A new look and feel for Knowledge Hub

Knowledge Hub Team

There’s a feeling of excitement at KHub HQ at the moment – and it’s not just because we’re all looking forward to what Santa is going to bring us in a few weeks’ time! We are also extremely excited to announce that coming soon in 2017, we will be releasing a new version of Knowledge Hub built using Liferay's new Digital Experience Platform (DXP)…

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be running a series of blogs sharing some of what you can expect from our new look Knowledge Hub and the benefits you can gain from DXP. In this first blog, we’re previewing some important elements of our new look and feel.

Improvements based on your feedback

Towards the end of last year and over the first part of this year, we spent time talking to you – our Knowledge Hub members – about what you like and dislike about the platform. We ran a survey, some focus groups and one-to-one interviews with a range of people to find out about your experience of using Knowledge Hub. We even asked some of you to share your designs of what you thought a new home page should look like.

While there was a lot of positive feedback, you also shared some of your frustrations. This has been really helpful in aiding us to modernise and upgrade the Knowledge Hub.

3 key changes

Here are three key things that are going to change about the look and feel of Knowledge Hub, based on what you told us…

You said: The current navigation is confusing – sometimes it’s difficult to understand where we are in the site.

What’s new? Clearer, easier navigation with contextual menus depending on where you are, so you don’t get lost.
You said: The pages are really busy and there’s loads of unnecessary text.

What’s new? Simple, clear use of icons and hover text, plus better use of the space on the page will make for a slicker experience.
You said: We’d like a better KHub mobile experience please.

What’s new? The use of a clever new piece of software means that we can provide you with a much more consistent experience of Knowledge Hub no matter whether you’re using a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone.

Keep an eye out on our blog over the next few weeks for more sneak previews and news on what’s changing.

Hi! By mobile experience, do you mean the browser version or will there also be an app? Kind regards

Hi Tiina, Thanks for your question. Initially it will be an improved experience using the Knowledge Hub in a browser, but as part of our roadmap next year, we will also be looking at the possibility of a native app. We'll keep you posted on our blog and via the KHub Connects group. Thanks, Liz

Really pleased to hear about the new updates, looking forward to hearing more about the changes. Thanks Khub team

Delighted to hear about the changes on the way. Using feedback is the best way forward, and it will attract new interest. I look forward to seeing the changes! Its Dec 1st, so here's to a great 2017! John

Great you are delivering improvements - a native app might well be a good idea (it seems to work for LinkedIn), but given the scale of KHub it would be worthwhile carrying out some serious user research before going down the path of developing another platform. There might be other approaches to consider first? I must have missed a lot of the research - did you do it through this group?

Hi Sally, Thanks for your response. I'm sorry you missed the member feedback surveys and focus groups - we did publicise them at the time. We also did a lot of work with the Improvement Service for Scotland. Although this is a significant update in terms of the user experience and interface, we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The things people know and like about Knowledge Hub will be similar and the underlying technology will be an enhanced and upgraded version of what we already use. This means that members will still be familiar with many of the tools, but that their experience of navigating around and interacting with the site will be much improved. I hope this allays some of your concerns, but please do let us know if you have any other queries we can help with.

Previously I was disappointed in KnowledgeHub as a platform for knowledge sharing because of it's "forums" structure, and it's lack of tags to emulate some sort of database. Has that changed yet ?

Hi Patrick, Sorry to hear you've been disappointed with Knowledge Hub. We'd be interested to hear more about your ideas. The forum will be similar, but it should be easier to add a conversation, with less cluttered pages. In fact, the decision about how to structure individual group forums e.g. whether to add categories etc. would normally come from the community itself, as it's down to the facilitator to set these up, so it would usually be based on what makes sense to group members. When it comes to sharing more widely across the platform, I understand what you're saying. I'd also like to see more suggestions of relevant content and people in suitable places and I think the new look and feel will allow for more of this. Knowledge Hub already uses tags to improve the searchability of content and pull blogs into groups, but we would be interested to hear more about how you would like to see them used. You can feedback in the KHub Connects group: https://khub.net/web/khubconnects or contact us direct: support@khub.net Many thanks for your views. Liz

I spotted the other day that there was no button for changing the font style of copied and pasted text. Is this something you could easily include as other similar content platforms have this.

Hi Simon There are a number of ways to remove the format of text that has been copied over from websites, word documents etc, so the text becomes standard on the page. There are two paste buttons on the text editor (Paste from Word and Paste as Plain Text) You also have the option to remove the format after you have pasted the text in by selecting Remove format. Cheers Michael

More Blog Entries

Exciting news for Knowledge Hub

Your notifications - your choice