[Strategic] User feedback or What does the community want / miss / annoy

[Steven Feldman]

Just gathering a wish list with no structure will be difficult to interpret and prioritise, particularly if we are not clear about which groups of users we are seeking to serve.

The first question for Strategic could be what purpose (and I imagine it will be several purposes) is the OSM site trying to fulfil? Explaining the project and showcasing our data, becoming a destination, soliciting donations, encouraging new mappers, supporting the active community, re-engaging the passive sign ups etc.

Perhaps we could run a short questionnaire/survey of people visiting the site to better inform our discussion before getting into the detail of what changes we should be making. 

Steven
_____________________

On 27 May 2011, at 07:17, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On 05/27/2011 06:12 AM, Kai Krueger wrote:
>> In addition to usability testing that some are currently doing, it would
>> possibly be good to gather some more statistics of what people want to
>> do with the homepage, what is currently missing and what bothers people
>> most with the current design.
> 
> Before that, it would be good to have a (attention marketing-speak) "mission statement" from which we could derive what kinds of people we want to please with our main page.
> 
> For example, I'm sure I could find a number of people who would say that our main page lacks the option to show aerial imagery (as compared to $COMMERCIAL_MAP_PROVIDER); to which our answer would clearly be "this page is intended to showcase the power of OSM maps and not that of a third-party imagery provider, so if you want aerial imagery, look elsewhere".
> 
> But this is an easy example; there will be others much less clear, and most along the well-known fault line of whether our target audience is (a) mostly mappers, (b) non-mappers whom we encourage to become mappers, or (c) the great unwashed^W^Wgeneral public.
> 
> You acknowledge that further down (very far down) in your posting when you say
> 
> > Many/most of the suggestions will likely never be
> > implemented. Either because it would take to much effort to implement
> > or because osmf might decide it is not desirable or does not fit in
> > with its strategic goals.
> 
> I just think it would be good to have well-defined strategic goals to begin with, against which these suggestions can then be measured. That would make for a clearer process.
> 
>> I would thus like to suggest to add such a feedback mechanism onto the
>> homepage for a while to get a decent feeling for what the community
>> wants from the webpage and see if any of it can be implemented.
> 
> The above paragraph contains the possible misconception that "the community" would use the feedback mechanism. It is just as likely that random visitors would; so if you do build such a mechanism, make sure to let people identify themselves ("I am a mapper/regular user/occasional visitor/first-time visitor" or something like that).
> 
>> In order for this to work, everyone has to be very clear that this would
>> be simply a big wish list with a voting system to try and understand the
>> wishes of the community.
> 
> The above paragraph contains the possible misconception that "the community" would use the feedback/voting mechanism and that we should do what "the community" wants. It is entirely possible that 65% of male respondents tell you they want more boobs on the front page; so you have to measure any responses you get against what the front page is *supposed* to do.
> 
> The front page is certainly not supposed to "please the maximum number of random people who happen to take part in a feedback/voting system". It is clear that results *must not* be taken at face value; they may be "genuine wishes from users" but they may not apply to what *we* want to achieve with the web site.
> 
> Bye
> Frederik
> 
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