Re: Idea for getting user feedback

[YetZero <yetzero gmail com>]

Hi list

This is my second or third-so post to the list, I've been reading the
stuff that goes through here for a while. Disclaimer: First of all, I
know absolutely nothing of marketing. Secondly, I know nothing about
programming. I'm just a 19 yo designer and a happy user of Gnome with
some feedback for the list.

I second what John says, there should be a simpler way to get the
feedback, and most important, trying to convince users on going there.
I know it's the same you've been discussing all the time, but I really
think that's one thing we should focus on.

Another thing, as a reader of the mailing list, I don't know what to
do to help. For example, I cannot get a clear objective to do for
helping the cause. It would be easy to say "we need you to do this"
and so one can feel useful and get more involved. Right now I'm
sitting here reading your suggestions and trying to figure out what to
do.

Finally, I also think the gnome.org website MUST be revamped. Totally.
After all it's the place where we'll point our potential future users,
right? Right now as a future user I get into the main site of this
"gnome thing", and find out that is totally boring, full of text not
useful to me (why should I be encouraged to be a donor if I haven't
even tried the product?), and graphically null (you know, we're going
for simple and that's nice, but it has to have some design to be
pleasing). There aren't even screenshots in there! And where do I find
how to get this stuff? Mailing lists? Are those a real thing non-geek
people use?

Of course I exaggerated a bit in that case. But I really think it's
one of the first low-level things we can do to help marketing or at
least to spread the word. My suggestion for the site revamp has this:

    - A fool-proof explanation of what Gnome is, and why it's so
great, right there, in the main page. And an equally fool-proof guide
on how to get Gnome on your computer (links to distributions, live
cds, etc.), and that has to be as far as two clicks away.
    - Forget the old "geek" site. No technical information (that can
be "hidden" in a deeper page), just the things a non-geek user would
find useful.
    - Graphically pleasing. I mean, simple is better, not a lot of
text, a lot of images, without going bloated.
    - Screenshots. If we want the users to get excited about Gnome, we
won't do it by words, we need to show them "the real thing". Hopefully
those screenshots will show the best looking configurations, nice
wallpapers, nice-looking themes, good-looking icons, and the user has
to be informed that most of the themes are drag and drop installed
(now that's a not-so-important feature, but it's a really "cool" thing
to the end user).

And about the win32 versions of Gnome apps, we should try somehow to
get those themes to work there too. Maybe I'm going too far, but we
should try to make the user "see" the difference between a pure and
beautiful Gnome app in contrast to his old fashioned boring grey
windows look :P

Well, that was my feedback, from a teenage designer point of view.
Thanks for your time!

2005/12/11, John Williams <john williams lists gmail com>:
> Hi team,
>
> I would like to get your feedback on a suggestion for a simple way to
> address our need for user feedback.
>
> Let us create the site feedback.gnome.org, and make it a base for all
> our customer intelligence gathering.
>
> A top-level link would be to bugzilla.gnome.org, for straight bug
> reporting (perhaps providing a few pre-prepared queries?).
>
> But now, what would be the other top-level links?  Do we seriously think
> that
>
> http://live.gnome.org/Suggestions
>
> http://live.gnome.org/Feedback
>
> http://live.gnome.org/UserFeedback
>
> http://live.gnome.org/DeveloperFeedback
>
> would do the trick?
>
> I don't.  Of course, if we had a better system, we would also need a
> team to monitor and ACT ON the incoming intelligence.  If this idea is
> implemented I will volunteer to be on the team.  I see it as essentially
> a triaging task.
>
> I think we also need to have
>
> http://feedback.gnome.org/UserSurvey
>
> where people can register as a GNOME user, tell us about themselves,
> answer a few (few!) well-chosen questions and have a chance to opt in to
> receiving further questions, perhaps by email.
>
> I will try to mock up the HTML for what I have in mind, but I have no
> host.  Could anyone provide a space on their WWW server for a test page?
>
> A token incentive would be helpful.  How much would it cost, in terms of
> both money and effort to provide registered users with a
> username gnome org mail alias?  I don't mean an actual email account,
> just a way of forwarding to their other email adress(es).  I'm not sure
> if this is the best idea for incentivising potential respondents.  It
> would sure help the feeling of belonging to a community though!
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
>
>
> --
> marketing-list mailing list
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> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list


--
-Luis Santander