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

[Kai Krueger]

On 05/27/2011 11:26 AM, Steve Coast wrote:
>
>
> On 5/27/2011 1:02 AM, Kai Krueger wrote:
>> On 05/27/2011 12:55 AM, SteveC wrote:
>>> Sounds like design by committee to me :-(
>> How exactly is "knowing what your users / the community wants" design 
>> by committee? How can having more information be bad in any decision 
>> process?
>
> Pretty simple - you don't get any consensus therefore the data is 
> pretty meaningless.
Getting back a diverse set of interests as a result does not mean it is 
useless. It just means you have to be cleverer in analysis and in the 
way you accommodate those needs. OpenStreetMap is all about the 
diversity of doing things with the data.  Understanding this diversity 
and dealing with it appropriately is therefore quite important.

Furthermore, just because you decided to not inquire about this 
diversity doesn't mean it isn't there. So by not knowing where there is 
consensus and where there are conflicting views is not going to get you 
any better design.
> If you get 50% of people saying there should be a big map on the front 
> page and 50% say no map. What are you supposed to do? It will just 
> randomize you.

It highlights that you have a conflict between diverse interests and 
that a good design will need to find a solution with which both can 
live. Some of these conflicts, like the one you mention, we already 
know. Others we may not yet know and thus it will help to design a 
better front page.

Figuring out a solution to this particular problem, between showing a 
big map and showing no (prominant) map but information about the 
project, will imho be one of the key issues in designing any new 
homepage. If we can't find a way to accommodate both sides 
satisfactorily, then the new design will not really be much of an 
improvement over the old one, just some random change.

Kai
>
>
>>
>> What and who does something with this information is where it could 
>> turn into "design by committee", but that is completely independent 
>> of if there is a feedback system or not.
>>
>> Kai
>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> stevecoast.com
>>>
>>> On May 26, 2011, at 21:12, Kai Krueger<kakrueger at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> as part of the osm.org frontpage reorganisation discussions, it 
>>>> seems to be important to understand better what the current 
>>>> problems are with the page and what are its the aims? This would 
>>>> then allow those implementing any changes to make better decisions 
>>>> of how to improve things.
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> One way to do this is to collect feedback from a large sample of 
>>>> users / visitors and hear what they would think would be an 
>>>> improvement to the website.
>>>>
>>>> A while back, during one of the previous iterations of "Frontpage 
>>>> design", SteveC (?) set up a user feedback system on uservoice[1] 
>>>> to collect such statistics. A number of people disliked this idea 
>>>> quite strongly, up to the point of childishly and deliberately 
>>>> posting silly suggestions to "prove" how stupid the feedback gained 
>>>> would be, but it is one way of "asking the community" and imho it 
>>>> is a lot better / more methodical than just posting such questions 
>>>> on the mailing list.
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> 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. This would include
>>>> a) that developers acknowledge that these are genuine wishes from 
>>>> users and can live with criticism of the current system
>>>> b) that users are very clear that things won't magically be 
>>>> implemented just because it is at the top of this wish list.
>>>>
>>>> Such a ranked list could help decisions of where to invest 
>>>> resources (both server / monetary and more importantly development 
>>>> time) to a maximum effect. 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. But again, as long as 
>>>> everyone acknowledges that these are no more than wishes, it can be 
>>>> a valuable statistical resource in addition to any others for 
>>>> future decisions.
>>>>
>>>> A further concern in the past has been to not wanting to rely on 
>>>> external services (which uservoice was). This could be overcome by 
>>>> running a similar service on osmf hardware. For example, one 
>>>> possibility would be to have a second instance of OSQA e.g. at 
>>>> feedback.osm.org.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts (and flames ;-))?
>>>>
>>>> Kai
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [1] http://osm.uservoice.com/forums/41047-general
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>
>>