CUNY Academic Commons

I'm working on the revisions of the wireframes based on the meetings last Friday. I'd love your input to help suss out a few of the sections in more detail. I'll list the rough feedback and a question:

1. Make "CUNY in Numbers" section more dynamic, show activity, maybe a ticker
Q: Can we query things like how many users are currently active on the Commons? If we wanted to quantify activity on the Commons how would we frame that (by day, week, month)? One suggestion was "in the last 24 hours… # users active, sites updated, groups updated…"

2. Campus specific updates
Q: We didn't get a clear answer to this topic. What do you feel would be useful to surface based on campus affiliation?

Other topics
3. As we're rethinking the homepage, when looking at the Groups activity feed, do we really need four filters there? (newest, active, popular, alphabetical). Same question for People (active, newest).

4. We didn't in enough detail talk about what the new homepage means for the My Commons tab. Will the new logged in homepage replace the My Commons tab or will the homepage activity sections (groups, posts, people) link to the appropriate activity stream within the My Commons tab? I'd like to talk about this during our dev call to get more clarity

I've made some revisions based on some of what we've discussed already. If you have a moment, please take a look at the updated wireframes before tomorrow's dev call: https://www.figma.com/proto/SKHemDoAkUuZvbISxLfBjW/CUNY-Wireframes?node-id=76%3A1473&scaling=min-zoom

Q: Can we query things like how many users are currently active on the Commons? If we wanted to quantify activity on the Commons how would we frame that (by day, week, month)? One suggestion was "in the last 24 hours… # users active, sites updated, groups updated…"

We can't reliably tell who's currently online, and I'm not sure that the numbers would be large enough to make it worth showing. Even within a single 24 hour period, the numbers could be pretty small. The last week might be a better snapshot. Another number that feels like it might be valuable is "X courses are being taught this semester", though we might want to pair this with some other stats that show how the Commons is not only a teaching platform.

3. As we're rethinking the homepage, when looking at the Groups activity feed, do we really need four filters there? (newest, active, popular, alphabetical). Same question for People (active, newest).

IMO we should remove them all. Just show most-recently-active and call this good enough. People can click through to the directories if they want more powerful sorting tools.

4. We didn't in enough detail talk about what the new homepage means for the My Commons tab. Will the new logged in homepage replace the My Commons tab or will the homepage activity sections (groups, posts, people) link to the appropriate activity stream within the My Commons tab? I'd like to talk about this during our dev call to get more clarity

I think that the proposed homepage does very different things from My Commons. The homepage gives some quick links along with a snapshot of sitewide activity. My Commons gives a stream of recent activity directly related to my groups, sites, etc. They have different purposes and I don't think they're redundant. I think there's room for a discussion about how to position My Commons, and what role the redesigned home page might play in this. Maybe 'My Commons' or 'See more of your activity at [My Commons]' could appear under Shortcuts, or could replace the 'Show more' link under 'My Sites' or something like that.

Regarding the 'My Sites' section, two comments. First, "most recently interacted with" may not be the best way to surface relevant content. Students may not "interact" with their course sites in a visible way (ie, they may be reading rather than producing content). Showing the most recently active sites - those with the most recent posts, or perhaps posts-or-comments - is likely to be our best proxy for "most salient". Second, putting My Sites in this section is a way of privileging them over other ways of carving up Commons content (specifically, Groups and Courses). This might do a disservice to those other content types, and it also might not be helpful to those using the Commons in a way that's not Site-focused.

Thanks for the updates, Sonja. Perhaps on the call we can go through your revisions and what you changed based on Friday's feedback.

I agree with Boone about removing the filters and linking into the directories for more granular control. Similar with My Commons -- no need to remove it, just use the snapshots on the homepage as a way of leading into the extra info that My Commons provides.

I also see what Boone means about the My Sites section in the three-panel section. I wonder if it makes sense there to have the three panels be the profile messages panel, then most recently active sites (My Sites) then most recently active groups (My Groups). This seems like logical placement and gives Sites and Groups equal standing.

Then in the area beneath, perhaps we could play more with a column showing Commons-wide site posts (though we still have to sort through the privacy issues raised during the meeting) as well as a more curated panel showing links to documentation. Perhaps we could even find a place here for Group/Site recent activity at your chosen campus, which I do think we can include a bit more.

Hi team,
I'd love to receive a little more feedback and direction from the team since our call on Tuesday. This will help me refine the wireframes. Please share anything that you'd like to contribute.

What I still need more clarity on is, what a section for Campus specific updates could include? Please be specific with examples of this content.
I'm also still trying to figure out what flexibility we need to build into the logged-in homepage in regards to variations of content amount and types (e.g. whether and how the layout might adjust if a user doesn't have any sites). What kind of use cases do you see we need to account for across our various users/user types?

Thank you.

Hi Sonja,

Thanks for sharing these wireframes. They look great and it's very exciting think through these new possibilities for the commons.

A few thoughts on the logged-in wireframes below..

- I do think it would be ideal to list "my groups" and "my sites" prominently and together. So in the current figma link slides, this would mean replacing "shortcuts" with "my groups". If someone does not have sites or groups, perhaps this area displays to "Shortcuts" and/or "Campus Activity".

- I don't think we need to list "courses" specifically if "my sites" and "my groups" are displayed prominently. Keeping one of the main nav tabs as a link to the courses directory would be good.

- Campus updates could be most recently active groups and/or posts from recently active sites tagged with that campus meta data. It would be cool if the campus activity feed could be multiple format types from a particular campus (not sure if this technically possible or worth the complexity)

-Not sure if we are still doing a "recent posts" area but if so, maybe the area could be called "recent site activity" to designate the content is from a site (to contract with group activity). In the current wireframes like how post title is central and large. I would suggest it is followed by SITE TITLE as next data point/link and then (last)by author info. I think this could work on the not-logged-in home page too, but maybe we strip the "by author" info?

Thanks Laurie, appreciate your feedback.

Hi team,
I've revised the wireframes for review tomorrow, see here: https://www.figma.com/proto/SKHemDoAkUuZvbISxLfBjW/CUNY-Wireframes?node-id=130%3A281&scaling=min-zoom (and the PDF attached – Homepage-wireframes-v3.pdf)

Public homepage:
I only change one small thing on the public-facing homepage. Within the site activity, I've removed the author info.

Member homepage:
I've made a few changes here:
- Added "My Groups" list next to "My Sites" within the profile section of the new member homepage
- Moved Shortcuts below the members section
- Removed the Groups activity feed and replaced it with a Campus activity feed. It would pull in the activity feed from the member's campus (the campus the member profile is associated with).

Globally the header structure, including the navigation will remain the same. It will simply get a fresh coat of paint – meaning it will look nicer but include the same elements and functionality as right now.

I won't be able to join our call tomorrow, but please discuss these changes within the group. We're aiming to get the wireframes approved before or during our next monthly call on March 12th.

Colin, another next step would be to start crafting the copy for the homepage. Could you please spearhead this effort?

Hi Sonja -- for campus-related info, it would definitely be interesting to see groups/sites/users from one's campus(es).

Another direction might be to see groups/sites that are popular among people from one's campus

other feedback:

• I remain worried about featured group/site if we have to configure that manually. If we were able to define a set of sites and have one loaded randomly on page load, that would be better, as it would add some variety to the page and lessen the need to curate it manually. but that would obviously involve more development.
• for active sites, groups, do we need the info on how recently they were updated? I'm wondering how important that is -- it would be cleaner, probably, if we could remove it

for the member page: campus activity could be complicated if people are members of multiple campuses, as many CUNY people are. but overall this page is looking good!

Matt Gold wrote:

• for active sites, groups, do we need the info on how recently they were updated? I'm wondering how important that is -- it would be cleaner, probably, if we could remove it

During the dev call, we leaned towards keeping this, as it shows how lively the CAC is, and furthermore we're looking at wireframes rather than design (as you reminded us last time -- something I forgot! Sorry)

also, for "People You Might Know," we use a friend as opposed to follow model on the CAC, though you can follow sites.

Hi Sonja, below is our feedback from yesterday's dev call, which I consolidated with Matt's group of comments just above.

Something we discussed generally is the timestamps ("active X ago" etc) around the design and whether they add unnecessary clutter or are worthwhile indicators of immediacy and vibrancy on the Commons. We were thinking of keeping them now given the latter, and seeing how they look in the actual design vs. wireframes and go from there.

Now specifically for the logged-in homepage:

- The "my stuff" section is looking great, with profile/sites/groups all in one place. One thing I wanted to carry over from our last group meeting -- do you think it could be worth putting this section at the very top, above the three-panel news section?

- The new shortcuts area is good too as a space we can work with more later, perhaps as part of the copywriting process which I will get going for sure shortly.

- For campus activity, given that people can belong to multiple campuses, maybe it will need to say something generic like "What's been happening at your CUNY campus or campuses?" We could even link here to documentation on how to change your campuses. Then we should draw from whatever campus(es) are selected.

- What is Campus Activity pulling from? We can define more in dev but it might help to lay out for design, too. Is the profile picture and other user-level activity too much? Perhaps we just show new sites and groups created at your campuses, along with new public site posts and new public group topics? Perhaps comments will be too granular?

- For Recent Site Activity, we talked about removing the All/My toggle so that whole section between Campus and Site Activity is all about general discovery and not tied to sites/groups you've already joined. We could link in the "my stuff" section under sites and groups to the My Commons links for more detailed personalized site and group activity, to keep the division of personalized and general activity separate.

- We're still interested in your design thoughts on how we might display images with the Activity columns in a way that adds some color without being too distracting. Maybe it comes down to size/placement of the thumbnail.

- We're wondering if the My Friends area might not have much utility. It looks great, but most of our and our sense of others' Commons use cases revolve around Sites and Groups, not going to friend profile pages directly. If we remove this area it also keeps the hierarchy of personal info up top, then discovery info in the lower sections.

- People You May Know, make sure it's Add Friend vs the Follow button we have now, or maybe just a button that says Friend so adding is implied.

And for the public homepage:

- Featured site and featured group are nice, but we need to be wary of curation demands and this going stale. Perhaps this is more of a dev issue, but if we could populate a set of sites and groups that then cycle through these slots, that might help it look fresh.

Thanks so much for consolidating feedback, Colin! One minor note: if we decide to keep "My Friends," we could include just one row of four friends instead of three rows of four friends

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as per the registration form, a user can only be associated with ONE campus. The campus selector is a dropdown. I understand that in reality people can be part of multiple campuses. Boone can you clarify that each user is associated with just ONE campus or is there legacy meta data that at some point allowed for multiple associations?

There are two sources of campus affiliation: the Campus dropdown selected when a user registers, and the Positions that users can enter when editing their profiles. This is not legacy, but is dynamic data that changes as users update their Positions.

Hmmm... I don't want to overcomplicate this section. We should either dedicate A LOT more space for campus updates – it's own section – or we should keep it pretty simple. I like the idea of limiting it to very relevant updates and excluding what isn't as relevant. I agree that comments would be too granular. What would be most feasible here from a technical perspective, Boone?

For privacy purposes, I think we must exclude non-public content. Aside from this, we can include whatever subset of campus-linked data you want. IMO including blog comments and forum replies makes it more likely that the stream will have fresh content, but it also creates more noise that doesn't have as much meaning out of context. In any case, we will need a comprehensive list of item types that appear here in order to build it.

I agree and this therefore should be some logic that makes sense and is automatically pulling in a featured site and group. It could be a list of pre-approved sites/groups, but that would still require updating from time to time. I'd suggest creating a logic that just works something like the following taking recency and popularity into account: display a random public site that has been updated within the last X days and has more than X followers. Display a random public group that has been active within the last X days and has more than X members. Or something even simpler than that. Referring to Boone here to dial in complexity.

We can do any combination of "recently active" and "X members" from a technical point of view. I have a feeling that a large number of our groups have fairly small membership, so I'd be cautious about setting a lower membership limit. In addition, sites can have followers, but I don't think this is a commonly used tool on the Commons, so I'd be wary of using it as a heuristic for "interestingness". As such, I'd recommend forgetting about the "popularity" metric. My recommendation is to pull a random item from the last 10 active and public sites/groups.

Thanks Boone, let's discuss any outstanding revisions during our call tomorrow.

Thanks for these updates, Sonja and Boone. During our call shortly let's touch on the user campus question. I think if we keep the copy general we can allow for those who've used Positions to indicate multiple campuses, though I suspect that most users just have the one campus chosen during registration.

We can also go over the content being pulled in for the Campus Activity column. Perhaps this list, most recent first:
- New group created
- New site created
- New public site posts
- New public group topics

Then for the public homepage Active Groups and Sites streams, will we just show most recently active groups, so that's less granular without specific topics, and then site posts just like we will on the member homepage?

I've been working on the copy for the public homepage in this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w8nzuEOAFGrilME8qAQ2TMSmVDjRsvCwpIIkbVE2qf0/edit?usp=sharing

I'd like to talk during our call about the possibility I outline there of a Building Blocks intro, then distinct sections for Site (featured and active), Group (featured and active) and People activity. I laid it out with two featured slots each for Site and Group, but if we're doing that programming I think we can handle inputting a few more.

This structure was helpful for me to write, with less jumping between different types of content. I thought it might be more clear for new visitors too.

The copy for the logged-in homepage is a little less demanding and dependent on some outstanding revisions above, so I'll get to that shortly.

Thanks Colin.
I've updated the wireframes for the public homepage with your suggested structure. Looking forward to seeing how this new flow lands with the group. I however have decided to show people before groups and sites – in the spirit of putting people first, but am happy to switch it around.

Please ping me when you've added the copy for the members homepage and I'll update that as well.
If you have more robust thoughts around what could go into the Shortcuts section, that would be welcome.

Thanks for taking the lead on copy!

Thanks Sonja, all's looking good for tomorrow. I'd like to see how the public homepage flow and copy go over with the group and then get more into the member homepage copy from there (the member copy is more minimal anyway, I think, and what we have now seems pretty close). I'd particularly like more feedback from Marilyn/Scott and the support team on how those shortcut links might be used.

Thanks Colin, sounds good. I've tweaked the copy on the logged in homepage a tiny bit for tomorrow (especially the more links).

I'll be presenting the revised wireframes tomorrow (rev 4):
https://www.figma.com/proto/SKHemDoAkUuZvbISxLfBjW/CUNY-Wireframes?node-id=130%3A281&scaling=min-zoom

I don't have mobile wireframes yet, but can talk through that tomorrow if we have time.

Recapping our Friday team meeting feedback, we talked more about tech requirements that we are soon going to define for different areas of the new homepages than the design/structure, which I think we are feeling good about at this point as we look ahead to the full visual direction in #14000. Some notes:

- We need to make sure we can populate a sizable list of manually curated featured Groups and Sites. Laurie offered to help with this, and I can help pull it together too. Then we'll just make sure they're cycling through the featured areas when we code it out.

- Let's make sure the activity stream areas aren't too text heavy, possibly showing avatars for groups and sites, though we can revisit if those may not be input a lot of the time.

- Make sure we show as many My Sites and My Groups links as possible up top, then just link into the full view of your sites and groups with the Show All links.

- Perhaps we can say in the copy how the Groups and Sites and People You May Know/Like sections are being identified.

- For the private homepage, these roles (required choice during registration) are for what we'll create custom shortcut sections, with advice from the community team:

Administrator
Alumnus/a
Faculty
Graduate Student
Other
Postdoc
Staff
Undergraduate Student

Thanks Colin for summarizing this.
I'll work on the mobile wireframes, so we can finalize all wireframes.

It sounds like there are no significant further revisions for the desktop wireframes (other than small tweaks and copy). Let's discuss tomorrow if I can hand those over to the devs so they can get started.

Hi team,
I've created a first iteration of the mobile wireframes for the homepages. They run quite long. I've condensed some sections by either reducing the number of items we show, or by implementing a horizontal slider for the content in the section (you can click and drag in the wireframes to see how that would work roughly).

Note, that I will optimize the layout, spacing and font sizes during the visual design phase. So things will look a little more ordered and appropriately weighted.

Mobile wireframes v1: https://www.figma.com/proto/SKHemDoAkUuZvbISxLfBjW/CUNY-Wireframes?node-id=276%3A4&scaling=min-zoom

Please review and share your feedback.

I forgot to mention, that I've made one small change for the mobile nav: I'm hiding the list of primary nav links behind a hamburger nav for mobile. This way the header is not as tall, given we're introducing the announcement bar. I'm not sure if that is in scope for the homepage redesign. I'll let Boone weigh in here from a technical implementation POV.

I forgot to mention, that I've made one small change for the mobile nav: I'm hiding the list of primary nav links behind a hamburger nav for mobile.

Thanks for drawing attention to this. It shouldn't be a problem to include this.

Hi Sonja, thanks for the mobile versions here. I think they're a great adaptation overall, but I see what you mean about the length of some sections. A couple of thoughts:

- Would it be enough to simply shorten a few sections on mobile, like three links each for the Site and Campus activity streams instead of five? Maybe even two or three links each in other sections instead of closer to five on the member homepage -- especially on the suggested group/site/member sections, but perhaps even up top in your group and site sections.

- I like the side-to-side space-saving design, but should we be more consistent with it? Maybe even use it more? On the member homepage we use it for suggested Groups but not Sites or People, for example.

- Should we consider making sections or lists collapsible anywhere on mobile? I could see just intro grafs for People, Sites and Groups perhaps, and then you expand to see the featured/active areas. It seems to me that My Sites and My Groups on the member page are natural expandable sections, though those are likely to be high-traffic and you might not want to hide them behind a click.

On another note, thanks to Boone for breaking off #14181 and #1418 under this ticket to nail down and build the Suggested and Featured parts of these designs. There are a couple more areas I want to make sure we're accounting for similarly. Should these be broken out into separate tickets?

- On the public homepage, how are we going to populate the Numbers section up top? Can/should we build a way to automatically update it with the latest totals for members, sites, groups, and courses (I assume Campuses may not change much)?

- Are these sections self-explanatory enough: Latest News is latest three news.commons.gc.cuny.edu posts, Active Members is last 12 most recently active members, Active Sites/Groups is last four most recent posts/groups from the most public privacy setting.

- I did just start up ticket #14217 to finalize with the community team the role-specific links that we show in the Shortcuts section. We need to build a way to pull and display those.

Hi - Really love the wireframes. One suggestion is to add "My Events" to the Logged-in Member options.

I think this section about the logged-in member pretty much replicates the member's "Commons Profile" page and may inform how we can dissect the "Commons Profile" from the members' "Public Portfolio" page, which to me is very confusing. Perhaps down the road, when users search for a member's "Commons Profile" (and their creation content), we could create a page that is somewhat similar to this section. Then I think we could get rid of the "Commons Profile" page (finally).

Hi All,

A couple thoughts...

shorten a few sections on mobile, like three links each for the Site and Campus activity streams instead of five?

I agree with colin here, maybe 3 active/suggested sites/groups links followed by "See Site/Group Activity" link at end.

I like the side-to-side space-saving design

Me too! could we have members, ft. groups, and ft. sites (and even active group/sites) work with the side swipe like this too (similar to how news is now)?

- Should we consider making sections or lists collapsible anywhere on mobile? I could see just intro grafs for People, Sites and Groups perhaps, and then you expand to see the featured/active areas. It seems to me that My Sites and My Groups on the member page are natural expandable sections, though those are likely to be high-traffic and you might not want to hide them behind a click.

If possible i can see how collapsed my sites/my groups would be helpful here and also maybe surface content that is further down.

- Are these sections self-explanatory enough: Latest News is latest three news.commons.gc.cuny.edu posts, Active Members is last 12 most recently active members, Active Sites/Groups is last four most recent posts/groups from the most public privacy setting.

Is 12 members only on desktop? this seems like too many for mobile unless there is the side swiping option to swipe through active commons members and see maybe 2 at a time? (typing that made me think of tinder so maybe we want avoid the side-swiping space-saving features on the members section?)

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I was able to shorten the homepages quite a bit with implementing more horizontal content alignment on mobile. As you can see on the last page (see notes in yellow), this doesn't always work when there are differently long content in the horizontal alignment – this sometimes creates ugly gaps in the layout. I wonder if we could truncate content on mobile or maybe working with a "show all" option to expand the number of items might work better in those cases.

Please review updated mobile wires v2: https://www.figma.com/proto/SKHemDoAkUuZvbISxLfBjW/CUNY-Wireframes?node-id=364%3A1050&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=364%3A629

Just wanted to note from the dev call today that we decided to implement a design element or two, like more broad use of the shadow boxes around content excerpts, along with some simple character limiting from the dev side on site/group names and headlines, in order to account for times when a lengthy activity stream item causes the layout spacing issues Sonja mentioned above.

--- Design handoff to dev ----
Boone,
I've created a Figma file with the approved wireframes and I invited you to it.
It contains two pages – one for the public homepage, the other for the member homepage. Each page includes the desktop as well as the mobile wireframe. If this structure is confusing, I'm happy to re-arrange it.
Here's the link: https://www.figma.com/file/d8p9daTHvLr9Pd3dL3e9Jb/CUNY-Homepage-wireframes-final?node-id=0%3A1
(Note: to navigate between the pages, click on the "F" icon in the top left corner)

Anyone who is not added as a contributor only has viewing access and can't click on individual elements. Boone, if you'd like for Ray and/or Jeremy to be added, please share their email address with me and I'll add them.

As a logged in contributor you should also see the layout grid. The specs for the grid might slightly change (column will stay the same, but column width/gutter might slightly change).

Let me know if you need any additional specs or have questions.