Turning a 25-year-old forum thread into a place for everyone on the same sailing.
A Roll Call is a Cruise Critic tradition. People booked on the same ship and date meet before they sail. The tradition lived in a classic forum for about 25 years, and it is one of the most loved parts of the site. I led the redesign into a dedicated community product.
Finding your Roll Call took several steps:
Inside a thread, hundreds of posts covered many topics. New members could not tell what mattered. Returning members could not tell what had changed.
The data showed the same problem from two sides:
The constraint that shaped everything: keep what people loved — real people and real moderation — while making it much easier to find your sailing and catch up.
Two recordings of the same flow, side by side. The left one shows the current experience. The right one shows the updated version.
This prototype was built from Figma screens in Claude. It was populated and usable in under 10 minutes.
Decision A finder that needs only cruise line, ship, and date.
Options Keep forum browsing as the main path.
Why Three picks beat three levels of forum navigation. Browsing stays as a secondary path, and signed-in members see the Roll Calls they follow with new-activity badges.
Decision Each sailing gets its own page: ship hero, countdown, Follow action, and tabs for Conversations, Events, Port Info, My Cruise Planner, Ship Info, and Files.
Options One long thread per sailing.
Why A page gives each sailing its own information architecture. A “Since your last visit” recap lists new posts, events, and mentions, so returning members catch up without scrolling a thread.
Decision A feed with a composer at the top, sort controls, tag filters, inline search, reactions, and nested replies.
Options Modernize the thread UI but keep it one linear thread.
Why Hundreds of mixed-topic posts buried what mattered. A feed lets people filter by what they care about, like a port name. Member events get Going, Interested, and Not going responses.
Decision Long posts get an AI summary of what people are saying. A “What's new” tour introduces the redesign to long-time members.
Options No AI, or AI-first.
Why Summaries cut catch-up time without replacing the real people and real moderation the community loves. The tour respects 25 years of habit.
Designed for desktop and mobile. Signed-out and signed-in states were considered from the start.
I ran a usability study with dscout on desktop and on mobile. Five people took the desktop study and six took the mobile study. The groups are small, so I read these results as direction, not proof.
Overall experience, 1 to 7 (7 = very satisfied)
Average scores, 1 to 7
Very confident this is where to find my sailing group
Facebook groups got the most picks, with 5 on desktop and 5 on mobile. Reddit came next, with 2 picks on desktop and 4 on mobile. These were multi-select answers, so testers could pick more than one.
“This analysis is really very helpful! Many of the problems we are trying to solve were identified here — great validation that we are on the right path.”