Hi everyone,
I'm Ellen, from the Community team here at Macmillan.
I'm posting here today to ask whether the members of this group would like to help us test a potential new group layout?
We know from user feedback that our groups could be structured better, to help members find the discussions and threads that are most relevant, and important to them.
As a team, we have designed a basic re-structure of how we think groups might be laid out better. We have run this structure through remote user testing, and the initial response to this has been positive, so we wanted to ask this group whether they'd like to try it out.
The suggested new layout would create spaces within the group to help categorise threads. We are suggesting having these sections:
And the group would look something like this:
Users can then click into each of these sections, where threads that are related to that title would be shown.
We are absolutely open to your suggestions, and we want to create spaces that are most relevant for you, so we would like to hear your feedback on the suggested changes. I've included three very brief polls below, just to get some initial feedback from you.
If we see that this group is keen to try this, we will look to implement it early next week.
I hope you don't mind me answering your question from the letter to admin thread here, just as it's a very good question, and I wondered if it would be helpful for anyone else viewing this thread to see.
You asked: Hi Ellen, So how would this look, in ‘portrait form’ at the head of the page, on a mobile phone, say?
Good question! I've taken a snip from our test site of the suggested layout in a mobile view, it would look something like this:
We're open to suggestions though, as none of this is set in stone. We want members in this group to help us shape this, to ensure we're creating something that is helpful for you and our other groups too.
Best wishes,
Ellen
Best wishes,
Ellen
Macmillan Community Team
Really like these suggestions, thanks Carol. I think you're right, too many categories. So with your suggestions, we could have three main categories so it would look more like this:
This is just a screenshot from our test site - what do you think? We would also likely have an 'Archive' section, where members can browse older content too.
Best wishes,
Ellen
Macmillan Community Team
Hi Londonmumof2,
We have a space on the side of the group where we've linked the other breast cancer forums, you can see them on the right hand side of the main page. We can have a think about how we can make this clearer though 
Just in case it's helpful, you can also 'bookmark' these groups, so you can access them quickly and easily. There's some more information about how to use bookmarks in our help guides.
Best wishes,
Ellen
Macmillan Community Team
Thanks everyone, glad to hear you feel it works well.
We're also looking to have a 'Latest Activity' stream below these categories, which would pull through the latest activity from all of the areas within the group. So on the 'homepage' of the breast cancer group, we'd see these three categories, with an activity stream below so you can get an overview of all the conversations in the group.
Best wishes,
Ellen
Macmillan Community Team
