Early Feedback

I played with the new forum for a bit and first I want to congratulate you guys for the great work! It looks really good and has some pretty cool features!

There are a couple of suggestions that I would make however if I may, please note I’ve only spent an hour on it and I may have gotten things wrong. Also, please don’t take these as a negative feedback as I’m focusing more on the things to improve than on the things that I like. Again, I really like the way this is going, and hopefully these suggestions can help.

- My first question is about the ordering of the posts. I understand that you wanted to make fresh content always appear on top and as such you are filtering by the date of the creation of the post. While this sounds good in theory, I note that this goes against the standard of sorting by time of last comment. I think that if you keep with that sorting, there’s a risk that only fresh content will get views and that it won’t promote a longer style of threads. Older interesting threads that could go for dozens of posts around a month will be lost and virtually inaccessible.

A side effect of that would be long thread not happening, and only “superficial” talking going on with short Q&A type threads. While I’m sure it’s a good thing to have, sacrificing the ability to have longer discussions is a high price to pay.

As an example, I replied to an “old” thread here: http://www.chefsteps.com/forum/posts/6a0c14500c2411e493761796aac043da

Nobody knows about it with the current system. You are showing “5 comments” in the main view but we don’t know when was the last one. Is the thead still alive or dead? I don't know! I guess the top poster gets a notification but that doesn’t include other people (thread outsiders) who may want to jump in on the discussion.

- This goes in tandem with my first point but my second point is accessibility of posts. Because there’s a small volume right now, the idea of infinite scroll works. Just like the ordering, I’m not sure it’s going to scale as a way to access really old posts. (By all mean keep infinite scroll but don’t let it be the only way to go look for older things).

So how to improve accessibility?

First would be search which I’m sure you already plan on implementing.

Second would be to add more ways to see threads. You already kinda implemented this with the related posts column, but I think you could expand on it. One way to keep your ordering and still make older threads live would be to use the sidebar to show the latest active posts (a column sorted by last posts in threads) for example. You could also think instead of showing featured recipes, showing featured threads (maybe the most faved ones? I don’t know!).

I feel compelled to have a third point but I don’t really have one. Sorry.

- Some thoughts on category views. Top looks gorgeous. I personally find the category menu font slightly too condensed, it could be because of the opacity that it’s

slightly hard to read. This is really a minor point and I’ve only checked on Windows with non-retina/high-DPI display for now.

I love the ability to reply directly inline. The position of the reply box in between content and other posts doesn’t really push you to read other comments first, but I understand the choice of putting it there. If you open a large thread, having it below can be confusing (but then again, wouldn’t you want to at least read what others had to say first?).

Slight inconsistency regarding likes/follower. If I click Like on a post it gets a cool orange under roundrect, if I click “follower” it doesn’t. It’s not obvious that clicking “3 followers” would add you to the list. This may need icons? If I like a Subpost, you use a heart icon with another metaphor (Like/Unlike + heart icon at the right of that block). You could probably tweak that.

- Thread view. As mentioned in another thread, top left should bring back to home, not forum home. But there’s a need to go back to category (after a while I saw the “in Recipes” next to the time of post, not obvious). Why not add the category bar from category view in some way to that view? That could add some color too maybe (page feels very white, lacks orange!).

“Create new post” button is a bit weird to me on that page. I’m reading a post, would creating a new post be a reply to what I’m reading? That was my first thought.

Related posts. How does that work? I have no idea yet.

- I can self-like my content, this probably should be a no-no? Maybe it’s what cool kids do nowadays, I don’t know, it feels weird to me

- What am I following? There probably should be a view to tell me that? Could be a sidebar with activity on my followed stuff + a list in some profile?

- Posting. I love the design but I reaaaaaally think that this edit box should be expandable if you want to promote deeper interactions. Either add a resizable handle or a button to make it bigger? I typed this in a text editor, I would never had typed it in that small and narrow a box for example. Please consider this!

Styling stuff. Are links auto hrefed? (I’ll see after posting this I guess). What about adding some way to add bold or italic maybe? I tried stuff like *bold* that you usually see on forums but didn’t seem to work.

You can still type while picture upload. I’m not sure if it’s good, I know I had to upload my macaron pic twice, I don’t know if it’s because I was typing or something else. It’s a bit weird to type and have it pop below. What if I put return carriage and stuff, would it pop where I was when I started uploading? Or at current cursor pos when uploading is done? I don’t know.

Ok I guess that’s it for early feedback. I feel like I have to say again that this is in no way a negative critique of the work done so far, which I think is really a step up in many ways from the older forum.

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Comments

cwizou

Sorry for the formatting it looks a bit weird, I tried to fix the first paragraph but that's how it looked when I pasted from Word Some weird string voodoo going on

cwizou

I see you guys are adding bold and stuff and fixing formatting, thanks. Side note,this looks gorgeous on iPad.

Edit : if I go into edit mode on ipad and scroll, the top bar gets stuck at the wrong position (keyboard pushed it up if you understand what I mean). Also you cant add new characters (but can delete) if you lose focus (latest ios 7).

Edit2 : http://www.chefsteps.com/forum/posts/0bf0441d-52b1-47ad-b737-68c43b4b62c5 on iPad pic shows as portrait, showed as landscape on pc (as intended).

Andrew_Hsu_30145

No worries, I reformatted it.

Andrew_Hsu_30145

Weird bug! It appears what's happening is that the iPad is taking image rotation data from the EXIF tags on the photograph. I'll fix it.

Andrew_Hsu_30145

This type of detailed feedback means a ton to us and I'd like to thank you for taking the time. I'm going to respond later to the points in more detail but for now, I'll just say that we hear you on everything and will work to improve things. Thanks!

Andrew_Hsu_30145

Okay, here's a more detailed reply.

* Post ordering: currently, posts are ordered by creation date. It's not the best solution, because as you correctly identified, older threads with new replies don't get pushed up. We plan in the next week on implementing better post ordering that takes into account recent comments and post popularity. We're also looking at showing the number of new comments since you last viewed the post.

* Post accessibility: we're actively thinking about better ways to surface content. Search is in the works, and we're experimenting internally with other ways to view older threads.

* Category view and replying: we'll think about the size of the reply box and whether there is a better placement. It's important though that the barrier to commenting or replying is as low as possible.

Like/follow language should be more consistent with the latest update. It's still a work in progress, though.

* Thread view: yes, we are aware of this issue, namely that categories aren't accessible from the middle of the feed and from the single post page. We'll fix it. The design solution is probably related to the placement of the new post button as well.

'Related posts' are currently relatively basic, pulling popular posts from the database. With time, we'll improve relevance.

* Self-liking: if you made a really good post, should you not be allowed to pat yourself on the back? In seriousness though, it could go either way. I'd say that just like on facebook, it's a bit of a social faux-pas to like your own comment or post, but we don't see a compelling reason to change it right now.

* Following: a list of things you're following would probably live in your ChefSteps profile. We're thinking about this.

* Posting: you might have already noticed that the text box for new post is now wider and feels more open. I'm aware that there have already been several very long posts, including yours, and generally users have been paranoid about accidentally losing the text, so they usually type it into a word processor and then paste it in. One solution we're considering might be to add a 'zen mode' button that would show a large, distraction-free writing zone, similar to Github's: https://github.com/blog/1379-zen-writing-mode

* Styling: links are auto-hrefed if you press space or enter after them, but it's not perfect and we're working on improving it. We've been trying to keep the text editor quite minimalistic to promote design consistency, but you can press command-b/ctrl-b to bold and command-i/ctrl-i to italicize. We might carefully add in a limited number of other formatting features, like lists.

Yes, picture upload isn't perfect and we'll make it better.

Hope this provides a view into the next few weeks!

cwizou

(side note, pasting from Word on Windows is still bugged, line gets auto cutted somehow)

Hey Andrew

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. Some extra thoughts about what you said, and again please don’t consider these as negative feedback. If I take the time to do this, it’s to be helpful to what is in my opinion one of the best sites out there that people don’t know about. On with it :

- Post ordering : Sounds good. Sorting by last post in thread is convenient and what people know, should you go that way. Comments since last viewed : very nice ! You could consider highlighting them too in thread when we go there (and might as well scroll there automagically).

However, I have to add in-thread ordering in the mix. Personnally I don’t get the reverse comment order. Just look at this thread, you have to read bottom from top to read comments (unnatural, not just forums, but for human reading in general) but if someone comments on a top+1 level comment, it shows below it. Which is nice. But then you really don’t get how it works, because your brain can’t figure it out. What’s the reading order ? Can I infer it myself ? If I forget your top post, all the other ones are 2 days old. How am I supposed to figure it out ? Having to read one way, then the other way, then the other way again is madness ! I’d reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally vote for putting comments by defaults in the natural order Long/multilevel discutions will never happen on an inverted view. The rest of the web already showed that much. As much as I could live with experiments on the « feed » (more on that later), to me this is as close to a show stopper as there is. Poll users if needed, I doubt I’m in the minority.

- Post accessibility : Good to know ! Always think about scaling too. Because feeds don’t scale, feeds are meant to be quickly seen and forgotten. You don’t want that for a community, unless you want the same thing to happen to the community itself. Which would be sad.

- Reply box size : the whole column does feel cramped on a desktop, really. Even if I zoom in. I understand you’re focused on making sure things are accessible and not intimidating but please consider a few points (that applies broadly I guess) :

-- There’s already a (not bad size) forum that some people are used to. It had it’s issues that were a barrier to entry, again in my opinion, dual login thing (although it was made easy, I have to say), disjointed [for a time at least, but it bit early users] recipe comments and forum comments, not the best post discoverability, lack of integration with the rest of the site (should have a badge showing new threads or something on top bar, something to pull me to the forums which to be honest, didn’t happen much for me), etc.

It also had good things for it, namely a wider view, very readable, some format thing, and natural post ordering. If you read something and thinking « I could reply to that !», in no way shape or form the « Leave a Comment » reply box was a barrier to entry. It was inviting, large and obvious. If anything, the reply box is not obvious ! The same goes on recipe comments (with the same ordering problem) where the reply box is much wider (nice) but could gain a bit in height and obviousness (such light grey !! Gimme color )

So when you think about that, you need to fix what really was an issue and make sure not to over-do it on your fix, or push people so far that they will use the new system less, or in a more superficial way. ChefSteps is all about going deep into cooking. Why would I want superficial/small/perishable/facebooky interactions in the forum ?

-- Forum index page where the feed is is *not* ChefSteps’ index page. So you need to be careful when you start talking about mixing stuff into the feed or massaging it. A forum needs to provide the features of a forum first and foremost. You don't come to the forum first, you come from the index page where new recipes are already features. It would make no sense for me to see that a new recipe has been posted show up in my « feed ». I already come from home. I already saw said recipe ! I couldn’t urge you guys more to think long and hard about this. If you start going too much the feed way, people won’t use it, not the way you expect them to at least. Think about it the other way, what do I want on CS homepage before you tell me your plan is to merge the feed on home. Do I want a mix of user content and the incredibly high quality recipe/class content ? Possibly. Do I want it in a unified feed ? Hell no. High quality content and user content (no offense to all of us) isn’t the same thing. Do I want to see some hot/new threads somewhere on the page ? Sure. It has to be separate, shown that it’s user content and not be on the same viewability level as the CS team stuff. So again, think about the purpose of things.

-- You guys are obviously very good developers and you have an incredible opportunity to make a great/modern comment/forum system that gets deeply integrated on ChefSteps. But you really need to do things in a correct, pro user way and leave the facebookyness aside. People don’t go to facebook for it’s cutting edge UI. They stay there despite the crappy everchanging UI because fb has critical mass and it’s their only way to keep in touch with some people. Nothing could be further apart from fb than ChefSteps. It hasn’t yet reached critical mass, it has insanely high quality content, and the users love it. If anything the biggest issue the site has is that not enough people know about it. Nobody would ever say the content isn’t great. I’m sure there are many ways to improve on the site, make it more social with better commenting system integrated everywhere and everything to pull more people in, but don’t model it on something that has already reached critical mass and which UI’s purpose is no longer to gain users, but simply to make sure they can’t leave.

So think about making a great product that people will love. That's all there is to it.

Ok that was a slightly long rant that doesn’t have much to do any longer with the size of the reply box But hopefully it adds to the mix of things to think about.

- Related : ok !

- Self liking : I really have no strong opinion on that one. Although you had to say facebook…

- Following : sounds good

- Posting : It hasn’t changed since my original post. Text editor then post won’t work in the long run. People just won’t do it. Zen mode : Why not, but I think you’re missing the point. On a desktop, the box is simply not large enough. It makes no sense for me to have to type in something that’s so small in such a large window. This is what I see :

Putting aside the incredible amount of white on each side, how does that make sense UI-wise to have to type in something that small ? What is gained by having it this small ? I know UI scaling to every screensize out there is hard, but you should not sacrifice larger screen usability for mobile.

Let me put it another way, I see the same number of words on a line on my iPad and on my desktop.

- Styling : I see about the shortcuts, but they do lack discoverability. I understand minimal design, but form and function should not have to compromise for each other. Also note that, while these shortcuts might be universal to an English OS, they are not for other languages where Ctrl/cmd+b probably isn’t the bold shortcut in text editors. So there should be another way to discover them.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer, hopefully we can talk about this some more in the next coming weeks. The changes you guys made in last update go in the right direction.

cwizou

Side side not, see how cramped my reply to you is here ?