Discussion boards. They’ve been around in some form since the internet began. It’s kind of amazing that in general, a major overhaul of the basic user interface of a discussion board has not changed. The structure of a scrolling list of topic buckets, threads and replies is really the same. It’s functional. It works. So why do anything to it? To get more value from it than what it’s producing, and to improve a users experience with it so the UI almost disappears and it becomes – fun.
Some “what ifs…”:
… there was a way to make it easier to engage in a board without “digging” for personally interesting content
… it knew that I would be interested in a topic, thread or comment
… you could reduce the amount of clicks and scrolling movements by half. Would that add to your desire to read and engage with content?
… it integrated easily with your mobile device
and a big “what if”
… it was developed in an open source platform that became a new standard?
Remember, the term “discussion board” is based on the idea of a physical board attached to a wall with content pinned to it. Innovation-wise we’ve not come a great distance since then.
