All good things must come to an end… and be replaced with something better. Today we’re beginning the rollout of a more intuitive user interface for creating new posts.
You might have seen it around the Circle community already. It looks like this:
In the next few days, this new modal will replace the full-screen post interface. This will make post creation quicker, simpler, and frictionless
And here's something you’ll love: adding a cover image for your post and picking its space in a matter of seconds. No need to play around with settings and toggles. It’s all right there, below your message.
Functionally, everything stays the same. Your post settings are just a click away.
Why this change?
Glad you ask! At Circle, all our product decisions are informed by data and feedback.
Here's a data point we couldn't ignore: 99% of all posts across Circle communities are 1,000 characters or less and fit within two paragraphs. A modal-based posting experience is much better suited for shorter posts than a full-page experience.
With this new interface, members can more easily share what's on their mind, without having to navigate to a new page and a full-screen interface. It's an easier, less overwhelming, and friction-reduced experience, which we hope will result in increased engagement across the board.
Finally, a modal-based posting interface is the standard for most asynchronous social products. For example — see Facebook, LinkedIn, and Quora.
This posting paradigm has been proven to be better for member engagement in products that serve billions of users. 🌎
What does it mean for my community?
Over the next few days, we're going to be gradually rolling out the new posting interface across our communities. From May 3, 2021, the full-page posting interface will no longer exist.
Adding a post is done by clicking the “New Post” button or the “+” at the top of the page (from anywhere in your community), which will bring this modal screen.
Can I keep access to the old interface?
Unfortunately, there are times when maintaining two separate versions of the same feature is simply too costly and complicated to support.
In maintaining two versions of the same feature, we increase the potential of introducing unintentional bugs in the future, and the amount of time it takes to add more improvements to the post-experience given it's now double the work for our engineers! This is one of the unfortunate times which involves deprecating the old UI.
But, worry not: by the time this UI is rolled out to the majority of our communities, we're going to do our best to ensure a 100% clean and bug-free experience which is proven across communities to increase engagement and reduce friction.
I write long-form content. Can I get a full-screen mode?
Yes! Full-screen mode will be available before we commence the broader roll-out next week.
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