Upcoming Enhancements to SANE Forums: Thanks to Your Feedback

[espressologic]

Hello all,

We have some exciting news to share!  

In 2023, we launched an extensive community co-design project made up of:  

• An online survey: We asked 572 people about their mental health needs and experiences with online support. This group included both forum users and non-users. 

• Co-design discussion group: We held detailed discussions with 60 members in a collaborative space on SANE Forums. 

Thanks to the many community members who participated in the co-design, we are now gearing up to introduce a series of Forum enhancements between now and October. 

These changes will result in a more user-friendly and welcoming community space for everyone, ensuring you can find the people, support and activities you are most interested in. We’ll also be making some improvements behind the scenes to improve the performance of the Forums. 

To make these implementations as smooth as possible, we’ll: 

• provide weekly updates here on this thread about what’s happening. 

• plan changes in a way that causes minimal disruption to you. 

• share resources to help you adjust to any changes. 

• listen to your feedback to keep improving. 

Thanks again to anyone who participated in the co-design process or provided feedback through other channels. As a community-led Forum, your input has been key to making these improvements possible. We're excited for you to experience the positive changes firsthand.  

Stay tuned here for weekly updates, and please add any questions you have below. 

[espressologic]

Dear Community Members,

Scheduled maintenance: Wednesday 17 July, 2-6am (AEST)We’re doing some work behind the scenes to improve the performance of SANE Forums and our first scheduled maintenance is happening this Wednesday.

What this means for you:

• SANE Forums will be temporarily unavailable between 2-6am on Wednesday, 17 July. Access will be restored at 6am.
• Your desktop notification history will be cleared, but new notifications will work as usual.
• Email notifications will continue to work before, during, and after maintenance. If you haven’t already, please enable email notifications. We also recommend saving your favourite threads or posts. See instructions below.

Enable your email notifications:

1. Click on your profile icon and select ‘Settings’. 
2. Click on ‘Subscriptions & Notifications’, then ‘Notification Settings’.
3. Follow the steps in the attached image to configure your settings.

Bookmark your favourite threads: 

1. Open the thread you want to save.
2. Click on ‘Options’ at the top of the page and select ‘Favourite’.
3. Access your saved favourites through your Member Profile page.

Note: You can follow this process to favourite posts, using the Post Options menu.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please email team@saneforums.org.

[espressologic]

Dear Community Members,

Scheduled maintenance: Thursday 25 July, 2-6am (AEST)

As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance the performance of SANE Forums, we will be conducting additional maintenance overnight.

What this means for you:

SANE Forums will be temporarily unavailable between 2-6am tonight/Thursday, 25 July. Access will be restored at 6am.

We don’t anticipate any other impacts for the community.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please email team@saneforums.org.

The Sane Forums Team

[espressologic]

Volunteers needed to help us improve SANE Forums

To ensure the Forum enhancements we’ve been designing meet the needs of our community, we’re looking for volunteers to test them out and provide feedback.

We’re looking for:

• 15 people for individual 60-minute user testing interviews. The interviews will be held online, with our research partner, Colosl.
• A mix of registered Forum members and first-time or returning visitors, including:
  • new members
  • long-time members
  • regular posters and visitors
  • occasional posters and visitors

Volunteers who complete their user testing interview will receive a $120 Prezee Smart eGift Card.

Register your interest at https://forms.gle/hUE9FP4KCz5UMzvT9

Colosl will contact selected participants over the next 3 weeks.

[espressologic]

Update: User Testing Interviews

A big thank you to everyone who expressed interest in our user testing interviews! Your feedback on our initial new layout and design for SANE Forums is essential for ensuring we get the new look and feel right for our community.

Interviews kick off today and will run for 2-3 weeks. If you’ve expressed interest in participating, please allow up to 3 weeks to hear from our research partner, Colossl.

If you’d like to be involved, you can still register your interest at https://forms.gle/hUE9FP4KCz5UMzvT9

Next week, we’ll also be asking for feedback on some changes directly in this Forums thread, so stay tuned!

Thanks for helping us make SANE Forums even better!

SANE Forums Team

[espressologic]

A huge thank you to everyone who has participated in our user testing interviews so far! We’ve been receiving some really useful feedback from members about their experience using the forums and their response to the new design. Your insights are immensely helpful in shaping the final design to better meet the needs of our recovery community.

Testing is still ongoing, so if you haven't had a chance to participate yet, there's still time to get involved! You can register your interest here: [ACTIVITY NOW CLOSED - UPDATE BELOW]

We’re excited to share the final design with the community soon and can’t wait to see how it makes your experience on the forums even better.

Thanks again for your support!

SANE Forums Team

[espressologic]

Thank you so much to everyone who expressed interest in helping us improve the SANE Forums. Over the last few weeks, Colosl has been reaching out to those who signed up through the registration form linked above. 

User testing interviews have been progressing well and your feedback has been invaluable in helping to shape the final designs. 

As we now have enough volunteers for this round, we'll be closing off registration to further participants. We really appreciate your willingness to get involved and share your experiences and ideas. 

We'll have further updates to share next week. If you haven't already, please subscribe to this thread so you can be notified of updates. 📜🖋️

[PeppyPatti]

i had my appointment for today at 2pm. I was looking forward to it and punched in information but nothing happened

[espressologic]

Hi @PeppyPatti, thanks for your message. This thread is for general updates on upcoming changes. I understand the testing team has been in touch with you and scheduled a new appointment for next week. If you need to change the time or have trouble accessing the appointment link, please contact them directly by email. Since this testing is managed externally, we're unable to assist with it through the forums. Thanks for your understanding. 😀

[tyme]

📢 Upcoming changes to SANE Forums 📢 

Next week you’ll notice two important changes to SANE Forums. These changes were informed through our extensive community co-design process and will help create a more connected community as well as improve navigating the forum space.

Creating one SANE Community, under one SANE Forum. We’re merging our two Forums into one community. Our Friends, Families and Carers Forum and Lived Experience Forum will merge into one SANE Forum, creating a more connected community space for everyone. Friends, family and carers will still have a dedicated discussion space in the Forum and we'll be sharing the link to that new space with you soon.  

Updating the categories. In line with merging the two forums, we are renaming some of our categories and introducing some new ones too to better support a more connected community. 

• Welcome and getting started (no change) 
• Our Stories (no change)  
• Events and updates (previously Forum news and updates and Special Events) 
• Social space 
• Recovery Club (previously called Looking After Ourselves) 
• Something’s not right (no change) 
• Friends, families and carers NEW 
• Managing relationships NEW 
• Advocating for change NEW 
• Talking through trauma and PTSD NEW 
• Managing thoughts of suicide & self-harm NEW 
• Employment, education and training NEW

Specialised group hub spaces, like Yarning Space, will remain unchanged. 

We will update you on thread movements later in the week. These category changes are to help the community more easily navigate and find topics and conversations that reflect their needs and interests. 

To minimise disruption, these changes will happen gradually between Tuesday 3rd and Sunday 8th September:

• First up will be the overall merge of the forums 
• Following that will be the new and updated categories  
• Last will be the threads moved and merged as mentioned above  

We appreciate change can be hard no matter how big or small. Please be kind to yourself and others, take the time to explore changes as they come and post any questions you may have. We are so grateful for your patience and understanding as we work to improve our community space with you. 

The SANE Forums Team