Community Platform Update: New indicators for unread posts

CarolineS
Community Manager

Greetings, community!

 

When we launched our community redesign on April 1, one of the strongest pieces of feedback we received was that it was now more difficult to keep track of which posts you had already read and to spot threads that had recent updates.

 

Previously, new threads and threads with new replies were indicated with a bold title; titles of read threads were less bold. However, it was difficult to differentiate between read and unread, as shown below.

 

image.png

 

Now, instead of using bold / non-bold links, we indicate threads with unread content with a small orange dot:

 

image.png

 

 

Note that the orange dots will only appear when you are logged in.

 

We hope this change helps you keep track of your reading of the community!

 

Please let us know any feedback in the comments below.

 

 

P.S. Due to technical constraints of our community platform, un-bolding ALL of the links within a given topic in the list (the forum, thread author name, timestamp, reply author name) was not an option. Dots to the rescue! 

18 Comments
Brash
Kind of a big deal

Easy enough to follow and a seemingly more accessible (I'm no expert) way to show unread topics.

Good work team 👍

DarrenOC
Kind of a big deal

Liking the dots. Easier to spot now. Thank you

jimmyt234
Building a reputation

Great work, been missing this from the new posts feed since the new look and feel went live.

cmr
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

Woo, much better, thanks dev team and @CarolineS 

CloudStrife
Getting noticed

Oh yes, this is quite the improvement.  Thanks for all you efforts team.

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal

This is 100x easier.

RaphaelL
Kind of a big deal

Just woke up, I thought I was connected to my dashboard org and all my networks were alerting for a sec 😂

 

Joking , but I love it.

BlakeRichardson
Kind of a big deal

Nice work, those with OCD will see an orange dot an think there is a problem 😂

Ryan_Miles
Meraki Employee

@RaphaelL does bring up a good point. I really appreciate the new indicator and find it very useful. But, the color initially comes off like a warning/alert/something is wrong in dashboard.

CarolineS
Community Manager

@Ryan_Miles / @BlakeRichardson / @RaphaelL - good point about the color making it feel like something is wrong! We have a limited palette to work with and we (I :)) couldn’t stomach more blue. But it’s worth exploring other options. I’ll discuss with the team!

van604
Building a reputation

small improvements like this makes things much more usable, thanks @CarolineS 

DanielWahlsten
Getting noticed

Excellent 

CarolineS
Community Manager

@RaphaelL / @BlakeRichardson / others who have thoughts on this topic - 

 

We are thinking of changing the dots to either teal (which means "low warning" in the dashboard design system) or purple (which implies "info").

 

Curious for your thoughts on either of these options (recommend clicking on the images to see them at a larger size!):

Homepage with teal dots indicating "unread"Homepage with teal dots indicating "unread"

 

Homepage with purple dots indicating "unread"Homepage with purple dots indicating "unread"

 

cmr
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

@CarolineS I prefer the current orange, though if it has to change then the purple is less bad 😉

RaphaelL
Kind of a big deal

I got used to the orange but I like both purple and green ( thought teal was a shade of blue haha  ? )

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal

Colour choices are above my pay grade.

 

I like the purple option the least.  I suspect teal/blue option is more likely to be friendlier to those with colour blindness.  The current orange/blue works good for me as well.

CarolineS
Community Manager

Thank you for the feedback, @cmr , @RaphaelL , @PhilipDAth! We may just leave the dots as-is 🙂

BlakeRichardson
Kind of a big deal

Like others I have got use to it now. If you were to change my vote would be for teal.