point by a government organisation overstepping their boundaries. I had heard about the Blue Knot but I wasn't ready to open that trauma yet. I found SANE that day.

The problem is SANE isn't well known and not one of the service providers we use are aware of the organisation. Could there be a mass information drop? Email to government organisations, hospitals, schools, doctors ect. media coverage about what SANE is doing? as the word isn't out there.

Forums - as a new user the forums are hard to navigate and can be a little overwhelming at points. I haven't found a guild to refer to, so I'm figuring this out by myself. If I was someone with limited abilities or limited computer skills, It would be a lot harder to find what I needed. Please don't get me wrong I love SANE and what it is doing and what it stands for, it's just not all inclusive for all abilities.

Thank you for posting this here @Miss-wish 😁

I do like your suggestion for voice chat - it is certainly an avenue to look into. The written word/text based does exclude some and it would be great to broaden our scope in reaching more people. In saying that, I agree that SANE is not widely know and that is one of the things our CEO is passionate about changing. These forums have done so much for so many - and have grown so much in the years it has been running. That is also one of the reasons we are looking at this co-design process and working with members in this space to improve - as you can imagine, the more something grows, the more is needed.

The site itself IS tricky to navigate and it would be great if you could continue to highlight those areas that are difficult and any ways they could be improved.

Thank you again for your feedback and helping in this space.

Hi @RachSANECEO @Zoe7

First of all, thank you again for the opportunity to provide feedback in this forum. (That is my attempt at humour...)

But, actually first of all, can somebody please explain the tagging culture, and why it is so prevalent that staff are instructing new users to tag people or not receive a reply? I've had/seen staff comment a whole new reply, and tag the other recipient, just to say " @tyme " I think this post was meant for you. Because, clearly the site is broken if you can't use it without being tagged or tagging someone, and as I said previously in a different thread, tagging on other forums in my experience, is an extreme measure when communicating. It is usually considered clingy, needy, self-centred and sometimes aggressive or abusive, and here its a complete norm to tag someone that has only responded to your posts once.

Most people are exclaiming a difficulty in navigating from the notification area, (which is only a result of tagging, unless they subscribed to replies on a previous post) and just leaving a tab open, and opening the link in a new tab is an easy way to alleviate these issues. However, this isn't an obvious strategy to navigation, and it shouldn't have to be.

Topic drift, and topic spread/split is natural for a forum of this nature, but it should also be gently discouraged. Again, a large majority of the threads I am involved in is either the protagonist venting, and being placated by various onlookers, or myself venting, and wondering if anyone is really reading my posts, and being placated myself in turn, under the guise of active listening, which is actually amusing to providers that find this sort of mental health support approach outdated and crass. It's clinical, and it has no place in a lived experience centred space.

Personally I use a computer for most of my apps, the browser based app in the case of the forum (which is actually a skylight website, and I have no idea how to access the SANE style forum, as I seem to be locked in the skylight version, of which the formatting is bloated and banana gang yellow, and it takes ages for the server side to load requests) and I only really use my smartphone for phone calls and text messaging, but I'm aware that I am unique in that way. Invariably, you can't have everything you want on two different layouts, (or a third for tablets/iPads) and if we can have everything then your dev team must be pretty cool. But I don't think the inclusion of a few buttons, or hiding/showing what a new notification or not is going to drastically change the outcomes of the users, particularly new users.

I've been on mental health Discords, they are toxic, and barely moderated, and far from the safety that the SANE forum seems to have accomplished, which I will commend them on, though I did read about the forums being censored directly following the Voice referendum and that made me cringe a little bit, but just shutting things down sometimes is a safer option (though when Wall Street do it, it's just criminal - but I digress). Instant Chat features are dangerous, and lend themselves to manipulative behaviour that cannot be moderated effectively, for vulnerable people this is extremely dangerous, and given the prevalence of social media options for most young people, who cannot escape their bullies even in the safety of their own private spaces, having a space online that is not only safe but supportive is paramount to any ability to chat more quickly. A direct message is akin to a love letter for anyone born before 1990, and the intimacy of texting someone is lost on a generation that doesn't realise immediately how pervaded their privacy has become.

But the real issue, as I see it, is that there is nowhere to engage with people. Sure, I can jump into Tabaluga's, but I don't know those people, and they are welcoming enough, and I'm bolder and more confident than most people that I could jump in, but I don't know those people, and they don't know me, and its challenging at best. I don't relate at all really if I lurk in the established conversations, and when I find myself looking for other threads to visit, they are again, all one protagonist venting to the void, with occasional staff chiming in to say they are being heard and to validate their experience. Or, I can attempt to chime in on any of the dozens of new threads everyday, where people just want you to help them, but aren't interested in engaging in return, or I can just open my own thread, and vent into the void, only to be occasionally placated and actively listened to, without any connection with anyone else. Not that having your own space to tell your own story isn't a great thing to have in a forum like this, but that seems to be all there is.

The Thursday evening chat group about asserting boundaries was great, but it felt competitive vying for the most likes, thumbs or hugs in an orthodox classroom, where we are all trying to be the teachers pet or the class clown. The Tuesday afternoon discussion was less so, but lacked engagement, and if it didn't, I'm not sure how out of hand the volume of replies would have gotten to. In other forums such as The WELL, they will have a featured conversation that lasts the entire week, and it gives people time to read things, and post thoughtful questions.

All in all, the overall design of topics, and where people are encouraged to post, and how they find new threads to navigate into and engage with is the core problem with the forum. In essence, the fundamental mechanics of the forum do not work at all. There were at least a dozen new threads from first time users today alone, and I don't really understand how that can be the aim of the forum. I tried to create a more useful topic for newbies to engage with, and I doubt anyone even saw it unless they really looked hard. New users should be vigorously dissuaded from starting a new thread that is going to instantly feature on the front page. If you want users to create dozens of new threads every day (I fail to see why, and it probably drives the devs to frustration) then create a navigated page away from the front page, whereby everyone can have their own little chunk of the forum, and if you get bored you know you can always go there to read in depth someone's venting and ranting, but it should be clear that there is going to be little response there.

Rach, your idea of the festival, though well intended, is a little too pizazz for my liking, and I think of festivals as being a place where for 3 days, the staff get abused, the site gets trashed, the entertainment largely ignored, and the ticket price is so high, and only the organisers make any profit, before all the festival goers leave after destroying the joint, and this seems like the sort of maladaptive symptoms the wider normal public expect from the insane.

But the thought process behind it is solid. You want to create permanent threads that are active everyday, and engage with them, and encourage users to post in them, and make it easy to see them on the front page permanently, with a displayed counter of how many new replies there are in that thread, how long ago, which users recently posted, etc.

And you want this to be a branch of navigation in wider form, and a drop down quick navigation for phone users. I would need to draw flow charts to really explain what I mean, but I hope I am being clear enough. The topics you have now, aren't too bad, such as Social Spaces, Something's Not Right, My Story, Introduction, but there isn't any prominent featured active conversations. Nor is there any easy way to view them, and if there was, there's no point to navigating to them. Some of the more established longer running active threads could be part of the infrastructure, but I think you need newly designed, catered threads as well and a kickstart to the conversations, and an emphasis on staff using them there first, instead of whatever abomination is happening now. And these featured threads need to be permanently visible from the main front page, or an easily navigated main hub page (yes you need the little buttons for this.)

If new users were funnelled into these spaces, instead of clogging up things screaming "me me me me" they would be forced to jump mid way into the conversations, and the existing users (if they are not just responding to being tagged) would naturally read the new posts, and be welcoming, as we all assume we are all welcoming, and fondly remember what it was like to first engage in a group dynamic. And as soon as one monkey jumps in and says "hello, I'm new here" and other monkeys see how successful that approach was, pretty soon you have 100 monkeys all jumping in and saying hello, in the same thread, all engaging in the current topic, because those people navigated to that thread because it looked and sounded interesting and it was actively being used.

It's scary and daunting for first time users, but you can't Molly coddle people, and then expect them to engage with the rest of your site and its activities. There has to be some element of accountability, and courage and authenticity, and disclosure when they feel comfortable to do so in a larger conversation.

I hope this is enough suggestions for now, I was challenged to say how I think improvements could be made, and if it's not clear what I'm addressing, I can be clearer.

hope some of you got some rest
😎
deshift

Oh okay. I put a lot of thought into that.

On recollection of hindsight, the other forum users asked to also provide feedback, were challenged when being disparaging about certain aspects of the forum, and then asked to offer suggestions to solutions that isn't really their role, or what could be seen as fair. on top of that, the justifications measured against their concerns seemed to belittle, and the whole concept of asking for feedback conjures up tokenism at best.

Rach's response here, seems to suggest that my opinion was a good chance to vent, and thanks for your input, however we're going to plough on with the focus groups, and the design we already have in motion, but we want you to seem like it's still important what you have written, but I have no idea how to fault what you've said like the other posts, so I hope no-one notices me shuffling towards closing this conversation.

(posting here, rather than the actual forum, since that seems like a complete waste of my time and energy)

I'd love an actual reply here.

😲
deshift

thanks, I realise you are flat out busy, so thanks for rising to the challenge, perhaps a little quicker than I had presumed, so thank you. I'm super grateful.

I'd be more than happy to actually sit in on some specifics, I guess I'm fairly skeptical given the actual amount of feedback I've given in the past has had little traction with other service providers' upper echelon.

I'd still like some clarity about my other questions regarding the tagging culture, and why I am locked in a skylight version of the SANE forums. perhaps from someone else, but I'm not picky, I just realise you might be super busy, as I said. having this information shows me you are dedicated to transparency, and assists me in understanding how to better make suggestions about a redesign.

thanks heaps for being authentic and attentive

😅
deshift

no worries

@Snaffle-Admin can you help @deshift with some advice on why they might be seeing a skylight version? i don't .... technically know what that means but i have a guess.

@deshift can you email some screenshots to the forums team so they can forward to snaffle to take a look - it may be something that has to get reported all the way to the product team but im sure its something we can figure out.

@RachSANECEO according to the system @deshift originally signed up to the Forums through the Skylight partner version, so whenever they log in they will see the Skylight design.

Unfortunately due to the Care rollout and my lack of access to Stage/Publishing, I haven't been able to review how the Group Hubs might be displaying on Partner versions so there could well be some visual differences with the SANE version.

If it's problematic we could update @deshift to be linked to the SANE version rather than Skylight.