uservoice - is it too much of a hassle?

xrouge

uservoice is the official way of requesting a feature and it allows other users to vote for it.

As a developer myself I understand the importance of getting user feedback and prioritizing work, however some (many?) users find too much of a hassle to register for yet-another-site and deal with the voting. How do you find it?

My suggestion:

• allow only registered smugmug members to submit feature requests and vote. If you're browsing dgrin, or uservoice, but are not a member, then you shouldn't have an impact. If your suggestion is what's keeping you from becoming a member, then start with a free/trial account. This will reduce trolling.
• allow users to submit their suggestion to the 'Feedback' thread on this forum. We already have this board in place - why bother with another one, uservoice? I would even try to merge the wiki system with this board as a single system "to rule them all" and make searching easier.
• add a "Vote" button to thread messages. This way smugmug get assess the importance of the issues. Similar to "Poll", but only "Yes/No".

xrouge

uservoice - is it too much of a hassle?
uservoice is the official way of requesting a feature and it allows other users to vote for it. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=125760 As a developer myself I understand the importance of getting user feedback and prioritizing work, however some (many?) users find too much of a hassle to register for yet-another-site and deal with the voting. How do you find it? My suggestion: * allow only registered smugmug members to submit feature requests and vote. If you're browsing dgrin, or uservoice, but are not a member, then you shouldn't have an impact. If your suggestion is what's keeping you from becoming a member, then start with a free/trial account. This will reduce trolling. * allow users to submit their suggestion to the 'Feedback' thread on this forum. We already have this board in place - why bother with another one, uservoice? I would even try to merge the wiki system with this board as a single system "to rule them all" and make searching easier. * add a "Vote" button to thread messages. This way smugmug get assess the importance of the issues.

jfriend

FYI, you don't have to register for something else. It's not easy to see how to do it, but you can use openID to login to userVoice with your existing Smugmug login.

I personally find it disappointing that there's no possibility of discussion about a new feature on uservoice.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

FYI, you don't have to register for something else. It's not easy to see how to do it, but you can use openID to login to userVoice with your existing Smugmug login.

I personally find it disappointing that there's no possibility of discussion about a new feature on uservoice.

Ironically, adding UserVoice was a feature request by mulitiple customers

I'm sorry you are disappointed in this. We're trying very hard to have our ears open!

By the way, you can comment, discuss, more:

Andy

xrouge wrote:

uservoice is the official way of requesting a feature and it allows other users to vote for it. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=125760 As a developer myself I understand the importance of getting user feedback and prioritizing work, however some (many?) users find too much of a hassle to register for yet-another-site and deal with the voting. How do you find it? My suggestion: * allow only registered smugmug members to submit feature requests and vote. If you're browsing dgrin, or uservoice, but are not a member, then you shouldn't have an impact. If your suggestion is what's keeping you from becoming a member, then start with a free/trial account. This will reduce trolling. * allow users to submit their suggestion to the 'Feedback' thread on this forum. We already have this board in place - why bother with another one, uservoice? I would even try to merge the wiki system with this board as a single system "to rule them all" and make searching easier. * add a "Vote" button to thread messages. This way smugmug get assess the importance of the issues.

Hi, I'm very sorry you are unhappy with our feedback forum! We've been getting lots of positive comments, not any negatives till now - thanks for them, we really do want to hear all sides.

This was an easy to implement solution that helps us see the most-requested stuff really easily. Thanks for your great feedback, I love it and am really grateful you posted!

jfriend

Andy wrote:

Ironically, adding UserVoice was a feature request by mulitiple customers

I'm sorry you are disappointed in this. We're trying very hard to have our ears open!

By the way, you can comment, discuss, more:

I wasn't one who asked for it. I preferred the feature request sub-forum because we can have real discussions about features there.

I know you can comment (I've left some comments), but you can't really have a discussion, you can't know when there are other comments, it's not a piece of discussion software.

Besides, at userVoice, there is ZERO reason to go there after you've submitted your votes. You only get a fixed number of votes and once they're placed, there's nothing else to do. No way to keep an existing customer engaged at giving you feature feedback.

Also, many useful feature requests are not things that ever would win a popularity contest. Popularity contests will only be won by very large things that appeal to a lot of people. You've essentially shut off any vehicle for useful smaller things to be posted and discussed - things that might appeal to a wide range of folks or might help you reach a new set of customers, but would never garner the limited votes from the existing user base. So, as it is, I see userVoice as only useful as a voting mechanism among the top 10 features.

If you want to use it for getting an idea for how your customers rank the largest features, that's fine, but you've shut off the good place for a whole lot of other feature request feedback that could be useful to you, but would never win a global popularity contest.

Allen

When I first went there I could not find any way to add a new request.
Nothing states you have to search first. I eventually stumbled upon it.
I can see a lot of visitors not doing this and going away in disgust. I
almost did.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

If you want to use it for getting an idea for how your customers rank the largest features, that's fine, but you've shut off the good place for a whole lot of other feature request feedback that could be useful to you, but would never win a global popularity contest.

We'll make sure folks know that they can still email us (we get 100s of FRs a week, at our help desk from our customers. Many, many (way the majority) will never darken a forum.

We love your feedback and I know darn well you'll post in the Support forum. Go fo it!

Andy

Allen wrote:

When I first went there I could not find any way to add a new request.
Nothing states you have to search first. I eventually stumbled upon it.
I can see a lot of visitors not doing this and going away in disgust. I
almost did.

, we're getting a lot of posts

Thanks for staying with it!

Andy

jfriend wrote:

I wasn't one who asked for it. I preferred the feature request sub-forum because we can have real discussions about features there.

By the way, you're a tough guy to please. I'm gonna try and please you though!

Andy

Andy wrote:

By the way, you're a tough guy to please. I'm gonna try and please you though!

Let's continue to have 'em, I edited my post to make sure folks know that they can still post in the Support Forum. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=125760

No, I don't want to reopen the FR forum, John, not right now, I already work 14-16 hours a day and that may break me

Keep the feedback comin!

jfriend

Andy wrote:

Let's continue to have 'em, I edited my post to make sure folks know that they can still post in the Support Forum. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=125760

No, I don't want to reopen the FR forum, John, not right now, I already work 14-16 hours a day and that may break me

Keep the feedback comin!

Yeah, I know I'm tough to please. I have very high standards for software and that has served me well in my software career. Though I'm sometimes a pain, hopefully it is sometimes worth it.

I loved the feature requests sub-forum. I thought it was a great idea when you opened it. I hated the one giant feature requests thread because it was impossible to follow a discussion about a single issue.

There was a low volume of threads in the FR request forum and it was a nice efficient place to keep things from getting lost in the noise of all the other support issues. And, I would have thought it was an efficient way for non-support folks at Smugmug to drop in and see what's being requested. I'm surprised it's more work for you, but that's your call.

darryl

Aw, I missed this thread? I'm the one who suggested and pushed for the FR and Bug Report sub-forums precisely because of the reasons John mentioned (too hard to follow a given FR/Bug through those ridiculously long FR/Bug Report threads).

Anyways, I have some small beefs with Uservoice (namely no frigging time/datestamps for when issues are created or resolved, and their insistence on using stupid Facebook-like "3 months ago" time/datestamps for the comments. Totally stupid. It's feature-requests, not status updates.

But whatever. If it's easier for Andy, fine.

My big beef for the last oh... 2-3 weeks: OpenID authentication is broken. I didn't want to create yet another account, and this thread told me I could use my SmugMug account by selecting OpenID and entering http://darryl.smugmug.com/ -- so I did, and then voted on and filed FRs.

And for 2-3 weeks now I've been unable to respond to comments, change votes, or file new FRs. This sucks, since I already have an existing account.

I suppose I could create yet another account and then double-up on my existing votes. (OH yeah, another flaw of the whole "voting" system.) But ugh. Can't you guys fix the OpenID thing?

Thanks.

Andy

darryl wrote:

Can't you guys fix the OpenID thing?

Thanks.

workin' on it.

TalkieT

Speaking of uservoice... Two of the Top 3 requested features (that aren't already planned or started) are a European Print Lab and International currency support.

Given that these (through the OFFICIAL feature request system) are now 2 of the most important features to your customers - can we expect a softening of the US Centric stance?

Cheers - Neil G

Andy

TalkieT wrote:

Speaking of uservoice... Two of the Top 3 requested features (that aren't already planned or started) are a European Print Lab and International currency support.

Given that these (through the OFFICIAL feature request system) are now 2 of the most important features to your customers - can we expect a softening of the US Centric stance?

Cheers - Neil G

We're not US centric we've got a looong list of feature requests to get to. And we get more feature requests by email than from Uservoice.

We'd love to have international currency. One day I hope we get there.

Thank you Neil!

Malte

Andy wrote:

We'll make sure folks know that they can still email us (we get 100s of FRs a week, at our help desk from our customers. Many, many (way the majority) will never darken a forum.

We love your feedback and I know darn well you'll post in the Support forum. Go fo it!

So is it OK to email feature requests but not post them on Dgrin? If someone emails a feature request, will you not post it to Uservoice? If Uservoice isn't the place to post them then it's a skewed view of whats really requested.

Malte

Andy

Malte wrote:

So is it OK to email feature requests but not post them on Dgrin? If someone emails a feature request, will you not post it to Uservoice? If Uservoice isn't the place to post them then it's a skewed view of whats really requested.

Malte

Hi Malte, we have hundreds of thousands of customers, and not all of them use Uservoice.

Many folks will write the help desk with a question - and add "oh by the way, can you .... "

Or they'll simply write us with their feature requests.

We won't turn anyone away, and we're trying to encourage more use of the uservoice system.

SamirD

xrouge wrote:

My suggestion:

• allow only registered smugmug members to submit feature requests and vote. If you're browsing dgrin, or uservoice, but are not a member, then you shouldn't have an impact. If your suggestion is what's keeping you from becoming a member, then start with a free/trial account. This will reduce trolling.

I like this idea.

xrouge wrote:

• allow users to submit their suggestion to the 'Feedback' thread on this forum. We already have this board in place - why bother with another one, uservoice? I would even try to merge the wiki system with this board as a single system "to rule them all" and make searching easier.

Andy's already said why the FR forum is closed, but I agree with you for the discussion capability. Merging the wiki data with this forum would be A LOT of work and a db admin's nightmare.

xrouge wrote:

• add a "Vote" button to thread messages. This way smugmug get assess the importance of the issues. Similar to "Poll", but only "Yes/No".

There is no such modification readily available for vbulletin (the software that runs the forum). So it would require programming something from scratch, stretching the already thin layer of SM programmers.

However, this being said, the built-in poll capability of vbulletin can add a poll to the top of a thread. I believe one can even be added by an admin once a thread has been created. But the problem with this goes back to your first point--everybody would have the ability to vote, giving fuzzy data.

FrankC

Andy wrote:

We're not US centric

Sorry Andy - oh come on - couldn't let that one go by.

BTW - you are perfectly entitled to be US-centric if that's your chosen business model and at the moment that's what you are
Obviously this might change in the future.

Examples of why I think so, off the top of my head :

US Currency only
US checks only (note spelling !)
US spelling
US Labs only
US character set
SMUG meets in US only

Also - I have no idea but I guess the majority of your members (and even more of your PRO members) are US-based.

Nothing wrong with any of that - but please don't deny the US-centricity......

Andy

FrankC wrote:

Sorry Andy - oh come on - couldn't let that one go by.

I just meant that we're not intentionally ignoring the feature requests. We have a lot of international customers and we love you all.