Change the quill icon to a pencil icon for Compose a new message

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

In the Messages section of Canvas, the way to compose a new message is to click on the icon of a quill. Some students don't even know what a quill is. And several of my students though the quill icon was a picture of a leaf.

A pencil is a standard icon on the web for "edit." Let's make the button easy to find by changing the quill to a pencil. (See attached files for examples.)

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13988-canvas-production-release-notes-2018-01-27 .

91 Comments
Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

 @kim_flowers ...

The 100-vote thing changed a while ago...and you can find more information here: How does the feature idea process work? 

kim_flowers
Community Novice

Ah ha! So... that leaves us where...? Smiley Wink 

It certainly makes our training interesting which I guess isn't a bad thing!

daniel_horsley
Community Novice

I have heard on high opinion that it is in fact a leaf. Change it Canvas. I dare you!

david_heath
Community Member

This shouldn't need a hundred votes to get changed - it's clearly not a very clear indicator for students!

eholtmann
Community Novice

It seems unreasonable to me that quick fixes (like changing an icon) have the same voting threshold as major changes. The time spent in voting is many multiples of the time that would be spent in making the fix--which no one opposes.

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Hi Deactivated user‌

As  @Chris_Hofer ‌ pointed out above, there is no longer a "threshold" for feature ideas.

Kelley

kara_robinson
Community Novice

I knew I'd seen this icon somewhere else too, but couldn't remember where... It seems it's also used in the Course Settings menu under Course Details... it's the icon next to the 'Change image' option.  Another very confusing place for this icon to pop up.

Quill Icon used for

frederick_smith
Community Novice

I will be surprised if it happens quickly and not surprised if it doesn't happen at all.  I hate to be negative, but I haven't been impressed with Canvas's concern for actually listening to users.  There are many areas that need improvement and that have been suggested (such as adding an editing bar to instructor comments boxes), but that show no interest or progress in being implemented.

awilliams
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hey  @eholtmann  Welcomeback to the Canvas Community and thank you for taking the time to share your ideas. It looks like you have an interest in our Ideation process and I'm glad you have found the guide How does the feature idea process work? I can empathize. I have been in your situation of wishing that what seems like a great and simple idea would arrive sooner and I can understand why it may seem unreasonable to treat a "quick-fix" the same as other ideas. However in my experience it works out pretty well for a variety of reasons. Some ideas that seem easy may turn out to be a lot of work and conversely some ideas that seem hard may turn out to be easy. Ideas that are technically easy to implement still require significant time to test and still need to be prioritized (which voting helps with). Regardless of how technically hard or simple an idea is, the change may still have a significant impact on users and benefit from a comment period. Sometimes this discussion around a "quick-fix" can lead to an even better fix.

All that being said, the product development process gets ideas from a lot of different places and they can find their way into development even if the version that exists here in the community isn't the most highly voted idea (or even still open for voting for that matter). So the status you see here isn't always the full story of any given idea. I hope this helps explain the approach better and alleviates some of your concern that good ideas aren't going unnoticed. In fact, in the most recent archive of ideas (which you can read about at Ideas: Archiving Anew) 24 ideas were included that didn't meet the same threshold as the others because of how they related to current priorities, and this is still but a fraction of the overall input that goes into product development.

PS. It looks like you might have had a previous account with us (link to profile Deactivated user). Would you mind checking that link for me and letting me know if that is a duplicate account we can retire?

eholtmann
Community Novice

Yes, please retire the duplicate account.

Thank you,

Erich Holtmann

925-473-7654