September 30: Redesigned Website Launch

Some suggestions, from having played with the chatrooms a bit more now - the header with the name of the room could be smaller/less tall, it takes up a lot of space with its height, and that makes only 3-4 messages visible at any time. The way the messages come in, too, with mine all the way to the right and everyone else's all the way to the left, makes it hard to read because my eyes don't skip to the right side of the page like that. I preferred the old way of having them stacked on top of each other. I also miss having my picture and username in the chat. And I miss the timestamps!

A bug I've noticed too - guests are showing up with the L of a listener.

I don't know if this one is a bug or deliberate but listeners have round pictures too now and it's very hard to tell them from members.

@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn

Can't begin to express my disappointment over this new lay out. The site now looks like Hello Kitty merchandise web shop. Are we servicing toddlers now?

The new layout isn't working for me. It's making my eyes ache, and the tones are really annoying.

I really hope the teams keeps doing their best to improve it.

It's gotten more complicated than the previous one, and the colors are just wrong and too bright.

I don't like the new design. I know creating it was a hard job, but I just dislike it. First of all, I think the colors are uncomfortable. I don't know how to describe it, but for me the theme is too light and the letters are wide and hard to read. After 5 minutes of chatting my eyes began to ache!! And those light-blue and light-pink rectangles on white backgrounds look very pale and it's disturbing. And white letters on light-blue backgrounds? Light-grey letters on a white background? Come on, that's unreadable!

Also, the time of a message in Listeners' Chatroom would be good. Today I was at my profile's page reading news and suddenly the site redirected me to the Listeners' Chatroom and I have no idea why. It happened several times.

Also, I personally don't like the big buttons with wide letters. I know it's popular these days, but here it looks bad imho.

Overall, I liked the old one better.

Hey everyone! So, there was a live tour about the new site. It was split into two parts due to technical difficulties. The first part was more about the conceptualization about the site, and the second was the tour!

(Note) Krink is sleep deprived and running on coffee during this live chat!

Design Conceptualization

(3:47) This is a screenshare of the map Krink built to see the different aspects of the site and how they are related to each other. Conceptuality, 7cups is really complicated because different aspects are related to each other, but theyre all kind of everywhere. A big part of his job is making sure the entire concept works, fits together, and makes sense. So people can get around and find their way from one place to another and back, and understand why the way things are the way they are.

With the way 7 cups is, it sometimes will need a new foundation. Its like a tree house where you can only put so many new roofs on the tree house and is only able to house a limited amount of people. They wanted to see how it got to where it is now and how it can be improved to make sense.

(6:18) This is the organized map of all the features and how they are connected to each other. Its more structured compared to before, and one of the rules is to make it consistent across everything. Other goals were:

- Preserve everything that is great about the site and the design. Not everyone will agree, but fundamentally about how it works. They wanted to have those things still.
- Improve parts of the site.
- People who come to site randomly know what to do. Essentially trying to make sense of what to do and what options they have in a way that isnt too overwhelming and cause a sensory overload.

(10:29) This is a early conceptualization of the app. He had an idea of being able to swipe in different directions. Each direction would basically take you in a different part of the site and help with progression. Its not necessarily how the app will work, but its an introduction with how Krink starts designing, which is a lot of sketching and just conceptualizing. He discusses a lot of technical points here.

(technical difficulties with screen sharing at this point)

Tour

On the homepage for a new guest, they can connect with a listener by clicking the button. The option to do other things is also on the homepage, but if they arent sure what 7cups does, they can scroll down to see different parts and features of the site such as browse listener, the forum, group chats, and growth path. To get back to this, you can click the teacup.

The tabs are:

Browse Listener
Help Yourself: Mindfulness, Q&A, Self-Help Guides, Forum, Group Support, Community Guidelines)
About 7 Cups: About the site, reputation, team, support faq, etc.)
Become a Listener
Login
Take your first Step"

As a guest, you can see different parts of the site, but some functionality is limited to members only such as following someone through the follow feed or post in the forums.

(9:22) Navigating as a Member

The homepage/dashboard shows the growth path. Its the same functionality, but provides different steps and option they can take. It also basically has the same functionality as before, but is more geared towards guidance now. You can click the teacup to get back to this.

My Path: Growth Path, Mood Boosts, Self-Help Guides
Chat: Conversations, Connect with a Listener, Browse Listener, Group Support
Community: Forum, Q&A, Calendar, Listener Reputation, Member Reputation, Support & feedback page, Support Community Guidelines
Feed
Me: Impact, Profile, Notes, Settings, Log Out

Envelope: Conversations
Bell: Notification system (will disappear if no notifications)

(26:00) Navigating as a Listener (Warning: notification sound is a loud ringing)

Dashboard is the same as before. Teacup leads back to this.

My Path: Progress Path, Mood Boosts, Self-help Guides, Training Guides
Chat: Conversations, Browse Listener, Group Support
Community: Forum, Q&A, Calendar, Mentors, Listener Reputation, Member Reputation, Support & Feedback, Listener Community Guidelines
Feed
Me: Impact, Profile, Notes, Settings, Log Out
Envelope: Conversations
Bell: Notification system (will disappear if no notifications)

(Listener Status is on your circle picture next to the envelope)

Final Notes

Lots of small issues were noted such as alignment, spacing, etc. This is due to various reasons, but will be adjusted in the subsequent days.

Most of the site got a facelift, but not much of an update because it wasnt feasible to do so. Places such as the forums are still being worked on. There were small improvements made such as the autotagging in replies and no more infinity indents. The next step is to focus on improving things across the board like the browse listener/Pr experience, the forums, and a lot of the bigger projects that need to be focused on now.

Q&A was organized. It can show you the latest answers and also related questions as long as pulling up the relevant forum link. The goal is to start putting related things (i.e. depression Q&A and depression forum) together to make it easier to find support on whatever topic you would like. This will hopefully be the focus in subsequent updates and features to make it easier to open discussions and find guidance on different areas of life.

There are a lot of things that are being worked on at the moment. Krink will be working on compiling information and known issues when he is able to. Some known issues are:

-Legibility (contract/font weight/etc)
- Reviews does not expand past 3
- Random Errors & Spacing Issues

He needed to rest after the launch because he has been plugging away at the site for weeks. You can still provide feedback in this forum here. They are listening and will listen to all the feedback. They cant listen to all the feedback because the community all wants different things, but they will try really hard to make changes that will positively impact the community.

There will be a dashboard alert, but please help each other out to get adjusted to our new home! Some things will take some adjustment. Once someone is use to it, it might not be as big of an issue as we may think it was. There are others issues that are chronic and constant.

Please be patient as the staff rest! They have been working very hard to get the design rolled out and need some time to recover their energy. When they are rested, they can continue to plug away to fix the known issues.

Wowowowow lots of design change :o I think with time I'll like the design part of this, but there's still some issues I'm having?

1. I'm still having an issue on the forums where sometimes if I click "post to thread" the box will come up, but it won't open to where I can type. Not sure if this is a problem with just me or...? D:

2. I don't know if this is on purpose, but I don't like that I can't see new notifications as they come, and instead I have to refresh the page to see if I have new ones. (This isn't a new thing, but I figure now is the best time to complain :P)

3. Another thing I'm not sure is purposely done, but if there's more than 4 or 5 notifications on my dropdown, I can't scroll down to see the ones beyond those 4 or 5.

I'd also really like to continue seeing my number of notifications :(

(Side note: Forgive me if this stuff has been said earlier, I'm too lazy to go through all the responses before mine)

@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn It seems like only thing I'm doing is catching bugs...
Anyway, when I click on smiley face (https://www.7cups.com/static/img/growthMarker.png) on home page (https://www.7cups.com/member/), a video shows up, "Intro to 7 Cups", and that video can't load, it's just spinning forever.

@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn Yeah, I know, I'm talking too much...

Anyway, there is some javascript code left after switching to new design, "preload logo hover image". Just letting you know.

WOW it's awesome, even I'm really lost. Trying to get used to it Ç:

I love the new update other than the first few issues which i see that they are now fixed :)

Buuut i guess im just going to sit back and be patient and let the dev team work i'm sure they will fix everything!