Re: GNOME user survey 2011

[Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com>]

On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño <gpoo gnome org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-08-01 at 11:00 +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 12:49 AM, Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Aug 01, 2011 at 12:16:54AM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> >> On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 11:14 PM, Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl> wrote:
>> >> > On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 07:11:34PM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> [...]
>> >> >> === 03. How do you describe the amount of configurations available? ===
>> >> >
>> >> > I don't see the relevance of asking this. Furthermore the question is
>> >> > suggestive. Seems more to prove a point than anything else.
>> >>
>> >> I do see the relevance, as I think it has been a big point of
>> >> contention raised by many users.
>> >
>> > Something should be done with a survey. No matter the outcome of this
>> > question, you won't be able to take these results and change things.
>> >
>> > Asking if people want more configuration options goes against why
>> > options are removed. Ideally everything should happen automatically.
>> >
>> > I'm only interested in the cases where it doesn't work.
>>
>> I other words, you are saying that it doesn't matter if 100% of the
>> responders of this survey say GNOME has too few options, nothing would
>> be done? Is there *any* kind of evidence that would convince GNOME ppl
>> that users want more options? Or is it what the wishes of users are
>> completely irrelevant?
>
> First at all, you need to define a goal, what are you going to do with
> the results and what kind of actions would be needed to improve the
> results in a future survey.

No, you don't.

Having been involved in the development of the Git user survey for
years, I can tell you that there's no concrete goal, it's just to
collect information. Many question didn't seem like they would get
interesting results, but after getting the results, it turned out that
they did. But it's only _afterwards_ that you can say for sure. Sure,
some of the questions look like could be removed, since they are not
providing any value, but it's only _afterwards_ that we know that.

> That said, if you get:
> 40% users answered 'Too many options'
> 10% users answered 'just enough'
> 50% users answered 'few options'

But what if you get:
2% users answered 'Too many options'
10% users answered 'just enough'
88% users answered 'few options'

I repeat, the worst that could happen is that the results of the
question don't provide any value, so you wasted one question... big
deal. You remove it in the next one.

-- 
Felipe Contreras