Cre8asite Forums Remodeling and Change
19 December 2005 04:46 AM | Weblogs
Cre8asite forums has new forum
software and a new look, or should I say 'looks'
in the plural because you can choose from about
7 different 'skins'. That is a nice feature
because there is something for everyone looks
wise. Although it has to be a pain to administer
that because for any changes by the staff to
navigation has to be done on each skin (like 7
times).
The admin staff pulled off one of the smoothest transfers to a new, completely different forum script that I have ever seen. Darn near everything worked from about the first minute. Good stuff.
But laying down compliments is not the reason for this post. What interested me the most, was observing both in myself and other members, through their comments, how we get used to one interface and don't really want to have to learn a new one. It's not a bad thing, just human nature. But you can see how the resistance to change can build up in any system be it an online forum community, a shopping site or even politiical systems in the real world. People tend to be predisposed to like that which is familier to them. It's not just technology that makes change incremental, it is human beings. If you try to change to much to fast (which Cre8 did not change to much too fast) you will have people rebelling against the changes.
So back to Cre8 - one thing I noticed right off is how with one skin the placement of the member's name makes the name stand out to me when I am scanning a thread, while with a different skin the Avatar becomes the visual identifier of the poster. This really jumped out at me so much that for the first time ever since I had joined Cre8 I had to upload an Avatar for myself. Hmm. maybe these usability people know their stuff?
My other self test is that I am forcing myself to use one of the more radically new skins, albeit one with a traditional blue/gray color scheme (the change of both color and template simultaneously was too much change for me to deal with comfortably) - and what I am finding out about myself is how quickly my brain (okay at least I thought it was quick) remaps itself so that I pretty quickly learned where all the new buttons were.
I'm not sure what all this means, but the observations are interesting. I think there are also lessons here for sales too but I'll save that for future posts however here is a hint - I think it's all about inertia.
The admin staff pulled off one of the smoothest transfers to a new, completely different forum script that I have ever seen. Darn near everything worked from about the first minute. Good stuff.
But laying down compliments is not the reason for this post. What interested me the most, was observing both in myself and other members, through their comments, how we get used to one interface and don't really want to have to learn a new one. It's not a bad thing, just human nature. But you can see how the resistance to change can build up in any system be it an online forum community, a shopping site or even politiical systems in the real world. People tend to be predisposed to like that which is familier to them. It's not just technology that makes change incremental, it is human beings. If you try to change to much to fast (which Cre8 did not change to much too fast) you will have people rebelling against the changes.
So back to Cre8 - one thing I noticed right off is how with one skin the placement of the member's name makes the name stand out to me when I am scanning a thread, while with a different skin the Avatar becomes the visual identifier of the poster. This really jumped out at me so much that for the first time ever since I had joined Cre8 I had to upload an Avatar for myself. Hmm. maybe these usability people know their stuff?
My other self test is that I am forcing myself to use one of the more radically new skins, albeit one with a traditional blue/gray color scheme (the change of both color and template simultaneously was too much change for me to deal with comfortably) - and what I am finding out about myself is how quickly my brain (okay at least I thought it was quick) remaps itself so that I pretty quickly learned where all the new buttons were.
I'm not sure what all this means, but the observations are interesting. I think there are also lessons here for sales too but I'll save that for future posts however here is a hint - I think it's all about inertia.
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