Hi all,
I want to bring up a touchy subject, but please know I'm not trying to
attack. The problem is I can think of 5 very recent to fairly recent
examples where engagement has asked for feedback, or received feedback and
then ignored it ("thanks for the feedback, but we're going to stick with
what we've got"). I'm assuming the problem is just how the feedback is
discussed and not that the feedback isn't actually being taken into
consideration.
Take the new name for Persona themes:
http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2012/03/01/personas-are-joining-the-themes-family
It looks really bad to have a poll then ignore the results of the poll. If
skins is bad, why was it included in the poll? Why weren't the reasons it
was bad shared? Not sharing the reasons makes it look like the poll was for
show, and engagement did what they were going to anyway. I am NOT
suggesting this is what happened (though that's a much bigger problem if it
is) just that it really _looks_ that way when there is no further dialogue.
I think maybe people are trying to avoid bikeshed arguments, and I know you
can't please everyone all the time, so you can't engage until everyone is
happy, but this is part of Mozilla, and part of being open. Put all the
information out there before moving on. If it was the right decision the
(vast?) majority of people will understand if you show them how you came to
the decision. There was a similar problem with renaming Identity to
Persona. Without knowing what suggestions were passed over and why, it's
_impossible_ for people to understand how Persona won given their
objections. The assumption from an onlooker is that you don't share the
other possibilities because people might like them better and then not
accept Persona. Though I know it's not necessarily traditional to consult
before naming a product, so that might need to be pointed out as well.
It's hard for me to understand that skin isn't the right word since this is
the industry word for the physical equivalent. You get a skin for your
iPhone, a gelaskin for your laptop. Given what I already know, it's not a
matter of not trusting engagement, it's that engagement is telling me
something that is the opposite of my current knowledge. I do think themes
works out so that's not quite the point here. It's just more the order of
things.
If you look at the comments from Amy's post, JanW suggests calling personas
"toolbar backgrounds" and IMO that hits the nail on the head. I think this
would be clear to users since they usually know what toolbars are and makes
a perfect distinction between the two types of themes. Even if it's not
chosen, hopefully it (and the other comments) can be taken into
consideration and/or addressed.
Thanks,
Lucy