Re: GNOME user survey 2011 (v4)

[Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com>]

Hi,

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org> wrote:
> Thanks for trying to get feedback from users. This is something that is
> really hard to do. It might also be worth contacting a company that does
> this professionally to see if they can help us.
>
> I do not think you will be able to do very much with the answers to the
> questions you ask below. It's going to be a lot of work for data that is not
> useful. Let me try to explain.
>
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe contreras gmail com> wrote:
>> Here's the fourth version of the survey, only tiny minor changes, it
>> seems it's stabilized as there isn't many more comments.
>>
>> Shall we start planning the deployment? Who can get it into the site?
>> Can I have access?
>
> Where are we deploying it? How are we going to get people to take it?

Have you read the original thread?
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.desktop/45432/focus=45456

I originally suggested questionpro.com, as it was the best option I
could find. Later on Frederic Muller suggested to use limesurvey which
supposedly it's installed in GNOME servers.

As for getting people to take it, I was suggesting the usual info
distribution channels; blogs, planets, online magazines, twitter,
Google+, facebook, etc. In addition to that I suggested a new software
component that would read information from the Internet, and pop up a
notification to the user, the user would be able to disable these
notifications easily, of course. Perhaps for GNOME 3.2. But I didn't
hear a lot of encouragement for that idea.

>> How about an application that pops notifications similar to this one?
>> Would such a thing be accepted?
>
> Within GNOME? Would the distros agree to ship it?
>>
>> === 01. Which of the following images best resemble your desktop? ===
>> (image selection)
>>
>>  - GNOME 2
>>  - GNOME 3
>>  - Unity
>>  - KDE
>
> I think if we want to get average users, most of them are not going to know
> what GNOME is.

That is the purpose of this question, they don't have to know, they
just select the image that resembles what they are using.

> I love GNOME and I've been using GNOME for years and working with GNOME, and
> I still don't really know what all is GNOME on my desktop.
>
> I think the questions will have to be much more specific.

How do you make this question more specific? They are images, you just
have to select one.

>> === 02. Overall, how happy are you with GNOME? ===
>> (single choice)
>>
>>  * unhappy
>>  * not so happy
>>  * happy
>>  * very happy
>>  * completely ecstatic
>
> If people tell you they are happy or unhappy with GNOME, what are you going
> to do with that? If they are unhappy what are you going to fix?  If they are
> happy, what did they like? The color, the menus, the windows, the apps,
> ...???

Baby steps, first, let's get the results. If they are happy, great,
not much to do, if they are unhappy, well, then some further actions
after this survey might be needed.

Having said that, we might find some clues in the rest of the survey,
as this question is somewhat split into multiple groups later on, and
in the worst case scenario, there's the free-form comments.

>> === 03. Where do you run GNOME? ===
>> (multiple choice, with other)
>>
>> === 04. Which GNOME version(s) are you using? ===
>> (multiple choice, with other)
>>
>> === 05. How long have you been using GNOME? (years) ===
>> (numeric)
>
> The previous 3 questions are only useful if it will somehow help you
> understand the other answers better.

Also the previous one. Maybe people don't like GNOME 2 that much, but
they do like GNOME 3...

>> === 06. How do you compare your current GNOME version with the version
>> from one year ago? ===
>> (single choice)
>>
>>  * better
>>  * no changes
>>  * worse
>>
>>  * cannot say
>
> They aren't going to know what's GNOME versus what's the distro. And maybe
> they like the help better and the menus less. Or maybe it's missing their
> favorite feature. This is way too vague ...

The purpose is to get some sense of progress. Say, the respondents
using GNOME 2 are answering "worse" a lot, it might be worth
investigating what might have been those changes.

How would you make this question less vague?

>> === 07. Does GNOME do what you want? ===
>> (single choice)
>>
>>  * Everything
>>  * Mostly
>>  * Somewhat
>>  * Barely
>>  * Not at all
>
> If they say "not at all", what are we missing?

Again, then you might want to take further actions beyond this survey.

Most likely though, you would be able to find some correlations
between this question to other ones. Maybe it's only people with a lot
of experience with computers that would answer in such way. We would
know only after getting the results.

>> === 08. How happy are you with GNOME in regards to ==
>> (matrix)
>>
>>  Columns: unhappy / not so happy / happy / very happy / completely
>> ecstatic
>>  + ease of use
>>  + documentation
>>  + language availability
>>  + accessibility
>>  + community
>
> This gets closer but it still way too high level.

At least is something. If you have a better idea, why not share it?

>> === 09. Which other desktop environments have you used in recent years? ==
>> (multiple choice, with other)
>>
>>  + KDE
>>  + Unity
>>  + XFCE
>>  + LXDE
>>  + Enlightenment
>>
>>  + other (please specify)
>
> Are you planning on polling just the open source community? Nobody else is
> going to have any idea what these are. They would be more likely to know
> Windows and Mac. But I'm not sure that this question is useful for us to act
> on.

Right, it's missing Windows and OS X (Mac). It might be useful to
correlate the results; perhaps the people using OS X have a tendency
to like GNOME 3, and Windows people a tendency to prefer GNOME 2.
Also, if many people select these "open source" DE's, that would also
give you an idea of what kind of people are answering the survey.

>> === 10. How many years of experience do you have using computers? ===
>> (numeric)
>
> Does it matter?

Yes, again, correlation; you might find that new-comers like GNOME 3,
and old farts GNOME 2.

>> === 11. How often do you use terminal/console? ==
>> (single choice)
>>
>>  * What is that?
>>  * When I have no other option
>>  * I can't live without them
>>  * Is there anything else?
>
> All the questions after this assume a knowledge of GNOME and how our
> community works. That's fine if you are polling developers. If you are
> polling average users, then I think it's not worth asking.

We are polling both, and it's important to know how many people are
directly involved, so can figure out if there's a strong bias in those
answers, and much it would affect the totals.

Also users that try to give feedback are still users, not developers.
Specially #14, anybody can chime in there.

>> === 12. Have you contributed to the GNOME project? ===
>> (single choice)
>>
>>  * Yes
>>  * No
>>
>> === 13. Have you contacted the GNOME team? ===
>> (single choice)
>>
>>  * Yes, successfully
>>  * Yes, unsuccessfully
>>  * No, I don't know how
>>  * No, never had the need
>>
>> === 14. If you could change three things in GNOME, what would they be? ===
>> (free form)
>>
>> === 15. Do you have any comments or suggestions for the GNOME team? ===
>> (free form)

-- 
Felipe Contreras