I don’t know why but I don’t tend to blog when I’m on the road. I think when I’m away I want to be away … still I like it when others blog when they are travelling so its not very give and take with me ;) Suffice it to say that I had a blast.
I’m back from jaunting around Europe and now down in DC at the Webshop , which is a week long Symposium for PhD students in Internet Studies. So far we’ve done a lot about the web-based stats program whose dissemination is funding this shin-ding, but today we’re getting into Online Communities with Jenny Preece which is more up my alley.
There are five of us here from Syracuse which is by far the largest contingent! I blame Rebecca, Christina and the late night drinks on Monday for this:
Every bug report or moment of user frustration is a business opportunity
I feel a manifesto coming on. Instead of charging large amounts up-front for software that simply cannot anticipate all its uses and ‘requirements’ there needs to be a shift to continuous collaborative design which is one thing that the open source community does well.
Feedback built into the software that allows the developers to see how their users are using it and what bugs and frustrations they experience. Now we have talkback and “Report this XP fuckup to microsoft” but no one uses them. On the other hand in the open source community the bug-tracking systems get pretty high usage. The motivation issue is clear: people don’t “report bugs” (ie provide design input) when they have paid for the software, instead the “report bug” feature just pisses them off. People will also provide reports when they are linked to the feedback and the process of solving the bug/adding the feature, tweaking the design.
So low upfront costs combined with continuous design is a lesson for all software development from the open source community. When you `requirements engineer’ and sell at high-upfront costs—-you lie to your users by pretending you are omniscient and have predicted all uses and potential problems. Any problems they experience are your fault. When you start slowly and develop rapidly in tune with user input you frame every problem as an opportunity for your business.
This is something that translates easily to proprietary development. The Launchbar developer is working like this with his public betas.
Posted by james at June 8, 2004 10:29 AM | TrackBackI think you are talking out of your bum on this one. First of all i doubt you have any real usage stats about the bug reporting feature in ms or apple products. Gnome has a similar bug reporting functionality do you have stats for that one?
In the end I think the big flaw in your theory is that you are assuming that the user communities are the same. They are not. People often make this mistake, a lot of the “bonuses” of OSS are a result of a intelligent user community not the actual model…
No data—-it is totally anecdotal. But I think it could be obtained. What I do have is an interview on the subject with the head of development with Mozilla who reported them using it (just the raw stack traces) to create a daily top 10 list for a “flying squad” to work on.
As far as differences in the user community, this is potentially a good point. But I also think that there are plenty of intelligent people capable of providing useful feedback and having a proper engagement with developers who aren’t in the OSS community. The incentives are there (better cheaper software) so if the technology supports and encourages behaviour then I think it can work out.
Just calling all non-OSS users too unintelligent to have a useful engagement with developers is a little patronizing, don’t you think?
>>People often make this mistake, a lot of the “bonuses” of OSS are a result of a intelligent user community not the actual model…
>Just calling all non-OSS users too unintelligent to have a useful engagement with developers is a little patronizing, don’t you think?
How does his comment about an intelligent user community translate into a “patronizing” remark about “all non-OSS users”? There are always exceptions, but if you think the the average windows user is as tech savvy as the average linux user, then you are talking out of your arse. Intelligent is probably the wrong word to use though, I know a lot of very intelligent people who are pretty incompetent when it comes to computers.
Ah abc, it must be a slow night for you, huh?
The remark seemed patronizing because it assumes that non-OSS users are incapable of achieving a similarly interaction relationship with developers. The remark was in a directly comparative context so it seemed clear that it was meant to have this implication for the non-OSS community.
I think you are right about intelligence. Fuzzy concept all round. Perhaps the relevant one is self-efficacy …
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