Feedback to the Dot story

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Thursday, September 05, 2013 13:30:54 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > I don't mean to say that we did bad work, because we didn't. We did
> > great work, but we still have more great work to do before we have a
> > "polished product". PA4 is great, but still very "rough" in a whole lot
> > of ways.
> 
> shall i list all the bugs i run into on a daily basis on my (not very old) 
> Android phone?
> 
> shall i share the pain of watching my brother-in-law use his brand new
> top-of- the-line Android phone while he complains about this or that as he
> fiddles about with it?
> 
> you are trying to live in a world of perfection that doesn’t exist, and
> that  mindset is an existential threat to the  project.

Yes, exactly that.

I also  think what got lost with you, Thomas, is the difference between 
scientific research and communicating what PA is. Put in other words: You're 
too close to it to look at it from that point of view.

We *need* to get people excited, how we do this:

- We do not promise things it clearly doesn't do
- We assume positives outweigh negatives
- We point out the positives and let people's minds run free
- We are confident (but critical) about our own work

User themselves filter pretty damn well the lies from the "this isn't up to my 
expectations", and that's exactly why we get good reviews: We're honest and 
don't tell things that clearly aren't true, but we also show some confidence 
in our own creation. The potential is there, and we show that it can be done. 
A works pretty well for a number of usecases.

Doing UX research is very different from doing marketing research by the way. 
You can't have a bunch of people test it to get behind UX problems, and then 
use these results for marketing / communication. I know it's tempting, but 
it's also wrong. (I've worked with UX people on marketing vs. UX research for 
years, and there are things that can be shared (techniques for building 
persona's, for example), and there are things that must not be shared.

I don't like this cover-your-ass mentality which leads to concentrating on 
problems and underselling the actual product. It's very common among Free 
software developers, and often a sign of proximity bias. What it leads to is 
that it deprives people of the motivation to try it themselves. And that's a 
real problem for us: people not trying out our stuff.

Ask yourself this question: What would you rather see, nobody out of ten 
people not even trying it, or 9 out of ten people walking away not interested 
and one sticking around, because PA caters to his/her needs?

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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