I recently attended a conference session on the topic of getting user feedback. One of the key takeaways for me was that people lie about how they use software. It’s not that they’re trying to be misleading, it’s more that it’s easy to misrepresent yourself out of context. The speaker suggested that you need to interrupt your users and find out what they’re doing at the moment. And you need to do this in regular intervals.
With such a large, diverse, and distributed community–combined with no actual budget–that’s going to be hard to do in any traditional sense.
So I tried a quick experiment on Twitter this morning, asking folks to stop what they’re doing and tell me which views they have on top in their currently-running Eclipse.
If you're using Eclipse right now, tell me which views are on top (my view stacks have Package Explorer, Task List, and History on top)
— Wayne Beaton (@waynebeaton) July 14, 2014
I’ve received six responses so far; seven if I count my own (with an audience this engaged, I’m thinking that it might be time to get verified).
- Package Explorer, History, and Console
- Package Explorer, and Git Staging
- Package Explorer, and Search
- Package Explorer, History, and Task List
- Package Explorer, Task List, Console, and Outline
- Package Explorer, Outline, and Console
- Package Explorer, Task List, and History
Clearly (and as expected), the Package Explorer get top billing. The Mylyn Task List shows up a lot which is encouraging. That almost half of the responds include the History view is a bit of a surprise (at least to me).
There’s not enough information here to make any real conclusions, but I think the method shows some promise. Let’s see what my next question brings…
What's the last thing Eclipse did that drove you crazy?
— Wayne Beaton (@waynebeaton) July 14, 2014
Nothing so far…
