Good question. The biggest objective was to make everything more simple. There was quite a learning curve with the old designs, and the filters/sorts weren't really helping in any meaningful way. On top of that, they weren't really worth it for the current size of the community.

The back-end also really started getting too complex and difficult to work with because one view (page) was handling both journals made by learners and journals awaiting your correction. We made the decision to split them up into two different pages, and when we brought back the sidebar, those journals/sorts became obsolete. For example, you no longer have to fiddle around with the buttons to view journals made by friends, because it displays it in the sidebar. With one click, you could also go directly to a list of all journals written by your friends.

The mobile apps are also in progress, so it was a nice opportunity to start laying out the foundation/get a universal design.

There's definitely still room for improvements, and I'd love to hear your overall impressions on our forums after you play around with it more!

I would love to hear your thoughts on our community forums