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Voting for features


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Hi BarKeegan,
There's no vote system in place. The implementation/development of new features depend on development goals/constraints/time, takes in account user's requests but can't be dictated by a voting system: certain features may not be implemented until some work/dependencies have been finished or expanded in the same or in other apps of the suite (they share code), certain bugs corrected first or may require heavy research/testing/time which have to be balanced with dev and/or commercial goals. The  Feature Requests/Suggestions section is closely followed by the dev/management teams. Eventually the most requested features will end up in the application whenever possible.

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  • 10 months later...
On 2/12/2019 at 11:02 AM, MEB said:

Hi BarKeegan,
There's no vote system in place. The implementation/development of new features depend on development goals/constraints/time, takes in account user's requests but can't be dictated by a voting system: certain features may not be implemented until some work/dependencies have been finished or expanded in the same or in other apps of the suite (they share code), certain bugs corrected first or may require heavy research/testing/time which have to be balanced with dev and/or commercial goals. The  Feature Requests/Suggestions section is closely followed by the dev/management teams. Eventually the most requested features will end up in the application whenever possible.

Yeah, but would it not be valuable in the long term to have a solid metric of what customers are most interested in? Obviously not everything can be catered to.

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21 hours ago, Eric Louw said:

Yeah, but would it not be valuable in the long term to have a solid metric of what customers are most interested in?

Recommend a request/suggestion (like, +1, +10).

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11 hours ago, fde101 said:

That provides a numeric tally of interest without cluttering the forum with useless "+1" posts that waste everyone's time.

How many times did I click on a new post in a topic of interest to see a '+1' that IMHO does not add anything to the discussion :(

Also, I do not favour a voting system. This would give people the impression that they have some kind of right to demand features and causes even more complaints in the long run. Serif have made clear that they have their internal ways of planning the roadmap and I think we, the users, can trust that they have good reasons to do what they do. After all they want to develop a good software package.

(To be clear if that matters at all: in political things I strongly believe in democracy).

d.

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1 hour ago, dominik said:

a '+1' that IMHO does not add anything to the discussion 

In my opinion, in this way the user joins the request/suggestion without unnecessary repetition and replenishment of any wisdom at all costs (context with your post is completely random :-)

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2 hours ago, Pšenda said:

any wisdom at all costs (context with your post is completely random :-)

As is your post...it is one thing to post opinion,  another to question forum members wisdom, unless you process the majority.

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Hi @fde101 and @dominik,
because you have responded to my post (that there is no voting system necessary, but you can use existing forum features), just a small addition:
- "Like", you have certainly noticed, that I put it first, so this is the preferred way of "voting". It is ideal for cases where the user fully agrees with the request and its justification.
- In some cases, however, the user identifies only with the request, but not with its reasoning and arguments.
For example, when the author of the request argued, that program XY has had a required function for ten years, and how is it possible that Affinity doesn't have it long ago, etc.
Then there is the "+1" way, which I can express like only for request. If I have some additions to the request, I will say "+1 with comment/add", if not I will only say "+1".
- Alternatively, I can give a comprehensive addition and extension of the requirement or, on the contrary, disagreement.

All the best in New Year :-)

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1 minute ago, Pšenda said:

 It is ideal for cases where the user fully agrees with the request and its justification.
- In some cases, however, the user identifies only with the request, but not with its reasoning and arguments.

In this situation that user has something to add to the discussion, so the added post should be more detailed than simply "+1".  I have much less of a problem with that than with simple "+1" posts that add nothing else.

I agree that there have been times when I wished I could "like" a subset of a post, and looked for creative ways to work around that by providing some context to my response when I replied.

If someone agrees with the revised information from such a post, obviously they can "like" that instead.

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1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

- "Like", you have certainly noticed, that I put it first, so this is the preferred way of "voting". It is ideal for cases where the user fully agrees with the request and its justification.
- In some cases, however, the user identifies only with the request, but not with its reasoning and arguments.
For example, when the author of the request argued, that program XY has had a required function for ten years, and how is it possible that Affinity doesn't have it long ago, etc.
Then there is the "+1" way, which I can express like only for request. If I have some additions to the request, I will say "+1 with comment/add", if not I will only say "+1".
- Alternatively, I can give a comprehensive addition and extension of the requirement or, on the contrary, disagreement.

Thanks, @Pšenda, for detailing on the options a forum member has to react to a post. This may help other forum members to follow this discussion that is perhaps a little theoretical to some (I'm serious and not joking at your post).

This is an open forum and we see many different ways of participation. The '+1' is just one of them and I do have to live with it. I find this particular one just not very helpful. Alone the lenght of a thread (e.g. 19 pages) should be an indication to the readers that this must be a topic of interest and discussion and has most likely come to Serif's attention. Why add such a redundant 'baa' to it (sorry +1-ers ;-) ). I'd rather see a new aspect or argument or idea added to a thread.

Apart from that: happy new year!
d.

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1 hour ago, dominik said:

I'd rather see a new aspect or argument or idea added to a thread.

The purpose of my contribution was not to question the importance of the voting system, which I personally think can be a valuable source of information about the priorities and needs of users for developers, see https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/47330-vote-system-for-features/&do=findComment&comment=237468.
But because I know Serif's opinion of him, see https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/47330-vote-system-for-features/&do=findComment&comment=237470,
so I suggested to the OP how this vote could be carried out by the existing forum features. Of course, it is up to each user, what form of post they will use.

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I'm quite new and just stumbled across this topic.

IMHO a huge benefit would be to have a dedicated list of features with their states (e.g. "in consideration", "planned", "being worked on", "rejected", "done") linking to forum posts where the feature is being discussed. This could act as an entrypoint for users that want an overview whether their missing feature of choice is already mentioned somewhere (so they can vote on, describe why they need it, post workarounds and so on), or if they should propose it. This does not have to involve any kind of voting, though.

Consider my current use-case as an example. I just found out that Affinity products seem not to support embedded fonts in PDF. I searched this forum and found some discussions. But is this being worked on or do I need a permanent workaround? Do I really have to aggregate the information spread across different (sometimes dated) threads on my own? I'm not a pro user, so I don't even get all the abbreviations and terms. If I had this kind of list, I could

  • see that it really is a missing feature and not a bug or layer 8 issue
  • silently follow the progress of its discussion / implementation process
  • have a dedicated place to discuss workarounds / solutions for it
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21 hours ago, thewilli said:

I'm quite new and just stumbled across this topic.

IMHO a huge benefit would be to have a dedicated list of features with their states (e.g. "in consideration", "planned", "being worked on", "rejected", "done") linking to forum posts where the feature is being discussed. This could act as an entrypoint for users that want an overview whether their missing feature of choice is already mentioned somewhere (so they can vote on, describe why they need it, post workarounds and so on), or if they should propose it. This does not have to involve any kind of voting, though.

Consider my current use-case as an example. I just found out that Affinity products seem not to support embedded fonts in PDF. I searched this forum and found some discussions. But is this being worked on or do I need a permanent workaround? Do I really have to aggregate the information spread across different (sometimes dated) threads on my own? I'm not a pro user, so I don't even get all the abbreviations and terms. If I had this kind of list, I could

  • see that it really is a missing feature and not a bug or layer 8 issue
  • silently follow the progress of its discussion / implementation process
  • have a dedicated place to discuss workarounds / solutions for it

I agree that this would indeed be of help to us users. However the developers are reluctant to adopt such an approach other than to acknowledge (which is appreciated), awareness of shortcomings on here. I totally respect that business decision but it would be useful to know the reasoning. It may be down to a number of factors...

Limited resources, other priorities (eg bugs, app development rather than dealing with endless customer requests), change of strategy, under promise and over deliver approach, not being a slave to customer increasing demands (ref we need a movie editor/animator/presenter).

Workarounds are great but they have to be found by searching the forums and YouTube.   Maybe the excellent presenters like Olivio Sarikas and Affinity Revolution can be persuaded to create some of these?

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  • 1 year later...

Voting for features shouldn't be a contraint for the development roadmap, but it is a nice way to highlight the users interests in a more structured way then a forum.

Dropbox did it for a while and it was really great ! They didn't always pick the most popular features, but used it as an ideation source and they updated the features status thus allowing the community to see that a feature was included in the internal roadmap, in progress or has already shipped in an update.

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2 hours ago, fdelaneau said:

and they updated the features status thus allowing the community to see that a feature was included in the internal roadmap, in progress

Serif have indicated that they are not interested in providing that kind of detail to us.

 

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Serif said time ago, they don´t want to keep a roadmap visible for customers, because it generates complaints later. Apart, you want a vote system for new features.

What about a hybrid system consisting in Serif said some features they were considering to develop in a short time and users could vote which of them are more usefull?

Serif was not obligated to hear features they are not prepared to develop, so they wouldn´t receive complaints later; and also users can make a mini roadmap, even helping Serif to see, which features they are thinking, users really don´t need, saving time not developing them.

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