Interface Improvements
How can I suggest improvements to the user interface and software logic and have someone who understands the suggestions with the power to make changes actually SEE them?
Answers
-
For any of the current lab experiments, including the Data Quality Checker, the new Merge routine, or the new Source Linker, join and post in the appropriate group under the Groups link. You may get feedback and questions from the designers and engineers behind those current improvement projects as well as comments from other users.
For anything else, use the Suggest an Idea section here under Ask A Question. Be aware that section is really a suggestion box where you drop in your suggestion and never get any response. However if it is viewed as useful, you may see it incorporated in the website after the months to years it takes to develop, test, refine, and put out in production.
3 -
I have tried this before, and got no response whatsoever. That is what is so baffling. I do not mind having ideas rejected as much as getting no response whatsoever. Some of my previous suggestions for correcting deficiencies or inefficiencies and would involve MINIMAL coding changes, e.g., pull in the already available cemetery name when posting burial locations.
1 -
@AdrianClift
There are billions of people using FamilySearch, for free, from all over the world. The full-time staff is very small.In other words, would you rather have the engineers working to keep everything working or have them responding to your requests for changes?
2 -
@AdrianClift for as long as there have been comment boards, we have always been reassured that all appropriate comments are forwarded to the appropriate people. Personally I have seen multiple people all post the same suggestions for improvements with multiple comments from multiple users suggesting additional refinements and outlining why they also saw the need for the improvement and then seen such features incorporated into the website within a year or two.
One past example is the relationship viewer. Multiple people over multiple years requested such a feature. Then one day, there it was.
FamilySearch is a huge website with massive databases. I doubt even minimal changes are quick and easy. This is reflected in the way that mysterious glitches, such as the recent change in labeling from public to private and back to public for everyone in our Recents lists, come and go. I'm sure whatever minimal change they made was never intended to produce that error and it took about a week to be fixed.
We also have no idea what their priority list is. I'm sure there is a list of critical items that need be taken care of, high priority fixes, high priority improvements, low priority fixes, low priority improvements, and things it would be nice to include one day.
Basically, keep submitting your suggestions, assume they are getting looked at and compiled, don't worry about or be offended by any lack of reply, and assume that one day, if requested by enough people, if supported by any focus group of users they may or may not have, if practical to incorporate with current database structure and coding, and if the programmers run out of higher priority tasks, you may see them incorporated on the site.
1 -
While I agree @Gordon Collett with what you say, the unfortunate thing is that we now have two black boxes into which suggestions go.
Having been in software development and maintenance myself, I would not expect much visibility into the engineers' workflow.
However, we now have the mechanism of submitting suggestions via the Community which has become equally opaque (unless I'm missing reports of acceptance and progress). This, so far as I remember from the publicised processes, has to take place before any official submission to FamilySearch. All corrections welcomed.
1
