Feedback please: keeping up to date without information overload

It all sounds good to me and makes total sense! Thanks!

It all makes sense generally, but I would suggest having the first bullet point (receiving a daily email with all new content) turned off by default. It's too much for me, personally, and my broader concern is that it would cause new people to delete their account completely, overwhelmed.

Given the default emails about new discussions and proposals, and given the second and third bullet points (subscription to discussions of my choice), the additional daily email seems superfluous. People can turn it on if they want, but it detracts from one strength of Loomio over the typical email listserve, which is that I have more control over which discussions I want to follow.

As a minor aside, what happens if I participate in a discussion (and thus become subscribed automatically), then manually unsubscribe, and then participate in the same discussion again (or am mentioned by someone else)? I'm guessing that I would be subscribed again, but I wonder if the default should be that I remain unsubscribed since I explicitly expressed that preference already.

I feel slightly worried about Loomio becoming too email-centric. I think it should integrate really well with email for those who want that, but wonder whether the core of solving 'keeping up to date without information overload' should be the redesigned inbox/dashboard replacement, and then let the email design follow on from that.

Matthew, can you explain more about what makes you worried?

To me, email is onboarding and our most important interface for new users.

Also, it should be said that this structure was identified as part of the new ui, but it was noticed that it could be built email first, which makes a lot of the benefits available earlier.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply @timhuegerich. I haven't got a good idea about the defaults yet.

It might be useful to share some of the problems I perceive with the current system:

• as usage increases, email volume increases, and digestibility decreases
• anytime someone adds me to a group I am auto-subscribed to all the new discussion and new proposal notifications

It would be good to hear what other problems people feel with the current email setup.

I think a major problem with the current system from an engagement standpoint is that people commonly set up an account for the first time, start a group with one or two discussions, invite a couple of people in, and don't hear a peep by email even if people are engaging in their discussions. I've heard lots of feedback from people who had the expectation that they'd be automatically notified about new comments, which I think is a fairly reasonable thing to expect.

I guess I see the basic problem as two-sided: currently Loomio is too quiet by email if you're a member of new/quiet groups (ghost town) - and it's too noisy by email once you're a member of highly active groups (shopping mall).

I'd love to see a solution that operated differently for people in low-volume groups (i.e. immediate notifications about new activity) and high-volume groups (i.e. situations where a daily digest might be more appropriate). There are clear differences in the way information flows in the two platforms, but I think we've got lot to learn from the way Twitter handles email notifications. Every new notification contains new content that's highly likely to be relevant to the user - and often they're combined in an intelligent way that feels relatively lightweight.

I personally don't engage at all with daily digests, for any online tools I use - but I know other people totally swear by them. I'd love to know what proportion of Loomio users engage in each way.

Sorry if this is a jumble of ideas - really glad we're having this conversation, and I'm confident we can come up with an elegant solution that avoids the ghost town and the shopping mall entirely!

@richarddbartlett and @robertguthrie does that resonate at all with the way you see the challenge?

Nope thats great @benjaminknightloom. I've been keeping that new user/low volume persona right at the top of my list of considerations with this.

I think we solve the problem pretty well with the suggested implementation. I'd like to give it a go and get feedback. The changes we're making could be taken a wee bit further if we don't get the feedback we wanted but it's really tricky to accurately auto subscribe people to low volume situations.

What if you are automatically watching your first group but then subsequent groups you have to explicitly click 'watch' if you want to be emailed about it?

I think that sounds really sensible @richarddbartlett!

I guess I think there's a hierarchy of importance/relevance of info that's likely to be similar across users - i.e. some highly relevant events might be things like:

• if I start a discussion I'm very likely to want to know about every comment posted in it.

• If I put up a proposal, I'm likely to want to know every time someone states their position on it.

• If I've started a group and invited people to it, I'm likely to want to know when someone has joined it.

• If I've just commented, I'm likely to want to know when someone has posted a comment soon after (since it's likely to be a reply to my comment).

• If I haven't participated in a proposal yet, I'm very likely to want to know that it closes in 24 hours.

• If someone @mentions me, I'm very likely to want to know about it.

These are just a few off the top of my head - some we already cover, and some we don't - some are obvious and some I think are less obvious. I guess I think the main point is that thinking about things in terms of importance/relevance of particular events/information is a good way to prioritise what we deliver and how we deliver it.

I think it's also important for us to remember that people who join the Loomio Community group (e.g. us) are a fairly special case (particularly if it's their first group), in that they're members of one of the biggest groups on Loomio. The typical new users' experience is of much much lower traffic, in smaller, quieter groups that are just finding their flow (or not, if people disengage because of silence).

@robertguthrie agree that we're heading in the right direction, and that these initial changes will be a good place to build from.

That's awesome thanks Ben. Most of those are already covered by the
proposed functionality. Great to think about it in those terms though.

Yea @benjaminrichter those are great stories. The ones where you interact with a discussion or proposal are all going to be true in the proposed system.

The case where you want to know of people accepting invitations is new/interesting/cool/not covered off and we'll keep it in mind, I agree with you.

Sorry @benjaminrichter I ment to mention @benjaminknightloom!!!!

Personally I would much prefer the default option to be
- email daily summary of activity in groups (personally I would turn this off but I think it's a reasonable default)
- email me when mentioned
- don't auto subscribe me to groups I participate or am mentioned in.
- email me immediately for groups I manually subscribe to

Someone mentioning me on a popular thread and getting a flood of unwanted email feels like a sub optimal experience to me. Unleashing immediate notifications should always be an opt in from the user imho.

@joshuavial, when you say "groups," do you mean "discussions"?

I agree that I don't want to be auto-subscribed to a discussion if someone mentions me.

I probably do want to be subscribed if I participate myself, but perhaps my ideal thing would be a little check box right below the input text box (or next to the "Post comment" button or similar) that says "subscribe to this discussion." That way, whatever the default is, I can easily subscribe or not whenever I choose to participate.

I am someone who loves the 'yesterday in Loomio update'.
I increasingly work off this entirely. My time is a series of focussed chunks in a day so I turn off all notifications, for me they are distractions to what. I am working on. In the update I would love a reminder about what proposals are about to close in the next day.

@joshuavial keen to hear if you mistyped groups rather than discussions. We'll never auto subscribe you to groups.

yes - i meant discussions and not groups.

Skip email notifications and use just notifications on loomio.org, i prefer this way. In that way i use other sites thus, facebook for example. There is no need to get notification in my email inbox + notification in my loomio account.

A flexible but not too complex email notification approach would be good. But rather than spend too much on a single channel, developing other information channels will be better:
- integration with facebook, twitter, google+ etc - getting feeds on the wall and being able to share discussions / proposals on social media
- develop rss feeds to keep up to date not only with the new conversations but also new decisions/messages
- proposing new discussions based on the ones being watched
- sending an email invitation for others to join a discussion directly from the discussion.

I reckon that some of the above ideas have the purpose to bring others in the discussion, not just to follow it but this has a reason: people will want to check more the discussions once they are able to invite their friends. The idea is to work also on the motivation side as well the technical one.

@zack RSS is already a feature :)

The others things you mentioned are also good ideas for the future!

@novicazivkovic I am the same as you - i turn off all email notifications and prefer to just use the app. But I think we're a minority of users. We'll always have the option to set your own notification preferences.

Personally, I would appreciate a single email at the end of each day that has the days activity and any proposals created in it with hyperlinks for easy navigation.

I would also like an email anytime there is only 24 hours left on a proposal, if I have not already voted on that proposal.