There needs to be clear breaks between sections like

• Past hour

• Yesterday

• Earlier

In addition to de-emphasizing system activity ( so and so joined or started following or reacted etc. ) (pushing these to the background

Looking at this again it seems the activity stream needs content boxes something that can be controlled in the theme editor. Scrolling thru it every thing is at the same z axis.

I would love some more spearation between posts / replies & system activity. I find it difficult to read

17 hours ago, Ocean West said:

Looking at this again it seems the activity stream needs content boxes something that can be controlled in the theme editor. Scrolling thru it every thing is at the same z axis.

I would love some more spearation between posts / replies & system activity. I find it difficult to read

Definitely, stripping things down so much makes it harder on the eyes

Edited August 13Aug 13 by marklcfc

If we’re talking about the general design of the Activity feed page, I agree that it feels too cluttered and confusing. I suggested the following on the Alpha Club a week or so ago, will repost here for fits and giggles:

I also wanted to add that the Activity Stream could do with a huge redesign and update, it feels very Web 2.0 right now with the big box covering all the updates and everything. There's an opportunity to mimic popular social media platforms with the approach here (and I suggest this only because that is now a design language that most mobile/power users are used to these days - in comparison, the current Activity Stream looks cluttered, complex and confusing).

Also, I vote to change the language of "posted a post in a topic)" to just "replied to a topic". Or change the singular of "post" to "reply". "Posted a post" is just... weird. 🙂 

(Decided to directly link to an image from the main Invision site because the image compression settings on this preview site was messing with the IQ of the uploaded version of the above image)

Key points:

• Remove the 'timeline' bar on the left, not needed.

• Space out the entries, give them air to breathe.

• Focus on the user, not the content node.

• Allow for all content to be expanded/read on activity feed, with link to content if user wishes.

• Allow for reactions/other usual content edit features to be made available via activity feed.

• Links/attached images etc should go under the content copy, like on social media platforms.

This could probably be tarted up a bit to look even better (and there are other fundamental issues with Activity Stream in terms of UX, such as creating feeds and all the overwhelming buttons and options - too complex and confusing, but I'm out of time so will talk about it later), but I think this would be a world ahead of what we have now. 🙂 

I hacked together a design in V4 for Activity Stream that I think looks pretty good on Mobile, figured I'd share an example screenshot in case it's interesting.