Citation & Comment Design Feedback

    Tags:

    There's confusion around the design where citations and comment counts are shown as separate elements.

    Additional UX feedback:

      One icon (citation) is fixed, the other (comments) only appears on hover — this inconsistency should be resolved. Both should behave consistently.

      If there's a count, it should be visible without hover.

      Highlighting marks for comments are preferred directly on the text.

      Blocks with comments could have a soft background to visually indicate interactivity (without being too loud).

      Visually, ranges and full-block comments should look the same to avoid user confusion.

      1

      This logic also applies to targets and embeds (especially range-based ones).

      Different colors might be used to distinguish between types (comments, citations, embeds).

    This feedback indicates a need to rethink the interaction and visual language to reduce cognitive load and improve clarity.

    Feedback

    1

      Small Prototype for a new interaction on blocks inside a document

      I created a small prototype about how we can fix the comments and citations per block. This video only shows how the bubbles at the block level can work. I also believe that we should add the range comment annotations directly into the block, so they are visible. and when a user clicks on one annotation we can highlight it in the accessory panel. we might get into some issues with overlapping ranges for this interaction (click or hover to show the annotation).

      3 August 2025

    Lightning Demos