Introducing LikeBack - Quick Feedback from Beta-Testers

[Sébastien Laoût]

Le Vendredi 11 Août 2006 19:36, Bram Schoenmakers a écrit :
> However it looks nice because of the low barrier for users, I'm not really
> happy with the fact that bug reports become decentralized. I'd rather see
> that bug reports somehow end up at http://bugs.kde.org as well.
> I assume you have thought about that already?

Initially, it was not a bug report tool.
My first tought was only to have two "I Like" and "I do not Like" buttons.
So it's not really a bugs.kde.org duplicate.
(But I figured out it could also be that.)

The basic idea of LikeBack is for users to tell develpers what they think of 
the application, if they encounter little glitches...
Little things easy to fix.

I've done a looooot of modifications in my application since its last version, 
removed lot of options that are of little use, changed concepts "more or 
less" radically (switching from a tabbar to a treeview, launching note 
edition with a single click instead of another manipulation)...

The LikeBack system is initially foreseen to know how much people accept those 
changes, allow to validate the changes... if not too much people are 
reluctant to use the new version because of removed features / changed 
concepts.

For instance, in BasKet Note Pads, there was two text note types: plain text 
(the old default) and rich texts. I completely removed the plain text notes 
and replaced them with rich text notes. I knew rich text notes was having 
some drawbacks, that's why I was reluctant to make them the default.
The result given by LikeBack: I received lot of comments saying it's nice 
plain text notes are gone. Or simply people discovering rich text notes was 
existing, they believed it was a new features, while it was in fact an old 
feature but placed in a more visible/usable place (the default).
Now, how much I got "I do not like the text note removal" comments?
One, only one.
Now, I'm not reluctant anymore: I know it was THE right decision to take.

Well, you get the idea: LikeBack is a way to know if you are in the right 
direction, discover if people have trouble using your software. Comments like 
"I do not understand what are templates" make you think about how to make it 
more understandable, perhapse add an help, or moving the thing in another 
place, etc.

It's more a tool to "evaluate and correct" the usability of your applications.
Not yet another bug reporting tool.


So, why is there a "Bug" button?
Because it's an handy way for that.
Because it allows people to report very little and easily fixable bugs (say 
"the layout is wrong in that dialog: there should be more margin": would 
people have took time to report such bugs on bugs.kde.org? Likely not).

And more importantly, because third party applications are not registered in 
bugs.kde.org.
Because they have little amount of users.
Because they just started to exist, so they need a simple and quick-to-set-up 
system.

> Does it only make sense with applications with windows? What about
> applications, like RSIBreak, which only have a configure dialog.

That's a nice question.
The icons will only be shown when the configure dialog is selected.
But RSIBreak is quite special.
The majority of applications have windows.
This is a thing I need to think about.
Perhapse it could popup a window with the icons.

Best regards,
Sébastien Laoût.