Hylo Redesign: Product Updates
This page outlines the comprehensive redesign of Hylo launching March 2025, focusing on enhancing user experience, improving functionality, and modernizing the interface.
General User Experience Improvements
Hylo is updating the layout and interface design of the web and mobile apps to be easier to understand and navigate, more current, and more polished.
There is a new look! The Hylo interface colors are now warmer and lots of details have been updated and refined. There is also now ~dark mode~ in addition to light mode. For now, these will correspond to your device's settings (you will see the light or dark version according to your device preferences).
New chat-centered focus that puts conversations at the heart of collaboration, making it easier to communicate and coordinate with your community in real-time.
There are new navigation menus to jump between groups and views within groups.
Calendar view! The events view will use this by default, and you can switch any other view to use the calendar interface.
Search: The search algorithm is optimized for speed, and members will have the option to search globally or within a specific group.
We updated all notifications and email messages to streamline content and ensure they work smoothly.
We have made significant backend updates to improve performance, speed, and reliability across the web and mobile apps.
New Layout Orientation
We have implemented a “full-width” design on the web that removes the right-hand column and allows content to take up more space. When viewing a post, it will open in the center of the screen instead of sliding out from the right.
Your Profile is now in the upper left corner, including "Your Content"/My Menu, with notifications, direct messaging, and the Commons below.
Your Group icons appear below this in the Navigation menu and are now always visible, making it easier to jump between groups. Hovering over the menu shows you the names of your groups.
The Public area of Hylo has been renamed The Commons. This is where you can find posts and groups that have been marked as public and available for anyone to find and connect with.
Find help, important links, feedback, and support with the "?" button.
To create a post, there are now two options: Click the plus button in the bottom left corner of the screen, or start writing a chat message. Once the chat message box is open, the chat can be expanded into other post types (which come along with more meta-data like dates, topics, location, etc according to which post type it is.)
View group details by clicking the info icon in the group header.
Chat Improvements
We’re centering chat as the core Hylo experience, making the chit-chat of day to day coordination lightning fast and easy to jump in.
There is now a main "Home" chat for each group. Normally this will be the first place you land in your group, for quick and easy communication with the group members. Some groups may change the Home view to something different, perhaps the traditional Stream of posts, or the Map, and the Home view will always appear first in the new group Context menu.
The experience of adding topics to posts has changed. We no longer have a separate section dedicated to it. When you are deciding where to send your post to you will see all the chat room topics as options in the “To” field. This adds that topic to the post and makes it easy to send your post to multiple chat rooms, in multiple groups. You can still use any other topic you want in a post, by typing the # symbol followed by the keyword.
Hylo will no longer create a chat channel for every Topic. Chat rooms are now created manually by a group steward. Chat rooms are still connected to a topic and any posts that use that topic in that group will appear in the chat room if it exists.
Backend improvements will make the chat UI faster to load, scroll, and post. Hylo will also track the last post read better and make it easier to catch up on what you missed.
Chat Notifications:
When joining a new group, by default you will get a notification for each chat in the main chat room. For chats in other topics you only get notified if mentioned in them. To control your notifications, click the bell icon at the top of the chatroom to adjust settings.
We will still have a separate user setting for each group about whether to get a notification for every non-chat post in the group. This is on by default. When turned off, then the user only gets notifications for posts in chat rooms to which they have subscribed.
If a member participates in a chat for the first time, we consider that “subscribing” to the chat/topic and we turn on notifications for them for every post in that channel. Afterwards, this setting can be manually changed per chat room to mute/unsubscribe from the channel, or re-subscribe to it.
Context Menu (In-Group Nav)
Hylo is making significant changes to the lefthand menu used to navigate within groups, now called the Context Menu. It will now be fully customizable by stewards, allowing them to create a curated menu to direct members’ attention toward what matters most.
Customizable: Stewards can customize the menu right in the menu UI.
Stewards can choose which view is the default home view for the group.
Stewards can create new sections called Widgets (groupings of views) that they can name and order.
Stewards can also add and remove different widgets from the menu.
Custom Views will still be a feature, where stewards can make a view that is a collection of specific posts or a filtered set of posts. Existing Custom Views will be migrated to a “Custom Views” widget.
Stewards can create a container widget to hold specific views, chat rooms, or even an individual post that they want to highlight. This will be formatted as a list for up to 5 items, then a grid with up to 9 items.
Evolutionary: One big change here is that instead of showing all the content types (Projects, Events, etc) by default, the menu will be dynamic and only show the types of content that exist in the group.
There will be a default widget that is a menu of all the “Common” views, including a button for each content type that has been created in the group.
All common views show up here by default. They can be dragged outside of this section if desired.
A max of 9 options in this section. If there are more views in the group, they can be accessed by clicking the “All” button.
Each view will have a number indicating how many new things are in that view (dark) or how many total things are in that view (light).
Each view will have an icon to indicate the type of view.
Complete List of Widgets
Home
By default, this will be a chat room for all new groups.
The view set as Home will always appear first in the menu and cannot be reordered or removed from the menu.
To change the Home view, stewards click the home icon on whichever view they want to set as the new home.
Chats
There is a dedicated Chats widget by default, and all existing active chat rooms appear here first. After that, a steward can rearrange them in the menu as desired.
Members
The Members widget appears by default for every new group.
It shows a list of member names and avatars in order of who’s online, then moderators, then everyone.
Clicking on a member takes you to their profile, and clicking “View all members” takes you to the member directory.
Common Views
This is the dynamic view that programmatically adds different content buttons as those content types are added to the group. These are the core views Hylo offers by default such as Stream, Events, Decisions, Projects, Requests & Offers, Map, Discussions, Related Groups, and Resources.
This widget always appears by default in new groups, but can be reordered or removed.
Items in the grid can be re-ordered and removed after they appear, and wont be re-added even if more content in that category is added (they will still be accessible through the All View).
Custom Views
These match current functionality, where a steward can create a special filtered view showing either a specific collection of posts, or a filtered set of posts, with a custom name and icon.
External Links
These are set by a steward to highlight the group’s key links to other websites or services.
Setup Guide
This widget is only visible to stewards and shows what’s left to set up the group.
All View
This opens up a menu showing every single view available in your group, whether it is in the menu or not. This includes all chat rooms in the group.
Global Navigation Menu (Between-Group Nav)
The global navigation menu is changing to show group icons rather than a list of group names. It will contain the most important member settings and highlight the member’s most visited groups. It can also be sorted by members to prioritize their favorite groups.
Global Nav Menu Items (from top to bottom)
Member Avatar: Clicking their photo icon in the top left will take the member to their personal settings and My Home context.
Notifications
Direct Messages
Hylo Commons
Groups
Groups with recent activity will have a number on a grey background.
Groups with notifications for the member will have a number on a red background.
The currently open group will be highlighted in blue.
Create
Help
On mobile, the global nav will display groups on the lefthand column, and then add an additional menu at the bottom of the screen (in thumb range) that includes the Create button, member settings, DMs, and notifications.
Notification Improvements
Adjust notifications for any group by clicking the bell icon in the group header.
Improved Notification Settings & UI: Members will be able to specify their desired frequency of notifications for each group they are a part of, with options including every post, mentions & announcements only, or no posts. The default will be to be subscribed to every post and to be automatically subscribed to the #home chat channel. Options for DM notifications will stay the same = push, email, both or none. (Default = both)
We will also add the ability to receive browser notifications.
Members will be able to pause all notifications.
Redesigned & Improved Email Digest: The email digest will be streamlined to remove top links and highlight more useful information:
The number of new posts in each chat room
A couple of the latest posts from rooms you are subscribed to
One or more recent comments on posts you are a part of
Highlight chat rooms that have new comment activity (showing one or two recent posts), even if you are not a part of them
New reminders, such as: Upcoming events in the next week, proposals closing this week, requests or offers that are closing this week, and highlighting currently open requests and offers
The digest will no longer show you chats and posts you created, and will also filter out chats you have already seen.
New notifications: We will add several new notifications such as for when:
A new member joins a group you are a host of
A new member joins a group you are a member of - in app only (this will appear in the Home chat stream)
A proposal closing soon - if they have not voted
A request or offer is closing soon
There are open requests, offers from the member that may need to be closed
A member RSVPs to an event, they will get an email with the calendar invite including add-to-cal links or cal attachments, and reminders the day before and hour before.
A new welcome email will be sent to orient new Hylo members, and people who set up a group will also receive an email to guide them on their journey.
Desktop app & notifications: We will release a desktop version of Hylo that includes desktop notifications.
Updates for Stewards
We’ve streamlined the process of setting up a new group on Hylo, to make it easier to make step-by-step progress and curate a space that is right for the scale of your group.
Easily invite new members or copy an invite link from the Add Members link in the group Context Menu.
Access Group Settings by clicking the gear icon in the group header.
Welcome Page: There is a new tab in Group Settings where stewards can enter rich content for a special welcome page that is highlighted for new members. This can include information about the group’s purpose and vision, and instructions for new members to take to get oriented and activated.
As detailed above, the Context Menu is completely customizable by stewards. Click Edit Menu to curate the experience for members and create the custom sections and groupings.
Stewards now manually create Chat Rooms (by editing the Context menu).
Future Phases
Signup & Onboarding
Streamlining this process to make it faster to become a member of Hylo and discover relevant groups.
Chat rooms will show who’s in the chat room and active right now.
A “Recent Activity” widget in the Context Menu.
Steward Guide will include more in-depth information about setting the group up for success.
Stewards will be able to curate members’ access to different areas of the group based on badges.
For example, there can be private chat channels only accessible to members with a certain badge, or Tracks that only members with badges from previous Tracks can access.
There will be a default private channel for everyone with a steward role
There will be an Announcements chat room where only stewards can post but everyone has access
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