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They redesigned our community web pages - and I don't think I like it

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This is belated feedback, after I missed the online chat hosted by TJLau on the redesign of the MOM and SMS web pages. In particular, I'm thinking of the redesigned pages for the SMS Community and MOM Community. Some aspects of the redesign are really nice: for example, the dynamically-generated "top-10" lists of the most active newsgroups, discussions, knowledgebase articles, and downloads.

But am I the only one who finds the placement of these lists really jarring? They're all over the place! Are we really thinking of the users here? As a user, I'm going to visit a community page for one of two reasons: to drill down in-depth into some static content that I've seen here before, or to surf a "top-10" list to find out what's new. So why can't we visually separate those two forms of content? Put all the static content in one column, and all the dynamic content in the other. That way my eye can easily scan down one column, find the link I'm interested in, and I'm on my way.

I'm sure there are many good arguments about logical structure and information ordering as to why the pages are structured the way they are, with dynamic content scattered between the two columns, but I don't think it fits the intended usage of these pages. Users aren't coming here to stay and read, they're coming to get a pointer to a different information source. And for that, they want something that's easy to scan.

Go check out one of these two communities. Do you think it could be better?

Update: we're not the only ones, the Exchange community pages have also been updated. KC Lemson is asking for feedback.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 18, 2004
    The pages seem to use only one background colour and two colours of text. Why not use different colours to designate the different logical divisions of the page?
  • Anonymous
    May 18, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    May 19, 2004
    "Community" is definitely a buzzword around Microsoft right now - lots of people are thinking about it. And yeah, I can see how the titles of these pages could be stretching the definition too far: there's no actual community input to the pages, they're just lists of pointers to community stuff. "Portal" doesn't really seem right either though. Can you think of a better term?
  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2004
    What about "Community Portal?"
  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2004
    "Community Portal" sounds good to me, yes
  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2004
    Portal--possibly--but some of our sites also offer original resources, for example, on TechNet and in the Windows Server community areas. The tough thing is to establish a consistent experience, while at the same time allowing for variation.

    On the earlier comments about jumbled and not easily distinguishable placement, I tend to agree. This is an interim step and we plan to improve on the basic (and standardized) foundation in the next several months. We've got more dynamic feeds and other features coming very soon, and we'll be trying to figure out how to bring them into the fold and at the same time hopefully reduce some of the "cognitive clutter."

    (btw, I'm leading the task team that's working on all these issues across the IT pro-related community sites; we very much appreciate getting community feedback on our 'designs'.)

  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2004
    Dave - then my feedback is to prioritize what is the most useful content and put that at the top of the page. For my product, for example, this would be the links to the list of related communities, the user groups page, etc. The list of active threads is not that useful in my opinion.
  • Anonymous
    May 21, 2004
    The comment has been removed