Unity Discussions
A reinvigorated hub for Unity's technical community.
✶ January 2023 – July 2024
✶ User journey, User research, Wireframing, UI Design
The Impact
The Challenge
When Unity announced the sunsetting of Unity Answers, many users were frustrated, as they had relied on it as a knowledge base for troubleshooting and learning. However, the platform was struggling—moderators were leaving due to an overwhelming number of repetitive beginner questions, which led to a decline in question quality. At the same time, users were abandoning Answers because their questions were going unanswered, further reducing engagement.
To better support our community, we needed a system that not only facilitated knowledge-sharing but also addressed the limitations of Answers. Additionally, the Unity Forum was set to migrate to a new platform, providing an opportunity to build a more sustainable, scalable solution that could meet evolving user needs.
The Approach
Discover
After understanding user dynamics, we performed detailed audits of the features of Unity Answers and Unity Forum to determine what was working and where there was room for improvement. We also took a look at our own data to establish what data was critical for the migration.
Explore
We explored several options for web platforms that would fulfill the needs of our users and how our competitors approached their community platforms.
Refine
A large part of the migration efforts was to ensure brand consistency between Unity’s web platforms. We reviewed Unity’s design library and integrated components that provided flexibility and aligned with the Unity brand.
The Solution
Analyze
After interviewing users to understand what they were looking for in a new community platform, we got to working on organizing our information architecture and user flows to help us visualize a typical workflow.
Strategize
Our priority was to ensure the new platform maintained feature parity and had the capability to provide enhanced features. We also needed to set a solid foundation for the platform to evolve as it continued to grow with our users.
Facilitate
To foster high-quality content creation, we provided clear guidelines and queues to encourage ongoing activity and strengthen user interconnectedness within the platform.
Test
We tested multiple power users who were active on both Unity Answers and Unity Forum to help us understand usability issues in navigating the new platform. Additionally, we gathered feedback on potential features they would like to see as the platform grows.
Launch
By working closely with our users, community managers, and engineers, we successfully migrated data from Unity Answers and the Forums, preserving the knowledge base that our users cherished and providing a platform for ongoing support and sharing of their work.