Discussion Redesign Feedback and Suggestions (with mockups)

[ChrisSchons]

Like everyone else posting here, we’ve had a considerable amount of complaints from both faculty and students about the new discussion experience. It doesn’t look like Instructure has any interest in going back to the original design so we’ve been looking at ways we can customize the UI to clear up some of the issues.

I thought I’d share them here in case it can help anyone else, or to possibly get some of these improvements implemented. If you have any feedback or questions, please let me know in the comments.

Inline View - Starting State

Inline view starting state

• The main reply posts have a border to separate them and to keep any replies grouped together visually.
• The button icons provide natural dividers so we removed the bars. I’ve also put them back in their original order to keep “Reply” in a consistent place throughout the UI.
• In inline view, the Show/Hide replies button always displays with text, making it extra clear what the button does.

Inline View - Replies

Inline view replies

• We’ve added a light gray background for all replies. This keeps them grouped together visually and provides a clear indication of when the next post starts
• I agree with other posters that this All Expanded view should be the default starting state to encourage student participation. We’ve done dev work to get this behavior in place, but it would be great if we didn’t need that workaround.

Split Screen View - Starting State

Split screen view starting state

• In split screen view the replies button looks the same as in the inline view, but it behaves very differently. The chevron and show/hide language is no longer relevant, so we replace them with an arrow pointing to the right. We continue this pattern for further replies in the split screen tray.

Split Screen View - Reply Tray

Split screen tray 1

• In the split view tray, the “10 Replies, 6 Unread” no longer has functionality so we give it a different style from the Reply and Mark as Read buttons.

Split screen tray 2

• Replies to replies use the same design patterns.

[mangles]

After rereading your posting again, I realized I misunderstood. I thought somehow you had implemented these changes. Now I understand this is what you would like to see.  And I agree, it meets my most important objective of making all postings, inclusive of all replies visible by default.  I really like your framing for each thread and the shading for the replies. Very easy on the eyes, vs small fonts, lack of grouping, etc.

Based on another best practices shared on the community forum, I have taken to editing those student postings I want to call attention to, so that the student's original posting and my comments are contained in one posting. Unfortunately, this work around still leaves student postings not viewable by default. I perceived students feel their comments (replies) are no longer important, hence the reduction in my summer classes discussion postings.

We agree Instructure is nonresponsive. 

Thank you,

~mike

[Jeff_F]

Bravo! I admire the creativity as well as the end product. This addresses several issues: the collapsed default state, differentiation between the levels of posts, and button placement. How about a standard font size between the reply levels?

Of course a concern is that if such custom CSS is implemented in the theme then each and every deploy and update one must then pay attention to how code changes may impact this design.  From what I have read and experienced, changes occur and these are not infrequent. That being so, the current status of the board design begs additional change and so I would be an advocate for taking on that overhead. But yes, it would be much preferred if such adjustments were the default.

[ChrisSchons]

Thanks. Customizations are tricky for the exact reason you mentioned. We were working on fixes for some issues but then they rolled out some undocumented "improvements" that messed them up. Right now we're going to wait it out, so all we can do is post feedback and wait until the core experience is fixed (fingers crossed).

[cheryltice]

The visuals are excellent, and Canvas should implement the suggestions you've shared here! Thank you for taking the time to do this!

[ChrisSchons]

Thanks, that's my hope as well. We can try and make our own customizations but it would be great if the Instructure team takes some of this feedback and incorporates it into their design work.