

Listen to your community, but don't let them tell you what to do - mgrouchy
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/listen-to-your-community-but-dont-let-them-tell-you-what-to-do.html

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jgarmon
Also, not all community members are created equal.

I used to be a mod/product lead for a major IT community forum. We had a group
of 300 or so hardcore posters (which the ad team referred to as "inventory
builders") who we took behind the curtain and showed our prototypes before we
released them. They often had some interesting feedback, but we quickly fell
into a strange trap:

The changes the hardcore users wanted didn't drive usage -- posting or reading
-- when we implemented them.

These guys were already spending every damn spare moment posting in our forum,
so they had no more to give and all the esoteric bells and whistles (segmented
follow lists, advanced karma scoring, multi-tiered private messaging) they
wanted were completely irrelevant to the casual user.

When we shifted to testing changes that drove casual usage, we saw much better
results. The hardcore group wasn't against it, generally, except for those
petty few who saw the forum as their private playground and didn't like the
riff raff wandering in to post. They were just dumbfounded as to why we were
wasting time on these "beginner" features.

You don't want to alienate the devoted userbase, but data -- not anecdotal
feedback -- is what should guide your decisions.

------
aymeric
Recently I deployed a new design for my web app that I thought was much better
than the previous.

A few of my users complained and I decided to rollback the changes. Nobody has
complained about the rollback but I still believe the new design was better.

I find it hard to know how to decide when to push further against the
community sentiment. Facebook has done that countless times and it has worked
for them.

I guess this is where the founder's vision comes into play.

How do you decide what to keep and what to ignore?

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Show us the redesign vs original design. The best way to tell if a design is
"better" than the original is to put both version in front of brand new users
who haven't developed usability habits yet.

Sometimes when you make an app the first time, it's badly designed but people
get used to the bad design. Then when you improve it they have to relearn
everything and that's why they're pissed off.

Another thing you can do is "incremental design". Change things little by
little over time.

~~~
kenrik
^ This! My company had a website that predated Google (seriously) when we
updated it you can imagine the shock people had after using the same site for
like 14 years.Incremental design in this case was out of the question it had
to be forced. They will get used to it soon enough.

Remember the famous quote from Henry Ford: 'If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses.'

Change for changes sake is not good however there are times where you NEED to
change and you have to face the criticism and stand your ground. The trick is
to know the difference.

~~~
yarone
FYI - Henry Ford likely didn't say that (although I love the phrase):
[http://www.quora.com/Quotations/Did-Henry-Ford-actually-
say-...](http://www.quora.com/Quotations/Did-Henry-Ford-actually-say-If-Id-
asked-my-customers-what-they-wanted-theyd-have-said-a-faster-horse)

------
fingerprinter
I believe this is quite true. I also believe that the loudest members of the
community (or work, family, politics etc) are the ones you should never, ever
listen to. The loudest people tend to get the attention, but I firmly believe
you should not indulge them and create a broken system where the loudest, most
obnoxious people start calling the shots.

This is particularly why I like Ubuntu these days. It seems they have a vision
and are sticking to it. Most current Ubuntu users are going to be quite happy,
but there will be a few very vocal community members who are essentially
caught in a "who moved my cheese" scenario and they will be quite loud. Unity
is turning out to be the best DE in all of Linux and they are doing something
different, bold and it is clear there is a unified vision there. Had they
listened to the community, they would still be doing GNOME2 for the next 10
years and the status quo would remain...no movement, no growth, no real
innovation.

Another community that seems to get it right, as much as I am not a fan of the
whole community, is Rails. DHH made some tough calls (Coffescript and not
going to HAML and Rspec) and there were quite a few people who hated those
decisions, but DHH either had a vision or made a random call (hard to tell in
his case) and stuck with it. Seems to be working out for them.

And, lastly, Apple. I really, really dislike Apple these days. I think they
are going Evil pretty quickly. BUT, they stick to their guns when everyone
else tells them they should be doing something different. Let other people
build mac hardware? Open up iPhone/iPad development off Macs? Flash on the
iPhone/iPad? App store taking 30% from in app purchases?

Overall, I think the message is this: Have a vision, understand what you are
doing and execute to your vision. You might be right, you might be wrong, but
you can't please everyone so know what you are trying to do and do it. Hot or
cold but not lukewarm.

------
gravitronic
This is especially important in the era of MVP where you are showing the
public the absolute bear minimum and all further progress is done in the
public's eye.

