Written by: Matthew Hile 1/17/2007 1:17 PM
Support groups on the web are a huge phenomena. However, what is the best way to organize the user experience. For asynchronous groups there are two common options a non-threaded time oriented bulletin board were users' entries get included in a single list and a threaded discussion form where a root entry (any number of root entries) is made that people then comment upon. The non-threaded form seems like it would be the easiest for “mom and pop” to understand but for groups of any size it would be a difficult cognitive task to keep up with the various threads of conversations. Sort of like arranging all of the individual statements at a party into chronological order then trying to figure out how they were grouped with one another. For small groups this would be possible because I think they would be more likely to have a single conversation. You mentioned that you keep groups to around 50 participants. I would guess that many of those have a very few individuals who participate actively and that in effect they have become a small group. The threaded discussions make sense to me and do reduce the cognitive load of keeping conversations coherent. But I have never really liked the narrow view you get of them when they are collapsed into the original post. While I have seen different ways to represent the richness of the comment space none has been particularly satisfying to my tastes. You exchange load problem of the first option with a new one, the need for the user to search for and identify which conversations of interest. The threaded interface seems like a difficult navigational hurdle for non geek users. I have been considering merging the two approaches perhaps giving the user a moment by moment choice as to the way to look at it or by offering two views of the same data. That would be easy enough to implement but the trick would be to devise a model/approach that would make sense to mom and pop.
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