Survivor Bias and Self-selection bias (The User-Demand Fallacy)
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What I have warned about numerous times - the 99.999% of feedback @VectorStyler (and the rest of us) never gets in this forum - an extremely relevant read and input for anyone related to Vectorstyler and its development:
Read "The User-Demand Fallacy" on medium.com
Check out the links:
Survivor Bias
Self-selection bias
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@Ingolf I agree, and I'm aware of this. Of course competitive analysis solves some of these problems.
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I think most people would agree that many objective and diverse views are an important aspect of program development. Everyone is going to have their own opinion on how much is enough/too much. There is always the danger that any project can become too insulated and veer off-course. It's also possible to listen too heavily to users who are not actually working in it every day.
It's obvious to me that @VectorStyler had a core set of reasons why he felt the world needed another vector styling program. So one could assume he went into this endeavor with those reasons as his guide. (All of us who love and use VS daily are grateful he did!) Side note: it would be fun to compile a list of questions for @VectorStyler to learn more about his reasons for creating VS, his vision for it going forward, what it's been like developing it, etc.
Other related programs have been created and have added features through a lot of testing over the years - Illustrator, Freehand, Corel, Affinity, etc... VS is in a unique position to build on what was created already and then also to innovate and thereby improve upon it. There's no reason to reinvent the entire wheel when creating a new program because many of the kinks and issues have been worked out and a standard expectation of use is already established in the industry.I've really enjoyed being in the trenches so to speak, of the development of VS over the years. There's a strong grassroots feel to the process and it feels close to the end user, not fully caught up in the biases of UI and UX "experts". We have a solid core of users on the forum that have diverse methods for using VS. There are also those users who fade in and out of the process over time contributing their ideas as well. Looking at the roadmap, @VectorStyler has compiled a solid amount of work to improve VS for the next couple years already, just based on the research he has acquired as well as our ideas and suggestions. There is also the amazing level of customization of VS, that allows users to find their own layout - this should not be discounted.
In my humble opinion, at some point after a lot of the roadmap work is complete, it might make sense to hire a UI/UX expert and streamline VS.
I never felt my ideas or concerns would be listened to by the behemoths like Adobe or Corel. When I first used Affinity and became active on their forum, I felt there was some listening going on... but it wasn't until I found VS that my ideas were not only listened to, but considered and implemented where applicable. Adobe with all their resources and expansive testing still has crazy bugs and spawned entire companies like Astute Graphics to compensate for their lack of innovation or vision. Now Adobe users can pay to use a bloated program and then pay extra for the innovation that should be built-in.
Affinity initially seemed to listen to ideas on the forum but did not interact with their customer base and has taken years to add features - to the point where some users are wondering if Affinity is still an active company. We can only hope that the vital tools Affinity assumed were not that important are added in their Vs2 release... whenever that is...I'm grateful for the approach VS has taken so far - it's amazing to see the program mature and develop with solutions that work for professionals because it's being designed with professionals in mind
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@Ingolf & Boldline: It exceeds my imagination to comprehend how developing VS can be a one man job, to start with. In this situation, it is imperative that there is good communication between the developer and the users of his program. Those who see the program's huge potential in spite of the bugs in the program and perhaps those who can see beyond them, because of the incredible amount of work that has already been put into developing VS, may suspect that this also means that the ability to write the bugs out of the code is also present. But this of course requires time and effort. So, if users want VS to become an even bigger success than it already is, they must provide useful feedback. With useful I mean decently formulated and structured feedback that is of use to the developer.
I use Affinity Designer for commercial projects, but as Boldline wrote, in spite of user feedback there seems to be a meager response from its devs. They scrapped the roadmap, which has just been an unaltered document for a long time now, unlike the Blender foundation for instance, that actually does seem to take its users serious. But then again, Serif has a small army of devs and Blender a rather large one. This puts VS in a unique position and users must understand that and be accurate and polite in the feedback they give. Especially those that really believe in this brilliant VS project.
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@VectorWhiz said in Survivor Bias and Self-selection bias (The User-Demand Fallacy):
the ability to write the bugs out of the code is also present. But this of course requires time and effort. So, if users want VS to become an even bigger success than it already is, they must provide useful feedback. With useful I mean decently formulated and structured feedback that is of use to the developer.
When I started experimenting with VS a couple years ago, I began using VS for as many steps as possible with both commercial and personal projects and took it as far as I could go before a bug, feature limitation or the project time allotted ran low (due to my slower pace while learning) and then I would switch back over to a program I knew well, like Illustrator to complete the project. I repeated the cycle over and over, each time pushing further into the VS program, learning more about VS and reporting bugs and issues as I went along. I started out doing 5% or so in VS and 95% in Illustrator. As time went on, the amount I could complete in VS before bailing to go to Illustrator kept increasing. At the beginning of this year enough had improved in VS that I decided to make the switch over to using VS full time and now only use Illustrator for the final steps of each project. I've shared the things I still need added/improved in VS and I'm confident those will eventually be added and I can move away from Adobe entirely at that point.
Transitioning this way allowed me to learn VS without getting too overwhelmed - I took my time and kept pushing further with each project. It also allowed me to find and report numerous bugs and suggestions for improvements to VS along the way.
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Since many of the discussions we have on the forum are about the way the app should work, and the
related Prefs settings, a way to better figure out which Prefs settings users prefer is to check which ones
are changed most often and having the user agree to send anonymized info about this (and also the
peripherals like tablets or second monitors) back to the developer.This won't help with the 'new/competitive features' part, but it could help with
the 'UX optimization' part.Should the developer considers this, or it would backfire with the… um… easily "triggered" younger
users that can consider this an "invasion of privacy"?
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It was a merely post for reflection on probably the biggest lack of basic understanding I have encountered in my professional life, and encounter every day. In here it is extreme, we are so few, but the problem permeates everything I witness. Software development, running restaurants, politics, journalism, friendships, everything.
That's why I'm so happy to work closely with UX specialists who are weekly and constantly in dialogue with the industry and large and constantly new representatives of either customers/users or people who completely reject all or part of the product. I've seen products developed and debated internally that seemed foolproof and functionally ridiculously simple be completely rejected in the world as incomprehensible and unappealing. It had to be completely redone, and with basic input from collaborators and "enemies" it got significantly better. It is just a professionalism with full contact with and in the front line, and where all illusions and projects' bullshit dies. Literally, dies.
The most important thing I have to say about this is that it is information you have to "pull out" of the world. Work for, pay for, humbly and patiently. You can't expect dissatisfied users to provide feedback. Certainly not commercial ones. The number one reason to fail in the medium and long term is not to SELL. Number two is NOT to seek knowledge far and wide.
Funnily enough, our biggest success UI-wise is that we pulled tons of visual noise and features out of one of our brand new products (compared to similar ones). Nobody gave a rats ass about them. Technical debt of competitors that made their products heavy in maintenance and use, and made them incomprehensible. And it was precisely constant dialogue with stakeholders and potential users (and even near-hostiles) that gave us the liberating knowledge of what features could be omitted. Some comes back on request maybe, but basically we avoided implementing all the competitors' mistakes and features. The things we implemented on request in the first year of the product's life are completely mundane things. We got much, much, much wiser about exactly which workflows are critical and need to be simple, and how much is simply not used and not critical to the product being chosen. Even if you don't understand it yourself, even with years of experience.
Well, the point was, in short, remember this image:
