Feature Requests: Should Users be NI’s North Poll?

GoKeez · 2022-01-18T12:15:47+00:00

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So clearly I love Polls. Pause:|| Everyone does apparently. Our new thread about them influencing upcoming Expansions is off to a good start. Find it here:

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/286/user-poll-for-genre-type-of-expansions-we-d-like-to-see-next-would-be-great-right/p2

@Matt @ NI has announced that a new feature request area is coming soon to our new community. He’s also informed us that Polls will also be coming soon. IMO, both of these elements can be extremely important and powerful tools for NI and empowering for we the people who ultimately fund the development of our collective future.

Is there a way to use them in concert?

Imagine a world where User Polls can influence which features are prioritized? Sounds simple but it isn’t done because it isn’t simple at all. I understand that users don’t know the complexity of how or why certain decisions are made however I’m not suggesting User Polls be more than just a factor, and clear document of what means the most to users.

Im thinking Pro Sports honors like MVP or Allstar game polls. Take NBA for example. Every year a poll is taken and fans influence who is nominated and honored for awards. It isn’t the only deciding factor, but considered along with league executives, coaches and sportswriters who cover the league.

Like, I wish I could create a poll for this thread to see how many of you would love to participate in this hypothetical Feature Request Poll. I’m even sure some sort of Voter Badge would be worth obtaining for members of the forum which is a win win also.

What say you folks? Good idea or naw? Why?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and…while we wait for polls and a new feature request area, what is your #1 feature request from NI. Just one… for the sake of future polling 😉

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Comments

T.Side

For me the Flexible Beatgrid is on the first place.

GoKeez

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/1368#Comment_1368

Flexible Beatgrid? Must admit it sounds dope lol but I have no idea what it is. Example and use case?

Matt_NI

Thanks for starting this conversation!

You are right both Poll and Feature Requests need to be done right and it's not as easy as it looks. Capturing interests and needs are not that hard but measuring individual suggestion against other ideas / needs of a the entire community is a bit more tricky.

In my opinion, this can't be done properly outside of a specific space. That's why I always thought, it'd be more useful to have a sub-community just for ideas as opposed to clutter everything into one giant community.

Polls then become a useful tool to understand what the community at large prefers the most.

Once this is all done, we need to implement the process into our product creation workflows so everyone gets feedback and see things do happen.

Curious to hear how everyone would envision this process beyond the ability to create a feature request and submit a poll?

GoKeez

Yes yes yes! @Matt @ NI

Clutter is the enemy of organization and productivity. What good is great feedback if it gets lost in a sea of discussions? I believe feature requests are important enough to have it’s own section (sub community?).

I certainly don’t have any answers, probably more questions than anything, but I’m psyched to hear you’re all in on trying to combine the two elements somehow and look forward to hearing community input and ideas on the topic.

Wyley

Feature request section is pretty straightforward isn’t it? One section per product or service.

Polls are best for moderators to approve from contributing members.

Denon is also revamping their forums. It’s gonna change from denonsjforums to engine dj forums. Here’s an example of polling https://denondjforum.com/t/poll-is-anyone-using-the-slicer-pad-mode/39206

Although visitors can’t see the tally I can tell you most 60-70% want the slicer feature replaced with something else. It’s a good read.

D-One

I think I prefer amount of Likes VS Poll's, simply because I don't think threads with Polls can be sorted based on the amount participants that voted. (?) The Like system makes things easy to deal with and anything with more engagement naturally rises to the top, if Polls can also do that then either one is fine by me.

Ideally I would prefer a voting system (in the case of a Poll) that asked user to rate how much they want something within a scale, say from 0 thru 3 for example:

0 - Nah, I don't want this.
1 - Sure, but not a priority.
2 - Would be very nice to have.
3 - I need this in my life, asap!

(Ignore the silly names, I'm not very creative with words.)

That's the system most companies use when they email people surveys and such, it gives more detailed data then binary "Yes I want this", but it doesn't have to be that fancy.

Anyway... gauging how much people want X feature was never really a major problem... The real issue is users desires haven't had much influence in what gets to be developed next; so if that isn't fixed first no fancy poll or voting system will ever make any difference.

GoKeez

I like the survey/poll style suggestion @D-One suggested but ultimately, historically our feedback hasn’t seemed to matter. Hopefully new management, partnerships and forum are signaling a shift in culture toward more transparency, engagement and accountability to users.

Wyley

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/1454#Comment_1454

Everybody is trying out new things. I know polls don’t generally change things they’re more for data collection.

What they started awhile back was to give each member 10 votes for feature requests. When the request is “implemented” or marked “will not implement” you get the votes back. Users want to creating a black market for votes 🤣 (jk)

And yes things get tagged with “will not implement”

The 0,1,2,3 idea is interesting though.

Likes don’t work well and you’re right the company has to want to work on some of the things the customers are asking for in the first place in order for these things to work.

Matt_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/1454#Comment_1454

I would disagree on the measuring aspect. It was never really implemented in a way that was easy to really evaluate. There's some features that we obviously know should get done. However, you're totally right, there's no point even going there if nothing happens with these requests anyway. That's why we're still tacking this topic and try to understand how it can be done with the way development is done here.

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/1517#Comment_1517

That's fair since what is "easy" is quite subjective but from the outside looking in I reckon that if someone is a professional developer or a Product Team Leader / Owner / <insert big time job tittle here> pressing a button to sort threads by most comments/likes and trying to understand what are the most requested things would probably be the easiest part of one's very hard job... it's not rocket science Matt!!! 😜😁 Especially after I got rid of dupes and such (on the MAS side).

Now picking something that makes sense and is feasible to work on now from popular requests, that yes, might be very hard to juggle, require a bunch of internal discussions, etc... I have no ideia how that process goes altho I am very curious.

ozon

Polls could be used to help to prioritize the backlog for the next release.

Say there are 5 issues, each needing the same amount of development resources. If only two of these 5 can be covered for the next release and there are no dependencies enforcing an order, a Poll asking the users which 2 of the 5 they want see first can help to prioritize the backlog in a way to cater the stakeholders best.

ozon

Another thought:

Polls could be used to zoom in on already known problems or (feature) requests presented here on the forum. They can give an indication of which issues (of a prepared selection) to address first by asking the stakeholders (us) to give a weight.

Naturally this process is repeated after issues have been solved.

Maybe this is trivial and has already been tried.

Solncev_

I think it's wrong to limit the developers and let the community choose what the developer should do next.

1) developers should know better than us what problems there are in the program

2) we may lose new and unexpected innovations for users.

but to make at least one change based on community choice in the next update that would be a nice move.

you can call it a "community features".

We will be pleased to receive what we have chosen and will feel involved in the development of the software.

I personally have a lot of requests for new features but I understand that this may not converge with the requests of all users.

Eric Rabb

Here is an idea💡! Take your top 5 best selling DAW’s and put them up against NI’s DAW. Then ask the question, in terms of functionality. Can our software do this task efficiently? But when the answer is no, well that needs to be on the list. You really don’t need user feed back to see what basically needs to be implemented. Kinda start from that perspective. Take the best parts of other DAWs and integrate them into the NI system, but do it better than the others. That’s how you make the NI DAW #1!! It’s lots of opportunities for development here. Similarly when NI functionality is equivalent with competing companies, again it’s on the list, and probably shouldn’t be a priority. But if the way that NI may do it and it takes 6 mouse clicks to complete a task, develop a work a round that only needs 2 clicks, so you make the process more efficient than before! What’s the theme of the development team? Are we thinking new Implementations? Are we thinking speed? Are we thinking basic functionality? And we kinda need all 3 to some degree. I personally love the team/group concept, but if the leadership isn’t there it’s hard to get stuff done. One team to cover all just isn’t feasible in the DAW game in my opinion and I wonder if that’s what’s going on at NI? Again lots of opportunities here guys. Bare minimum never worked for me. Who wants to be basic? This isn’t rocket 🚀 science. But, let’s get the basics out the way first though. Polls should be focused concepts not priorities. I’d think about how many users who own NI products vs. how many are online in this forum? See my point, not many online. NI should maybe “reach out” to the owners of products via email, and ask what features you’d like to see implemented in the future? What do you like about the software/Hardware? Provide a temporary phone number where owners of products can call in after they received a NI poll/questionnaire to give feedback. The reason I say provide a temporary phone number is because no one really wants to do all that typing basically.

GoKeez

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/1984#Comment_1984

Biggest issue with that idea is that NI doesn’t have nor have they ever developed a DAW.

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