Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on some new visuals for the site that address some long-standing criticisms.

First, the new navigation. We’ll be removing the ‘You, Create, Activity’ box on the left hand side and moving its menus up into the main navigation…which goes a little something like this:

You’ll notice two new tabs on the main navigation line – Hubs (where you can select London, Boston or one of our future hubs), and You, which contains most of the options (snapshot, profile, etc.) previously accessible through the box in the left column.

Each navigation element then opens a new set of option. For example, under blogs you will be able to browse the most recent posts, recent comments, popular blogs and tags.

By doing this, we’re removing the ‘London’ and ‘Boston’ tabs (now filed under Hubs). Feedback suggested that these tabs looked out of place to anyone not interested in our hub cities.

By removing the navigation box from the left margin, we also have the opportunity to remedy another common bugbear—that the main content area is too narrow. You’ll now have more space to play with in the forums, blogs and other areas. Here’s a sample blog homepage:

We’ll also be freshening up the local hub pages and adding a few new pages here and there. The changes should arrive in the next few weeks. Exciting times!