[Koha-devel] Re: MyLib Next Steps

[Pat Eyler]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Chris Gray wrote:

> > One of the most important things here is to get the input of our customers
> > (librarians, systems administrators, consultants, and patrons).  We as
> > developers have an (often) limited or incorrect view of what is important
> > and why.  By drawing the users of our software into the discussion about
> > what features are the most important, we can deliver better value, faster.
> >
> > One approach would be to develop a board (or similar group) of librarians
> > to review lists of possible enhancements and have them place them in a
> > matrix like that above (good for OSS).  Another method would be to give
> > them a pool of 'developer units' and allow them to spend that pool on
> > building a release (good for commercial style development).  (Note, there
> > is no reason that commercial style development can not produce free
> > software.)
>
> I have some reservations about this kind of approach.  As Jakob Nielsen
> puts it "don't listen to users"
> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010805.html>.  The point is simply that
> there is often a large gap between what people say they need and what
> would actually help them.

This may be true of end users (Though I take some of Jakob's words with a
grain of salt ... he is a bit dogmatic for my tastes), but I'm talking
about the professional users of the software, who use it to provide
services to the end user.  Ignoring their input is a dangerous game.

Finding out how to get that input is an interesting challenge though.

>
> XP is good because the customer is an active participant in all phases of
> the development so you get the benefit of their feedback all the way along
> not just at the beginning and at the end.  XP recognizes that there is a
> lot that you don't know about something until you actually try to build
> it.
>
> Here's one area where XP is more difficult in a "dispersed" environment.
> You need on-line tools to help replace face-to-face feedback from users.

There are certainly other approaches here.

With Koha, we can rely on 'face-to-face' feedback between libraries and
consultants/developers like Katipo, Steve, and Paul (among others) - this
feedback occurs naturally as part of the client interaction, and drives
the consultants development priorities.

Koha and other projects can certainly make use of email, irc, wikis, and
web based surveys to gather feedback from our users.  Where we have
created installation or upgrading scripts, we can certainly include an
optional feedback form which could be emailed to a project address (given
permission, and probably an option to edit the email).

> Does this perhaps lead to a top priority of MyLibrary development?  Maybe
> we need to begin by tracking and analyzing how people actually do use
> MyLibrary.  I've got in mind something like the following story from
> Philip Greenspun <http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/user-tracking>:
>
> "You can also use the logs to refine content. My very first log summary
> revealed that half of my visitors were just looking at the slide show for
> Travels with Samantha. Did that mean they thought my writing sucked? Well,
> maybe, but it actually looked like my talents as a hypertext designer were
> lame. The slide show was the very first link on the page. Users had to
> scroll way down past a bunch of photos to get to the Chapter 1 link. I
> reshuffled the links and traffic on the slide show fell to 10 percent."
>

This is a very good idea, and a nice illustration of how to make use of
it.  Beyond application logging, it may be fruitful to look into the logs
of a projects website (particularily in on-line help and documentation) to
see where people are going most often.

-pate



> Chris
>
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