Users feedback about FC

[antoniovazquezblanco]

Hello everyone!

I was wondering if there is any period in your development cycle where you ask people about their experience and what they miss/love about FC. Other than the feedback I see in the forums (which is great but limited to a very small subset of users), I could not find polls or forms about the general experience with the software.

Do you guys believe it would be nice to make a poll to distribute among users in order to get feedback from them?

I know this can take a while to elaborate and to have a look at the results but I was thinking on making a very simple poll about user demography/profile (age, studies, ocupation), usage profile (how long have you been using freecad, what version do you currently use, do you use it for commercial, studies or personal stuff) and experience (is FC stable enough in their releases? what would you like to see more development on?).

What do you guys think?

[ickby]

What do you guys think?

I don't think it is a good idea. Basically everyone developing here knows very well what the users would like to have, however, most devs work on what they need. A user poll would lead to nice results and than they would never be implemented. That is how freecad works, people add what they need, and getting new features means finding someone with a need for it to make it.

[antoniovazquezblanco]

What do you guys think?

I don't think it is a good idea. Basically everyone developing here knows very well what the users would like to have, however, most devs work on what they need. A user poll would lead to nice results and than they would never be implemented. That is how freecad works, people add what they need, and getting new features means finding someone with a need for it to make it.

I think is very true that devs push the changes they need to use the software. I don't mean to change that because it wouldn't be fair to them, on top of the work you guys already do (that by the way is awesome!). I just mean to know more about the users and how the software is used.

Maybe limiting the scope of the survey and just deleting the last section (no questions about stability or features they miss)? Do you think that would hurt the community in any way?

[wandererfan]

I was wondering if there is any period in your development cycle where you ask people about their experience and what they miss/love about FC.

Not so much a survey as a brain dump, but there was this exercise before the start of the v0.18 development cycle:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... whiteboard

[antoniovazquezblanco]

Not so much a survey as a brain dump, but there was this exercise before the start of the v0.18 development cycle:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... whiteboard

That is very nice to see. I didn't knew about the existence of that thread. I believe it is a very good exercise.

Maybe that particular example does not have the same reach that FC software has. What I mean is that there are 112 posts in that thread. Let's be optimistic and round it up; that is to say that 112 people commented on the thread. The reach of the forum thread is very limited but the feedback is very reach and very well formulated from people with probably the deepest understanding of FC that you can find. That is a really well informed minority of the users. I was hoping to find a wider target with much more focused answers (just simple multiple choice answers).

[GeneFC]

Do you guys believe it would be nice to make a poll to distribute among users in order to get feedback from them?

How would you propose to do that?

Other than self-reporting on the forum there is no user list. Downloading and installing is anonymous.

Gene

[antoniovazquezblanco]

How would you propose to do that?

Other than self-reporting on the forum there is no user list. Downloading and installing is anonymous.

Gene

One vote per installation seems reasonable. It would be nice to have the poll in the start window of FC although that would probably be more work than sharing a link of any poll service available online.

Email accounts can serve the purpose for detecting duplicated votes.

[nemesis]

Do you guys believe it would be nice to make a poll to distribute among users in order.......
What do you guys think?

hello.
you can have a look ro this poll
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30542

nothing scientific, but kind of intereting.
users profile is not here so it is more an information than a study on freecad use case

[antoniovazquezblanco]

hello.
you can have a look ro this poll
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30542

nothing scientific, but kind of intereting.
users profile is not here so it is more an information than a study on freecad use case

That is also nice. I miss having two separate polls, one for the professional/hobby theme and another one for the field.

[GeneFC]

It would be nice to have the poll in the start window of FC

I haven't looked in the Start WB for years. Others who are active on this forum are vehemently against any kind of upstream communication from FreeCAD.

Gene