Community Support Forum Redesign

Community is Santander's internal equivalent of Reddit or Quora — a place where colleagues can post edge-case questions and tap into the collective knowledge of the organisation. It lives within the i-Exchange knowledge base and has become a vital safety net: when the official process doesn't cover a situation, Community often does.

What started as a pilot had grown rapidly to over 1,000 posts a month with more business areas joining regularly. The Product Owner, Danielle, reached out after seeing the i-Exchange work and asked if I could address two growing pains: homepage load times that were getting worse as the platform scaled, and a feeling that the platform wasn't doing enough to recognise its most active contributors.

Building a team

I was still managing i-Exchange deployments in parallel, so I made a deliberate choice: rather than take this project on alone, I'd use it as an opportunity to lead. I reached out to three Community moderators — Samantha, Lee, and Bonny — and assigned each a research strand matched to their strengths.

• Samantha — People-focused and skilled at building rapport. Assigned to user interviews with contact centre and live chat colleagues.
• Lee — Analytical and technically minded. Assigned to competitor analysis, studying platforms like Reddit and ServiceNow Community.
• Bonny — Deep branch banking knowledge. Assigned to observational studies with branch staff — where she uncovered the true scale of the load time problem.

Across surveys, interviews, observational studies, and competitor analysis, the team produced a consistent picture of where Community was falling short. We came back together to share findings and consolidate them into themes.

Research findings

• Outdated content — Posts from 2021 onwards had never been removed. Older posts dominated search results, and an answer that was correct four years ago was often wrong today.
• Long load times — The homepage displayed live statistics for 20 forums simultaneously — question counts, comment counts, and last activity — loading up to 10 seconds in some cases. Bonny's observations showed colleagues giving up and moving on before the page finished loading.
• Missing recognition — The platform had gamification built in from launch: points, badges, and a leaderboard. But top contributors weren't being prominently celebrated. The leaderboard was small and easy to miss.
• Hidden menus — Key features — "My network", "My posts", "Achievements", notifications — all lived on a separate page called myExchange, not on Community itself. Users had no idea these existed.

Heuristic analysis

The homepage had too much information, poor information architecture, and didn't follow an F-shaped reading pattern. Forum groupings were vague — a "General" category isn't meaningful navigation. There were no posts visible on the homepage of a platform whose entire purpose was posts.

The "Ask a question" form had its own issues: no way to reference an i-Exchange article (despite most posts relating to one), attachments that existed but weren't discoverable, instructions that were too long and too small to read, and feedback forums labelled "Ask a question" — the wrong prompt for someone trying to give feedback.

The old post problem

Community had been active since 2021 with no content expiry in place. Posts were growing rapidly with no mechanism to retire outdated answers. The challenge was striking a balance: removing stale content without erasing genuinely useful knowledge that had stood the test of time.

The loading problem

The cause was clear: loading four years of live data for 20 forums on every single page visit. The Product Owner and moderators were attached to the data, but users weren't finding it useful. The trade-off needed to be made explicit.

The recognition problem

Gamification had been a genuine driver of engagement since launch. Colleagues competed for leaderboard positions and badge counts. But the display was too small and low-profile to motivate the behaviour it was designed to encourage. The data was all there — the problem was purely how it was surfaced.

The missing menus problem

Network, previous posts, profile, achievements, and notifications — all hidden on a separate part of the website. The forms compounded this: feedback forums prompted users to "Ask a question", which is actively wrong framing for someone trying to report an issue or leave a suggestion.

I scheduled design workshops with the team to work through each problem. A consistent theme emerged: the biggest wins didn't require building anything new. They required removing things, moving things, or showing things differently.

Post expiry — plan A and plan B

The logical solution to outdated content was automatic post expiry after a set period. We built a strong business case and submitted it to the global ServiceNow ideation forum — the same governance process I'd navigated for the i-Exchange AI search upgrade.

This time we weren't optimistic. Santander UK was the only country using Community, meaning other countries had no reason to vote for a feature that didn't benefit them. We prepared a plan B in parallel: a monthly bulk-update process to manually expire old posts, run by the moderation team. One way or another, we were going to clean up Community.

Removing the homepage data

The forum statistics table on the homepage — question counts, comment counts, last activity for 20 forums — was the primary load time culprit. Users in interviews confirmed they weren't using the data to make decisions. I made the case to the Product Owner directly: the data wasn't earning its page weight. Once the load time trade-off was clearly framed, they agreed.

Leaderboard with hourly refresh

Calculating total points for all users on every page load would have replicated the performance problem we'd just fixed. The solution: cache leaderboard data and refresh it once per hour rather than on every visit. The data was still near-real-time for users, but the cost to the system was a fraction of the original approach.

Moving the menus

The missing navigation items — My network, My posts, Achievements, notifications — already existed on myExchange. Rather than rebuild them, I lifted them directly onto the Community homepage, redesigned the UI, and removed the items that weren't adding value (Favourites stayed on myExchange; Events were removed entirely). Iconography was added to help users distinguish between options at a glance.

Form redesign

Working with the team in a focused workshop, we prioritised changes that required minimal developer effort. The key additions: an i-Exchange article lookup field so colleagues could reference the relevant process directly in their post, clearer form prompts matched to the forum type (support forums say "Ask a question"; feedback forums say "Give feedback"), simplified bulleted instructions, and a dedicated attachments section.

Load time testing

I set up a reduced version of the homepage in the test environment — without the forum data table — to measure the impact of removing it. Load times across the team averaged 2–3 seconds. A meaningful improvement, though I was cautious: test environment performance doesn't always match production, and the redesigned homepage would add new content back in. Still, it was a strong directional signal.

Old post impact

I ran a test where I removed the majority of older posts and checked five commonly searched queries. The results were noticeably more relevant with the old content cleared. This validated the expiry approach before we'd committed to a delivery method.

Form testing

A focus group on the redesigned forms found that users responded well to the clearer layout. The article reference lookup was specifically welcomed — colleagues had always wanted to link to i-Exchange processes but had no structured way to do it.

Recognition testing

We spoke to high-scoring users and to some who had been active previously but dropped off. The expanded leaderboard — particularly the per-forum breakdown that let colleagues compete within their own teams — resonated more strongly than expected. The team-level competition was something users cared about that the original design hadn't surfaced at all.

Redesigned homepage

• New hero section — A welcoming header that immediately surfaces the two primary actions: post a question and search existing content.
• Pinned posts — Moderators can promote high-value posts to the top of the homepage, ensuring the most useful content gets maximum visibility.
• Menus in the right place — My network, My posts, Achievements, and notifications moved from myExchange onto Community itself. Everything a member needs, without leaving the platform.
• Reorganised forums — The sprawling list of 20 forums replaced with clearly grouped categories, defined through card sorting exercises with users.
• Expanded leaderboard — A prominent top contributors section with per-forum breakdowns, cached on an hourly refresh to avoid reintroducing load time issues.
• F-shaped layout — Information architecture restructured to match natural reading behaviour, with the most important content in the most-scanned positions.

Redesigned post submission form

• Context-aware prompts — Support forums say "Ask a question". Feedback forums say "Give feedback". The right framing for each context.
• Article reference lookup — A search field lets colleagues link directly to the relevant i-Exchange process from within their post.
• Simplified instructions — Long paragraphs replaced with short bulleted guidance. Easier to read, easier to act on.
• Visible attachments — A dedicated section makes the attachment feature discoverable, ending the recurring complaint that it didn't exist.

Removing the live forum data table cut homepage load times from up to 10 seconds to around 3 seconds — a 50% reduction that translated directly to 97 hours saved across the operation every month. The redesigned homepage and post form brought Community visually in line with Santander's internal design system for the first time.

The expanded leaderboard and medal system were well received by the community. Colleagues who had previously been active but drifted re-engaged when they saw their contributions being properly recognised. The per-forum competition mechanic — which emerged from testing rather than the original brief — became one of the most talked-about additions.

Post expiry via the global ideation forum didn't pass, as anticipated. The bulk expiry workaround — run monthly by the moderation team — delivered a similar improvement to content relevance without requiring the global vote.

I moved on from Santander shortly after this project completed, so I don't have post-launch data beyond the initial reception. The load time saving is the hardest figure available and the one I'm most confident in.