Hello everyone, welcome to the first blog I am writing as the Community Manager for the Arm community. You may have seen me around the platform on occasion, or Annie Cracknell who makes up the other half of the community team. Coming up to six months in the role, I am writing this blog to let you know about some changes that are happening to this community.
We carried out a survey in August with some of the most active members in the community. The survey finished with 17 responses, and had two main questions:
If we look at the results to the first question, we can see that we have a favorable result when it comes finding content:
This does not mean that we have perfect search. We are aware there is a text entry bug in search right now, and we are looking to fix this in an upcoming platform upgrade. You can also learn more about our long-term efforts to improve the search experience across our platforms in this blog: Documentation hub – New search experience.
Moving on, we next asked how easy is it to understand where questions should be posted? This produced a more mixed response:
What we are taking from this, is that the way we can organize our forums and blogs can be better. We heard the same thing from a group of colleagues that we surveyed, so this is something that has been front of mind for us.
Coming up soon, is a new global navigation menu that is consistent across Arm websites and platforms. The purpose is to unify the user experience for those moving between Arm Community, Arm Developer and, Arm.com. There is a blog explaining the changes in more detail closer to the deployment of this new navigation menu in community. You can see it action right now by going to our Developer platform.
There is a tab for Community in this new navigation menu. Our aim is to simplify the options so it easier to find the forum, blog, or group that you are looking for. Once this does go live, we will follow up with another survey to see how you are finding the changes. This will help us to understand how we can continue to improve the experience for you in this community. If you would like to be part of that survey, please let us know in the comment section below.
We are also aware that the key purpose of our forums is to get a correct response to your questions. The Community team is working on how we can increase the response and resolution rates to all your questions. In the meantime, I want to thank all the people in this community who volunteer their time and expertise to provide solutions to their peers. This does not go unnoticed and we are working on ways to reward and support those of you who give your time to us.
Finally, we have cleaned up the Community Help forum, moving product-related questions to the right place where we can. What I would ask from anyone reading this blog, is use Community Help to provide any feedback for us on how we are doing and how we can improve. Your suggestions are seen and acknowledged.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, and if you have any comments or questions then please use the following comments section.
So, from experience, this type of forum is commonplace inside an internal company community where employees gather. I think the point you make about having an area to discuss things like projects is interesting, and I would very much like us to have areas like this.
Timeline wise, I would see us visiting this idea after we have strengthened our existing forums and blogs, but this is something that is on my roadmap for sure.
Another idea :Is it possible to have a non arm's subject forum, like a "coffe forum" ?In this one you could have some diy projects, personal discussions, smart advices, or local none-arm events (like a school fest with some ARM chips or boards demonstrations convention). You can alse move unclassable question in this.
Thanks Jerome for this feedback. You make a good point about the name Community Help, and I will discuss this with Annie to see if we should come up with a better name. The other tactic we have been employing recently is moving content to the correct product forum, along with a comment on threads to the author letting them know we have moved the thread.
The issue with the submenu will be going away very soon, and in its place will just be a list of all of our forums, much like in your second screenshot. My hope is that this will simplify the navigation experience for users, and ensure more people find their way to the correct forum.
Second inspection round :)What are the differences between top headers submenu and left link.Sure for the moment you are working on it, so that may confuse me...Would you like to keep twice or not ?If you want to keep twice, you may include the general subject in submenu,and the specifics or highlighted in the link...
It's what i see in my first inspection round : The community help...
You should move forum for helping question in the forum as "Help to use community website" and let's the FAQ good answers in the top header.
Lets' me explains why the probleme still persist.
The subjet his not clear : "Community Help" Are you need help of the community ?Or are you asking help about the use of the community.
Due of this confusion you will always get the same probleme...You can rename the top header as FAQ or Use help...