on 1/14/08, David Herzog wrote: Does somebody know if there are any newer developments or did we reach the end of development on this area some years ago?
It feels stagnant because off the shelf/turnkey systems are widely used and rarely extensively customized for a particular context. Dreaming up features for no particular group of users works about as well for online discussion forums as it does anywhere else. Since the majority of these systems are off the shelf, a given community more or less fits their conversation style to whatever features exist and sometimes they appropriate it in interesting ways. I have in mind a particular community that uses the subject only thread view of one system to essentially carry on their entire conversation with a user established indicator at the end of the line if there is "more inside" so to speak. Not really the way the designers intended it to be or assumed it would used. These short, frequent, "bursts" might be better accommodated with, for example, live chat. I'd like to think that a certain amount of user research would have revealed that. (Having the luxury of conducting such research is a separate issue.) There are a lot of questions I would have if I were you (and things you probably already know the answer to but didn't go into in your post). For example, will the users be discussing something that they'll often need images to illustrate? Is the subject conducive to (and the user group the kind of users who will post) lengthy multi-paragraph messages? Or will posts usually be just a sentence or two? What other online forums does this group participate in and what are the conventions and features used there? Etc etc. If you can take what you know about the community you're designing this for and any of their unique needs, it might better inspire you to come up with features that don't exist yet in any of these systems we've seen. It's always hard to come up with novel features if there isn't a design problem you're trying to solve or a user need to accommodate. -Tanya ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
