Welcome to the new DailyChallenge.org! If you’re an active Do Gooder, you may have noticed that we went live with what we’re calling Beta 2.0 of Daily Challenge last Wednesday morning. We’re still rolling out a number of updates over the next few days, but I wanted to take some time to walk you through some of the biggest changes.

So, what’s new with DailyChallenge.org? In short, everything. We’ve spent the last five months examining user preferences and listening to community feedback. We even conducted a series of usability tests in late January. The results were clear: everyone jived with the concept of doing random acts of kindness but desperately needed an easier way to get it done. So, we overhauled the entire site and essentially built it again from the ground up. Only this time, we were able to apply all the lessons we had learned to help make Daily Challenge more about you.

Let’s take a short tour through some of the major changes.

The Homepage

The new Daily Challenge homepage is now dedicated to the challenges that are most relevant to you. Here you’ll find the challenge of the day as well a list of the most active challenges. We’ve had an enormously positive response on our most active challenges list ever since we debuted it in January so we wanted to put emphasis on that. You can still browse all challenges by visiting the Challenges page.

1. Everything “you”. This strip of dark blue at the top of the site’s body is your space. It’s where you’ll find convenient links to your profile, your friends list, and your account settings.
2. Submit new challenges from anywhere. We wanted to make challenging the community even easier for you, so we’ve added a Submit New Challenge button at the top of every page.
3. Do Gooder Statistics. Keep track of how you’re doing by keeping an eye on your Do Gooder statistics. A newly introduced metric is the number of Actions Inspired, which is simply a measure of how many actions your submitted challenges have attracted. In other words, this number represents the impact you’ve made.
4. Related challenges/discussions/tips. You’ll find that as you navigate through the site, the sidebar will be filled with related information such as related challenges, discussions and tips.
5. Challenges. Challenges have a whole new look and a whole new way to interact with them. For example, you should find that challenges you’ve interacted with (i.e. have taken action on) are now highlighted in blue. This new visual cue will let you determine at a glance what challenges you have and haven’t touched. See below for more on the new look and feel of challenges.

Challenges

Challenges were rethought, redeveloped and redesigned to make it easier for you to be a Do Gooder on Daily Challenge. For starters, we’ve decided to compress the challenge workflow from the 3-phase Accept-Pending-Complete model to a nice and simple 1-click Take Action model. Taking action is your way of committing to the challenge and vowing that you will do it. See below for more new goodies.

The Challenge Page

1. The challenge. See below for a deeper breakdown of the new challenge interface.
2. Submit New Challenge. You’ll find that each section’s main actions (i.e. submit a new challenge, start a new discussion, or add a user as a friend), can be found in this location.
3. Who’s Taken Action. Want to see who else shares similar views as you? You can see a list of other Do Gooders who have taken action on this challenge.
4. Latest Challenges. Never lose sight of the latest challenges submitted to the community.
5. Comments. Love the challenge? Hate the challenge? Have a story to share? Comments are the perfect place to leave your 2 cents.

The new Challenge interface

All the same information you’re used to seeing for challenges, but reorganized for better usability.

1. Action count. Challenges are now measured in Actions - the total number of actions that have been taken on this challenge.
2. The challenger.
3. The challenge.
4. Take Action! This is the biggest change we’ve made to challenges; Instead of accepting and completing challenges, you simply need to Take Action now (by clicking the orange button).
5. Action Taken. We use visual cues to help you quickly identify challenges you’ve already taken action on. These challenges are highlighted in blue with Action Taken indicated at the bottom right.
6. Remove this challenge. Accidentally took action on a challenge you didn’t mean to? Click this link to remove your logged actions.
7. How many times have you taken action? This newly added feature lets you indicate how many times you’ve taken action on a challenge (up to 10 times). Perfect for those challenges you enjoy doing periodically.

User Profiles

User profiles have been cleaned up a great deal to improve readability and interaction. Have a look at what’s new.

1. About the user. In this box you’ll find a summary of who the user is - About, Why I Joined, and Favourite Quote - as well as a photo of the user.
2. Send a Message. If you are friends with the user, and the user has enabled messaging, you will be able to send him/her a message with this button. Otherwise, you will find a link to add the user as a friend.
3. Do Gooder History & Profile. More information about this particular user.
4. Friends of friends. Browse friends of friends to connect with even more Do Gooders!
5. Challenges Taken & Submitted. Browse through the list of challenges that the user has taken action on or has submitted.

Is that all?

Absolutely not. Like I said, we rebuilt the new DailyChallenge.org from the ground up so we had the fortunate opportunity to throw a lot more goodies into the mix! Under the hood is a much more robust platform and scalable architecture and a footprint that is less than half the size of the original site - all of which contributes to a site that loads more than two times faster than before!

But none of that matters as much as helping you, the Do Gooder, make the impact you want as easily as possible. We think we’ve taken a huge leap forward toward accomplishing this goal, but what do you think?