Your ideal hearing aid forum?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Behind the scenes, Brian (my dev partner) and I have been very frustrated with Discourse for a very long time. So while it may not seem “broke” to you guys, from a development and maintenance perspective, things could be much, much better. Little things like improving the audiogram, selecting your hearing aids from a list, attaching reviews to your profile, etc, are things that we have not bothered with because extending the functionality of discourse is such a pain for us. Anyway, since the build is happening regardless, I would ask that you only offer suggestions for what to carry forward / improve upon and hold your comments otherwise. Thank you!

You could probably change the heart back to a thumbs up.

I’ve been happy with how the forum has been structured, especially when other members are able to help with questions. My only beef has been with the fitting software. A LOT of people have asked for links to the download and get a response to read something. I’ve never been able to find that something. Maybe it’s an age thing??? Is the software meant to be only available to audiologists, Hearing Instrument Specialists, and dealers? Seems that there is a lot of people that are not happy with their fitting so a DIY may make users much happier with their hearing aids. Years ago, I was able to find the software for the Resound but never for my current Oticon’s. I had given up trying to find it.

@AbramBaileyAuD said:

selecting your hearing aids from a list,

Aha, that’s one of the things I miss the most from the old forum.

Being able to select a specific brand was great, instead of the hodgepodge we have now, where 90% of the threads relate to Phonak or Costco.

I wonder how many of you guys from the old hearingaidforums website are still around. Cool that some people remember the old site

What…? you can’t run a report of joined date and the old forum usernames and recent posts to see who’s still here? I started here in March of 2017 if that counts for anything. I’m certain there are others who have been here longer.
I remember old users had to do something to become users on the new system and that you would migrate all the old information over to the new system.

The data suggests that only 348 legacy users remained active in the last year… down from 1,185 active after moving to the current forum software… Arguably most of the truly active users made the move to this platform. The old forum had been around for like a decade and had a LOT of spam and inactive accounts.

I suggest to put up a draft Home Page for the ideal hearing aid forum. It is easier for forum users to comment on a draft forum, because there is now something concrete to discuss.

As to forum structure, I suggest that the Home Page shows subforums/subsubforums that allow for easy and immediate visual navigation of the site:

• Avoid pull down menus or any other navigational means that stay hidden until you click on it, i.e. the subforums/subsubforums are always visible (static) on the Home Page
• Subforums have descriptive titles only, but no description
• Subsubforums have descriptive titles and a short 1-3 line description, but not longer
• Avoid subsubsubforums on the Home Page, limit navigation on the Home Page to the top 2 levels

The above forum structure is a quite common one for a user forum (great for users) although it does require careful design, especially if most/all info needs to be migrated.

Good luck!

Thank you for the thoughtful advice. I agree this is a good direction, and I cannot wait to have more flexibility in designing the home/landing page!

Good Luck with the new forum when it is up and running @AbramBaileyAuD… I go back to around 2011 as far as I can see Abram, but If I remember correctly 2007 comes to mind, for some unknown reason, but I believe some data was lost to a forum upgrade, way back nearer then… Not that it makes any difference, but would be nice to know what your actual “Joining date” was?… Cheers Kev

@hearingMac said:

10. Better accessibility. Adjustable font size, high contrast, dark mode, excellent keyboard navigation, reliable voice dictation, and compatibility with screen readers and live-captioning tools should be foundational on a hearing-loss forum.

There is already a setting for Dark Mode on this forum in the settings > interface group. Also has options for font size and high contrast.

@kevels55 said:

I go back to around 2011 as far as I can see Abram, but If I remember correctly 2007 comes to mind, for some unknown reason,

October 11, 2010 is your join date according to your avatar description.

To add a little information to this I joined October 5, 2009.

Thank you—I wasn’t aware those options were already available. That is good to know. My broader point was that accessibility features should remain prominent, easy to find, and fully supported in the redesigned forum.