Discourse Design team experimentation topic

This topic will house the Discourse Design Team’s current experiments running on Meta. We will document what the current running experiments are here in this topic in a table.

After a test run of an experiment, each one will get a final decision from our team:

  • Promote to core, or
  • Abandon, or
  • Ship in dedicated theme component

Please feel free to let us know what you think of any of the ongoing experiments we are currently working on. As discussion takes place, we will separate the conversation into topics of their own.

Experiment Started Status End
Details styling November 13,2023 Merged into Discourse :rocket: 2023-12-04T22:00:00Z
Copy quote to clipboard November 13,2023 Merged into Discourse :rocket: 2024-01-07T14:00:00Z
Full Screen Login November 21, 2023 Will bring into Core at a later date 2023-12-19T06:00:00Z
Hide text in text select popup 2023-12-05T06:00:00Z Will bring into Core at a later date 2024-01-29T06:00:00Z
Emoji line-height Adjustment 2023-12-19T06:00:00Z Paused 2024-01-02T06:00:00Z
Embedded Replies 2024-01-04T06:00:00Z Merged 2024-05-08T05:00:00Z
Select colour variable Jan 22, 2024 Merged into core for default schemes Jan 30 2022
Simplified topic map 2024-05-10T04:00:00Z Will bring into Core at a later date 2024-07-02T04:00:00Z
Header Shadow Removal 2024-05-15T05:00:00Z Merged into Discourse :rocket: 2024-07-10T05:00:00Z
New sidebar experiment (Sidebar Feng Shui) 2024-08-06T05:00:00Z Merged into Discourse :rocket: 2024-10-08T05:00:00Z
Share your feedback about updated notification menu! 2024-08-06T04:00:00Z Core feature, considering default
Improved code block font sizing 2024-10-31T14:00:00Z Pending
Previous Experiments

Experiment: Simplified topic map
Date enabled: 2024-05-10T04:00:00Z
Preview:
image

Feedback topic: Feedback on our simplified topic map experiment

Experiment: Embedded reply styling changes
Description: To move toward a “threaded” design to show inline replies in topics on both desktop and mobile. Merging this component idea into core. Custom embedded replies
Date enabled: 2024-01-04T06:00:00Z
Idea by: @Don

Preview:

Feedback: Embedded Replies

Experiment: Full screen login / create account screen
Description: This turns the login/create account modal into a full screen login.
Date Enabled: 2023-11-21T06:00:00Z
Idea by: @jordan-vidrine
Preview:

Feedback topic: Full Screen Login & Create Account

Experiment: Details in topic styling changes
Description: Change the styling of the details aspect of topic posts.
Date Enabled: 2023-11-13T06:00:00Z
Idea By: @chapoi

Preview:

Feedback topic: Details in topic styling changes - Feedback - #2


Experiment: Add a copy button when selecting text in a post
Description: This adds a Copy button to the post quote buttons that copies the quote markdown to the user’s clipboard, so they don’t have to manually do it from the composer:
Date enabled: 2023-11-13T06:00:00Z

Preview:

Feedback topic: Post quote copy to clipboard button -- Feedback - #2


Experiment: Hide text on text select popup menu
Description: This hides text on the text selection popup menu, decreasing the visual noise & leaning into the popup menu styling for icons on the chat message hover.
Date Enabled: 2023-12-05T06:00:00Z
Idea by: @keegan

Preview:

Feedback topic: Hide text in text select popup menu - Feedback


53 Likes

The experimentation topic is a great idea!
Would it make sense to have voting? I think some people might like/dislike a feature, but are less vocal, or don’t have much more to add to the conversation than “like it/don’t like it”.

4 Likes

Feature (/ux) voting on meta has cropped up a couple of times. I wonder if now would be a good time to have an experiment in that?

What do you think @sam @mcwumbly @jordan-vidrine?

7 Likes

That could be interesting. It would only be scoped to the specific “feedback” topics tied to the experiments right?

1 Like

I think the topic voting plugin can only currently do categories and not tags, so it would be enabled for all feature and ux topics (though not all ux topics would really be ‘votable’ ones as it houses some non-breaking visual bugs as well as ux improvements).

3 Likes

@jordan-vidrine Think we need to make a decision about this one. Been on for more than a month. Based on the feedback topic, I think we can merge?

4 Likes