Introducing the new Virgin Media Community

[Kei_M]

Huzzah! 🍾

After many years (8!) on the previous iteration, we’re delighted to announce our Virgin Media Community has had an upgrade.

2011 (courtesy of waybackmachine 😊)

2014

2015

Aside from the fact that it's been a while, it’s also given us an opportunity to greatly simplify things and put everything on a crash diet 🍔;

• We’ve reduced the number of different layouts (over 20 😱) to around 5. This should mean it’s easier to get to grips with particularly for newer users.
• We’ve removed a lot of redundant background code ❌ that should speed it up as well 🏎. It also allows us to do platform updates in the future without a constant fear 😱 of something breaking.
• No more going backwards to go forwards! ⏪ There’s now a persistent navigation bar along the top on desktop view or within the menu bar on mobile view so it reduces the instances where you need to go back to a previous page to navigate the site.

Let us know your thoughts or you have any questions below 👇

[jhuk]

Will take a bit of time to adjust esp. at my age as sometimes change is hard.

[carl_pearce]

I'm a little confused by the sorting of threads.

It appears to be sorting by the date/time of the most recent post in a thread, however the date/time is showing when the thread was orginally created.

Some threads don't show all posts either.

[Andrew-G]

Wow.  One heck of a change.  I accept change in appearance is necessary to keep things contemporary and keeping up with standards of web design, and I'll give you this is modern and visually attractive, but it's also totally lacking in digital ergonomics.  Not clear how much can now be changed at this stage, but if you're looking for ideas, make much more efficient use of screen space, and improve the forum navigation (as opposed to VM navigation). 

Landing in the forum now and it's .....how to put it....just lacking forumness.  Three levels of non-forum links are the top 25% of the screen, half the screen then given over to a "welcome back" banner that really does nothing useful for me, and the lower quarter (and a bit ore below on my 27" monitor) is VM information posts.  I have to scroll down a further screen depth or so before I get to any actual forum member posts.  Those are a jumble of Community Activity from all sub-forums, and only show three or four posts per screen depth because the presentation of each post takes up 7-8 lines each.  If I click on the link to a sub-forum, say Networking & Wifi, the top half of my screen is wasted, and to get to actual posts and real content I have to scroll down through two entire screen depths to get past the (now purple) stickies - again, far too much depth wasted per post.  Open a thread, and the same profligacy with screen space is apparent, with the left 25% of the screen wasted as white space, and the right 33%.

I have an impression that there was either no testing by actual users, or that if there was, their comments were not heard and acted on. 

[jhuk]

^^ So you mean just like every other VM Trial?  😉

[MrHalfAsleep]

New format is confusing and access to newer replies etc is missing. Can't find what I'm after.  Going round in circles.  Logged in a bit ago; it's like some little kids have managed to get into mum's home office and thrown all the paperwork all over the place.  Community FAQ also needs updating.

OK - you need to go on to your profile page and click on the Replies link, then click on the thread title.  Getting there slowly. [edit] Sorry, giving wrong information out.

[edit]

1303 finally figured it out now.

Lots of whitespace on a desktop 'cos peeps like mobile phones.

[Tobytyler77]

I have absolutely no idea how to negotiate this new set up it's complicated to say the least.

[Paulpal67]

In a few short words. Not good 😐 

[stevef]

Well I think I've got to grips with navigating this beast but finding useful information is way harder than previously. The size of each post, as mentioned above, means a lot more scrolling and visually filtering the titles from the post content. It was much quicker with just the title showing initially (tho granted some titles are not very informative). Overall I'd give it a thumbs down, too much wasted space and irrelevant content, resulting in requiring the user to have to work harder to find what they want. 

[Client62]

Website appears to have had no usability review before release.

Fixed width screen layout fails to flow content  to make use of more than half the width of 1920x1080 computer monitor.

An overview summary view by topics & subjects is lacking.

Navigation is needlessly inefficient. Click click click, scroll scroll scroll.

When composing a post or reply the text box is tiny.

When composing a comment the control buttons should be Cancel & Post,  not Cancel & Reply.

[gitty]

The forum now has a "load more" button. This feature is not suitable for a forum. I have been a member of a couple of forums in the past that introduced this feature. I am no longer a member. This will be a repeat. Take care.

[jpeg1]

It seems to have followed the Virginmedia principle of making it as difficult as possible for anyone to bother them by asking for help. 

For anyone entering the home page, they are presented with stupid graphics and a list of existing threads. There's a query box, but the helpful list of forums that one might want to browse for knowledge is hidden away.

I'll come back in a month or two and see if this nonsense has been sorted.  Bye for now. 

[Andrew-G]

MrHalfAsleep: "Lots of whitespace on a desktop 'cos peeps like mobile phones."

You've looked at the mobile experience?  Admittedly no white space, but experience is different yet as bad as desktop, just in different ways.  Surely I can't be the only person who participates in other forums where there's a good user experience on both desktop and mobile?  

Some aspects of the changes (eg navigation) are going to be a familiarity thing, and I'm not expecting perfection, but there's a lot here that could be usefully improved. 

[Bolehill]

The best on-line fora are structured, searchable resources, usually aimed at helping others to solve a problem.  Read and Unread items need to be clearly demarcated so the reader knows what's appeared since they last logged on.

I have to agree with gitty above - the provision of a 'load more' button suggests this forum is now simply something to be browsed at leisure.  Not good!

[Anankha]

Horrible! I can’t find my pinned boards as they’re no longer shown. No option to list new posts first.

[MrHalfAsleep]

Andrew-G: "You've looked at the mobile experience?  Admittedly no white space, but experience is different yet as bad as desktop, just in different ways.  Surely I can't be the only person who participates in other forums where there's a good user experience on both desktop and mobile?"  

No, I haven't used mobile internet for years!  Far too small for text-heavy websites.  It's like trying to read War and Peace through a periscope, so I haven't bothered with it since 2015.  It's OK for small thin client type stuff, but anything else is just ridiculous.  Berners-Lee's original HTML design was for CRT's and print, not mobile phones; however, progress dictates that things need to be smaller.

[Oxo29]

I only signed up last week so haven't got used to any system at mo.  Can't see on this where the list of groups are? So can't see majority of topics.

[Graham_A]

@Oxo29 

In the desktop version the list of groups is in a ribbon menu across the top of the community page.  In the mobile version click on the hamburger icon top left to see a drop-down list of the forums.

[Oxo29]

Oh my! I didn't realise they were the list of forums. Oops.

[Anonymous]

i read in the first post that VM are delighted to announce the upgrade, not sure users are from the initial reaction, but then users who come here are generally unhappy with the service from VM so this just adds to that

[martinianpaul]

Hmmm.  Did you actually carry out any UAT before going live? It's a nice clean look but, navigation and browsing are not intuitive.