Re: Re: [libreoffice-design] User Research

Hi Björn,

cool to have you back :-) The topic "user research" gets a bit more
interesting, since things evolve in a positive direction with the
development. Thus, it would be good to know more about our userbase.

And, even from the marketing perspective, it seems to fit very well: 
      * TDF is open and transparent 
      * The LibreOffice community cares about end-users
      * Everybody can easily contribute *g*

Am Mittwoch, den 15.06.2011, 19:17 +0200 schrieb Björn Balazs:
> The main purpose on the other hand is to gain knowledge about how to
> install a 
> communication channel to the users. Thus I would like to focus the
> discussion 
> at the moment on how to reach users and motivate them to participate
> in such 
> studies.
>
> If this is established well, we will be able to do frequent surveys in
> order 
> to do real user-centric design. 

I thought a bit about the communication channels - whether e.g. the
upcoming Extension Website might be worth considering, or even adding
the link to selected press releases. But at the end, all these channels
might miss the "real" user base.

Although it might look scary (now), but how about adding a link from
within LibreOffice to call an external survey? We already had such
requests by users in the past - people sometimes really want to provide
feedback. They don't want to use the issue tracker, but they may want to
fill out a questionnaire.

It's not perfect (since feedback might be provided if things do not work
properly in this very moment of the user's live), but I think it is the
only way to get reasonable feedback "from the field".

How does this sound?

Personally, I think the coding/translation is manageable and worth the
effort. And - if you agree - I will ask for some help from the
development.

Until then, we have to figure out a lot of details, e.g.:
      * Who is responsible for / who owns the (potentially sensible)
        user data?
      * How can we make sure the survey is accessible during the whole
        lifecycle of this LibreOffice version? (Proposal: generic link
        to TDF, forward to most recent survey)
      * Do we want to get selected feedback - e.g. "highly stable"
        versions, or just "beta" versions?
      * Where to place the feedback link? (Proposal: Help menu, Start
        Center)
      * Are people allowed to provide feedback several times?
      * How can we make sure that we can compare feedback caused by
        different versions of LibreOffice (if we ask product specific
        questions)?
      * How do we make sure that people don't want to report bugs via
        this feedback channel? (Proposal: Provide link to issue
        tracker ...)
      * Is there a need to offer localized / translated versions of the
        survey? (worked very well within OOo)
      * Can we handle the server load if we get lots of feedback?
      * How to achieve "company compatibility"? (e.g. disabling of
        feedback actions)
      * ... (1000 additional items) ...

Lots of questions - but these can be answered, or its even possible to
start with a "light" version to gather experience whether it works.
Fortunately, we have a predictable release schedule ...

By the way, the OOo data [1] is still online - so there might be a
chance for some comparison or even some sanity check on our data.

Cheers,
Christoph


PS: Send some greetings to Isabel, please :-)

[1] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Phase_1


-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+help@global.libreoffice.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted