"User Support" Category is Visually Confusing

[deeplow]

@ToastedCoral

2. Visually, landing on User Support - Qubes OS Forum is pretty confusing. Especially after you’ve tried and failed to solve your problem on screen after screen…

• The link boxes are the biggest, brightest elements on the screen.
• The small, grey “new topic” button sitting waaaay off to the right is easily missed.
• On a laptop screen, the actually posts are all but hidden, all the more so with the survey box that’s currently up the top.

It just doesn’t look like you’re at the forum page yet. It looks like you must chose one of the boxes to make your post, and “How to” is the one that closest fits. You interpret it as “How do I…?”

Creating a new topic to discuss this

[deeplow]

The Boxes

These boxes are just a setting that I’ve enabled. They can be disabled if users find it confusing.

But I think the reason for the confusion is not so much the boxes, but rather the fact that the “main” category is the parent category. See bellow:

User Support --> Main Support category
├── Hardware Support
├── HCL Reports
├── How-Tos
└── Testing 4.1

So following your explanation @ToastedCoral when one jumps into the “User Support”, then there is no box for let’s say “User Support”.

If this is the problem one possible solution could be to create a subcategory for general questions such that no “user support” post would land on the parent category.

Unlike Renaming "How-Tos" category this is a problem that is hard to assess we can’t see users doing the mistakes. So let’s see if someone else also complains about this.

[deeplow]

Further feedback from the user @ToastedCoral, who is having usings using discourse (being followed up here). I’ll paste here the feedback.

Sorry for taking so long to reply.

@deeplow

when one jumps into the “User Support”, then there is no box for let’s say “User Support”.

Exactly right. It looks like you’ve arrived at the User Support section, and you must choose from these 4 options.

There is very little (nothing?) to indicate you are already on a forum page. The posts are hidden off-screen; you don’t scroll because you assume, “oh, I have to choose from these four”.

Basically, its first an obfuscation, then a misdirection (boxes).

(Maddeningly, I cannot get a screenshot off dom0 to upload here to show you what I see on the laptop. No vm will handle any file off dom0, apparently).

@deeplow

If this is the problem one possible solution could be to create a subcategory for general questions such that no “user support” post would land on the parent category.

​That would work. Or slimline the boxes. Basically the User Support forum should be immediately apparent on the page, regardless of screen size, so there is a clear signal to the user “stop searching, you’ve found the forum”

[deeplow]

@deeplow

Exactly right. It looks like you’ve arrived at the User Support section, and you must choose from these 4 options.

I think this is a general issue on the first experience of posting an new post. So I think we should create a category Support or General Support.

User Support --> Main Support category
├── General Support
├── Hardware Support
├── HCL Reports
├── How-Tos
└── Testing 4.1

@adw, any thoughts?

[adw]

I understand his complaint to be about how the subcategories are visually presented, not about the naming or organization of the categories.

[ToastedCoral]

I am sorry, it seems like this post has sat in my “draft” pane for many days.

@deeplow

So following your explanation @ToastedCoral when one jumps into the “User Support”, then there is no box for let’s say “User Support”.

If this is the problem one possible solution could be to create a subcategory for general questions such that no “user support” post would land on the parent category.

Sorry for taking so long to reply.
This extra box would work perfectly for someone like me.