Keep in mind that we already have a large recent survey of sorts, based on Google Analytics data from those who have visited the website and downloaded AOO.
It won't tell us some of the detailed stuff, like whether they use AOO at home or at work, but there is more info available here than might be generally known. For example: - what countries users are mainly from. Can also get detail to the level of what cities are most often downloading AOO. - what languages - what operating systems and versions they are using - what screen resolution they have - what browser they are using - if they found our website from searching Google, what were the most used search strings - if they came to our website via a link from another website, what were the most common "referring" sites - what social networking sites lead them most to the website - what pages on the website are most frequently read - what paths through the website most often lead to a download and any of these can be correlated against download conversion rate. So for example we can look at what % of visitors download AOO based on country, or language, or OS or browser or whatever. Obviously this is not a replacement for a survey that looks at the habits and preferences of the user's in-application behavior. But this information is "low hanging fruit" that is based on data already collected. -Rob On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 1:51 AM, Graham Lauder <y...@apache.org> wrote: >> KG01 - see comments inline. >> >> On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Graham Lauder <y...@apache.org> wrote: >> > > > Hi. >> > > > >> > > > Questions relating to research! >> > >> > [....] >> > >> > > Perhaps the first survey we should conduct is a survey about what sort >> > > of surveys our users would respond to. >> >> KG01 - Thanks for your feedback and interest in the user research effort. >> While I agree we could deploy different types of surveys to gather >> different types of data, I feel that a survey of surveys might induce >> premature survey fatigue. > > Survey fatique has already set in, that is not a new thing, that is > recognisable simply by those surveys conducted by SUN. We haven't caused > that, it is a factor of the modern marketing malaise. The cost of incentives > these days, that one needs to hand out to get a significant sampling in a > timely manner is huge. > >> User research, especially surveys, consumes >> people's time and energy. > > Indeed as I myself pointed out earlier in this thread > >> Rather, I propose we work from the other >> direction. If the goal of the research activity is to gather data that will >> help us build insight and drive informed design and development decisions, >> then we should focus the surveys on the information we need to do that. I >> have captured some comments in the wiki discussion page. > > Indeed, however if the sample of respondents is ridiculously small, as has > historically been the case, then the data is useless. > > You cannot use corporate methodologies in an open source environment. We have > no ability to offer incentives, we therefore need to make the survey process > as pleasant and enjoyable as possible or we need to find out from people what > would encourage them to participate. > > That requires research, I doubt it will require as big a sample as a UX survey > but that is only because there are a limited number of answers needed. > > Every good research organisation I have worked with does short surveys to find > out what they're doing right or wrong. For the most part they do these at the > end of another survey, but that is because the group of respondents they are > questioning will probably never do the same survey again. For us the problem > has been getting respondents to finish. Lose them once and they won't come > back again and we will need to talk to our user community if not often, at > least regularly > > I would prefer to do things right first time up so people will happily respond > to any surveys we need to put out. Remember that there are not only UX > surveys to be done but Marketing as well. > > We know already know two things that get people to complete surveys: > Brevity and Fun. > > If we do a light hearted, quick survey that gives us the reasons that people > will participate, I think that's a really good use of resources. > > The Surveys already put up are boring, generic and not likely to inspire > people to complete them. > > OOo has a user base in the hundreds of millions a few hundred completions is > not a sample. We need 10s of thousands of responses across scores of > languages, to get a easonable sample. > > So first we need to figure out how to get that sample. > > Cheers > G > >
