I've been working this week on stick failures and I've had a good conversation with Martin <font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Dengler which I think is relevant to the problem we hope to solve with this new tool.</span></font><div> <font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">My feedback from the field was vague, incomplete and built over a period of days. It was not structured QA, replicable bugs with logs attached. I also talked about features that are not in scope for the next few months (specifically creating a Stick solution that survives the washing machine).</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">My hope is that every developer on this project goes to their local school or daycare and runs a Sugar Club and gets to experience trying to get good data on errors in a room with 10-20 kids where the kid who is experiencing a problem is really engaged and very upset that they can't do what they were trying to do, especially when all the other kids are! Actually mostly I hope you do this cause its actually a ton of fun. :) Things are working most of the time and kids love it.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">However, everyday I'm in class something weird happens with Sugar. At this point if I can get it to go away I don't report it. Its just too much time to fill out a trac ticket for unreplicable things that aren't fatal.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">I think we have a choice. We harrang and nag the people in the classroom to give us better info, thus chasing away most of them, or we encourage feedback and get a lot of bad data.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">I vote for creating a system that lets us aggregate the bad data enough to pull out the real issues.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Following the agile traditional I write some stories.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Today, for example, a stick didn't boot twice on one computer. It did boot on another. If I wanted to test that I need to boot another known good stick on that computer, and probably retry later with the problem stick, plus capture what points the boot stop and if its consistent. The problem is class ends at 12:30 and we have to be cross town at Dorchester at 1:00. And honestly I have more serious issues to work on right now.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">What I actually did was ignore it and move on. My hope is that with a nice AJAX UI I could very quickly make notes about this and in the process of typing see if someone else has already reported it.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">If I had a this system in place I would have noted what the error on the screen was (I could have taken a photo of the screen) and written: "Stick failed to boot and the screen said "dectecting USB blah blah" stick booted on another computer."</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">In my ideal world of this story there are many other people and they also write things like this. So lets say I' m the first. The next teachers goes to enter the same error. With the wonders of AJAX they see that for me the stick booted on another computer after this error. So they now go try it on another computer. Perhaps their immediate problem is solved.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Over the next few weeks I keep an eye on that computer, does it happen again? Does it happen to that stick again? If it happens again does it work on a different USB port of the same computer, is the cord bad? What work arounds does the other teacher use? Does the other teacher see a repeat on the same machine...etc. so eventually, if its a real problem, over the course of weeks we get data. The data may not end up pointing to a bug that Sugar can fix, it might end up pointing to the need to write an FAQ. If you see this type of error try another USB port on the same computer.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#00681C" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><b><br> </b></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#00681C" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><b><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">In this story we never need developer attention. Its a hardware issue. Its still a Sugar issue, its still a problem that we need to support Sugar users in solving. Indeed the people solving this problem are every bit as much members of the Sugar community as developers. </span></font></b></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#00681C" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><b><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Let me tell another story with a software bug:</span></font></b></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#00681C" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><b><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">"Activity X crashes when I have a bunch of people sharing it". - One report, not very actionable.</span></font></b></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Next person types in Activity X and sharing and sees the report above so adds theirs as a comment. </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">Soon we have 25 reports each with different details. Some list the number of people sharing. Another whether it local or remote collaboration, another whether its wireless or not. With a bunch of reports we know that 1. Its important, lots of people want to share Activity X. 2. We probably see some patterns to the failure. 3. look through the 25 reports and find the tech savvy teacher who can collect logs. </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">We can't do this if the 20 not so tech savvy teachers have any sort of emotional or logistical block to posting their incomplete bug reports.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">We also can't have developers having to categorize, close as duplicate 25 tickets! nor can we have developers feeling like each of these 25 people need an immediate personal response and thus they are overwhelmed.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#00681C" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><b><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So thats the vision of where I want to go. Its going to take more then putting up a web page to get there. Little bit of Web 2.0 magic and lots of social engineering, probably "gardners" or the support gang helping quite a bit.</span></font></b></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br></span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#00681C" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><b><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">As we seem to be currently evaluating tools, does anyone else have a user story they would like to share on how they would like to see teacher feedback and communication with developers supported?<br> </span></font></b></span></font><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Frederick Grose <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:fgrose@gmail.com">fgrose@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> <pre><a href="http://idea.laptop.org/drupal5/ideatorrent" target="_blank">http://idea.laptop.org/drupal5/ideatorrent</a> is a resource that<br>OLPC's Volunteer Infrastructure Group have experimented with.<br><br>A <a href="http://sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">sugarlabs.org</a> variant may be an easy step.<br> <br>It has the idea, solution, voting features, and possibly could be configured to segregate questions, problems, praise, etc.<br><br> --Fred<br></pre><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Sebastian Dziallas <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sebastian@when.com" target="_blank">sebastian@when.com</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex"><div>Walter Bender wrote:<br> > It isn't obvious at first glance why this particular site appeals to<br> > you. Could you describe its features and the problems you think they<br> > address?<br> <br> </div>It is the one I came across and a quick research (not very deep,<br> admittedly) didn't result in many comparable alternatives - that's also<br> why I asked for alternatives in the end.<br> <br> What I believe is: *we need to make it easy to submit feedback*<br> <br> The feedback@sl.o address was a beginning, but I think we need to<br> explore other possibilities, too. GetSatisfaction looks - to me - like a<br> good way of offering our users an easy, well designed interface, where<br> they can enter their requests & issues.<br> <br> I mentioned some of its features already below (like the various kinds<br> of feedback, the possibility of making the current state on an issue<br> easily clear enough,m...). However, I think if we promote such a<br> solution well enough, it might help us to get feedback even from those<br> people, who're probably not that experienced with open source projects<br> or even feared of entering a ticket in trac ("what the heck is a bug?",<br> "why do I need an account here?" "what's this all about?",...).<br> <font color="#888888"><br> --Sebastian<br> </font><div><div></div><div><br> > thanks.<br> ><br> > -walter<br> ><br> > On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:35 AM, Sebastian Dziallas<<a href="mailto:sebastian@when.com" target="_blank">sebastian@when.com</a>> wrote:<br> >> Hi everybody,<br> >><br> >> it's really good to see this discussion getting off the ground. While<br> >> being at LinuxTag, we discussed with some folks how to improve the way<br> >> of getting feedback from our users, without putting too much barriers in<br> >> their way.<br> >><br> >> So while looking around and at various issue tracking systems, I<br> >> discovered GetSatisfaction. I had seen that before already, but wasn't<br> >> sure of its current state. There you go: <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/" target="_blank">http://getsatisfaction.com/</a><br> >><br> >> GetSatisfaction is also used by other open source projects like Songbird<br> >> (which might also be a good place to an idea how such an instance looks<br> >> like): <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird" target="_blank">http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird</a><br> >><br> >> So as you can see, users gain various possibilities of interacting with<br> >> the developers here. They can ask questions, report issues and so on.<br> >> Others go ahead and comment and vote an entry up and down so that<br> >> developers can see what's more and what's less important. Finally, a<br> >> developer can also put a "we're working on it" or "we're aware of this<br> >> problem" flag on an entry, to make the current state more obvious.<br> >><br> >> In my opinion, this might be a good way of inviting more people to give<br> >> us feedback (I'm not suggesting to abandon trac, I guess we should use<br> >> that to track issues ourselves, too). For example, if we created such an<br> >> instance and mentioned it in the next press release, I'm pretty sure it<br> >> could work out well.<br> >><br> >> Well, GetSatisfaction is a company. So they have various plans (also a<br> >> free one, which looks like it would probably already be enough), while I<br> >> guess we could also contact them directly.<br> >><br> >> So. What do you think? Is this worth trying out? Any alternatives?<br> >><br> >> I've already a personal account with them, but how do we proceed?<br> >><br> >> Cheers,<br> >> --Sebastian<br> >> _______________________________________________<br> >> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)<br> >> <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br> >> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a><br> _______________________________________________<br> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)<br> <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br> </div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)<br> <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Caroline Meeks<br>Solution Grove<br>Caroline@SolutionGrove.com<br> <br>617-500-3488 - Office<br>505-213-3268 - Fax<br> </div></div>