Introducing LikeBack - Quick Feedback from Beta-Testers

[Ellen Reitmayr]

On Saturday 12 August 2006 21:15, Florian Graessle wrote:
> Another thing is the bug icon. While its meaning is known to
> technical-savvy users, the icon may mean nothing to users unfamiliar
> with the term. In languages other than English the bug icon is totally
> unrelated to the essence of a program error. But I have to admit that
> finding a good "report program error" icon is a really tough nut to
> crack...

Here, I'd really like to know who are the users of beta versions? Is that 
mainly the developers and the community, or also non-technical users? 

I wonder if we won't run in trouble if the LikeBack system is sometimes 
available, sometimes not. If beta users are mostly technical users, the 
feedback we get is somehow biased (we will get feedback by developers, less 
by non-technical users). If they are also non-technical users, my guess is 
that they often don't even know whether they use a beta or final version. 
They may become frustrated if they realise that after an update, the cool 
feedback buttons are gone ;-)

At the moment, the barriers to report a bug in KDE are way too high for 
non-technical users. So LikeBack would be a good opportunity to get permanent 
feedback from that user group. On the other hand, the number of bugs in 
bugs.kde.org is already quite high, and opening the bug system to that user 
group might overload it.

All in all I really like the idea, but I don't think it should be tied to beta 
versions. Even a big part of the usability people don't use beta versions - 
it would be a pity if we'd miss that cool way of communication ;-)

Why not making LikeBack-items permanently available in the Help menu? the 
current bug wizard might even be complemented by LikeBack's easy UI, so only 
power users need to go to bugs.kde.org.

My only concern is that the number of reports might grow too fast when 
LikeBack is shipped with final releases. In this case I suggest to provide it 
as a plugin that is shipped by default only with betas but is installable any 
time.

good night...
/el


-- 
Ellen Reitmayr
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org
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