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I am planning to launch a new Forum/Chat app for Android/iPhone. The app requires users to specify a category before creating a new thread.

How do I show and allow users to choose the thread category without losing the focus on writing the new thread?

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Could you advise how many categories are involved? Is it a small number, like 5, or a great many like 50? Also, will threads be split into different collections based on the assigned category, or could a given forum contain many threads with differing categories? –  Erics Apr 1 '12 at 11:27
"Most used method" isn't a very helpful (or easily measurable) metric. Could you edit your question to be more like "Is there a convention for how to do this" rather than "how do most people do X". –  Ben Brocka Apr 1 '12 at 14:58

1 Answer 1

Can you make it part of the thread creation workflow instead of making it feel like an extra step? For example, if they have already navigated to an area or searched for a topic before creating the new thread, you can guess that the new thread is about the same topic...

For a more traditional approach, take a look at how pintrest does new board creation (though IMHO their list is too long):

Pintrest New Board creation with category selection

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