Re: roadmap status update/update request

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

On Maw, 2005-03-08 at 17:20, Damon Chaplin wrote:
> Maybe a simple feedback questionnaire on gnome.org would be a start
> (avoiding the issue of voting), e.g.
> 
>    1) Are you (a) a Home/Office User
>               (b) an Advanced GNOME User
>               (c) a Site Administrator

You need to ask questions that don't imply exclusive options that are
not - eg I'm an advanced home gnome user ;) If someone wants to try and
build such a questionnaire I'll be glad to help and interested in the
results (although the foundation has real marketing people working for
it who can help a lot lot more and know a lot more about the topic!)

> If anyone does manage to do some field research they could post the
> results here as well.

I'm currently doing some work on this for my MBA. It's a bit early to
try and summarise or to draw conclusions but 

1.	Havoc warned me technical and non-technical users would give totally
different answers. Havoc was right. Havoc was *very* right.

2.	For the general case of abstract arm-waving priorities the FLOSS
studies in the EU have answers about current levels (as of the survey)
of desktop usage and priorities for open source *as a whole* not just
desktop. There is ongoing research into the desktop. For skill levels
there is data for UK education I don't know about other market areas.
FLOSS also asked skill level questions to gauge user concern in that
area. There are some other data sources and surveys out there which may
help.

3.	On the good side I repeatedly heard the exact same comment "We were
amazed how far it had come"

4.	Number one reason for using KDE in business/schools is the lockdown

5.	Most business "end users" don't know what a Gnome is. Some have the
idea that Gnome is Red Hat and KDE is Novell's product but the level of
confusion (and not-caring I guess) is high. If you ask them about
compatibility they talk about the fact yast is different to
system-config-foo not the desktop.

#5 is a problem because my original plan was to ask questions not
dissimilar to the ones you suggested but the users seem not to know
enough about it, or to answer questions like "how did you decide to use
desktop X". My supervisor has fed me a book to read on that aspect...
 
Now I must emphasize I'm still filling in interviews with certain groups
of user so there is a bias to the EU and to larger businesses in the
people I have talked to so far. That may matter a great deal in terms of
why things like lockdown come up high.

I'd be interested in comparing notes with anyone doing similar work.

Alan