Nokia Beta Labs

Let's wrap up this discussion in Friday's chat!!
http://betalabs.nokia.com/blog/2008/05/28/trying-out-betalabs-chat-sessi...

Hello everyone. That's really great that you're going to improve BetaLab. As a regular member of beta-team in Kaspersky Beta Lab I could say that one of the most useful thing is forum, which is neccessary here if you want to attract more people. It allows convenient way to track changes (email is most convenient way for me), you can easy search for some info that you need. Here it's now a problem, espesially when more then 100 comments left. Wishlist - great idea if it will be update often enought. About bug tracking system, yeah it will be usefull. Also it will be nice to have any public live discussion time to time, like chat, irc or anything like that. Well that's first ideas.

> I’ll check back tomorrow and see if anyone has replied on this post,
> if not, this project is doomed for all I care…

I'm here, listening. But also, I'm physically in an off-site workshop (for the rest of the week) with angry people watching me as I'm typing this comment... Great comments so far, everyone, I'll reply properly to you on Monday or so!!

Here's another vote for more collaboration, but I'd like to have separate sections for:

- end-user feedback: wishlists, votes, forum chatter.

- community content. Example: the new Maps 2.0 knows an impressive amount of pedestrian shortcuts but it also lacks many - most notably pavements/sidewalks alongside main roads, some crossings and escalators in case of level differences. A nice AJAX map application to notify Nokia of errors/omissions would be awesome.)

- developer feedback: something like a subscription and post moderated mailinglist for serious, intelligent discussion. For developers and capable enthousiasts only.

Really good comments.

[+1] vote from me:
- More active participation from Nokia side
- User ratings
- More videos (by Nokia and others)
- Getting rid of overly lengthy blog comment threads
- Expetation management: telling what people can expect from submitting feedback, and keeping this commitment
- Separating feedback pages
- Keeping the user registration optional
- Exclusive invitations for best contributors (based on reputation system)
- public live discussion time to time

Needs careful thought:
- Bug tracking system open to general public
- Put future roadmaps visible
- discussion forum as feedback channel

Sorry for Commenting on this late, But I guess last date is 30 May :-)

I have read the earlier comments which include many good suggestions to improve the beta labs. Ofcourse, all the suggestions need a proper classification and feasible ones should be implemented.

I have 2 things to add:

1) You can take help of the Forum Nokia Champions, to review the Beta products, I guess they would be good audience to receive a response from. And many of the Forum Nokia Champions contribute their experience on Forum Nokia as well as already here on the Beta Labs.

2) Conducting Surveys, for Beta lab users, to know their opinions and suggestions for the Beta products.
Extensive survey for each product may help to learn good points about the product, Also if you include a lucky draw prize to be drawn out from the participants of the Survey, many people will take it.
Like for example there is a Developer Survey carried out by Forum Nokia to know about its services.

3) Voice conferences among top contributors and regular contributors may help to get a better response.

Other things such as Discussion forum, More Videos, etc has already been mentioned earlier.

@Tommi: I would like to have your email address so that I can email you.

Best Regards,
Pankaj Nathani
Forum Nokia Champion

Implement a bug tracking system open for the general public (similar to http://connect.microsoft.com/).

What do I like about current approach? Well the very existence of Beta Labs speaks volumes. Personally I actually like that there is a voice / obvious person behind it. While I think getting developers to guest post is good its also good to have some continuity.

Not so good stuff? Reading the very long comments threads is a bit of a pain. Looking for replies and/or following up on something is not easy. As a result its more of a shouting fest than a conversation. So basically doing feedback in post comments needs to go.

What should we add or improve? It seems its the feedback value is the real issue both for Nokia but also to make users think their input has been seen and taken on board. Applications should have feedback pages rather than comment threads. I imagine some kind of user log-in / identification would help. Within these feedback pages you could make it clearer what sort of feedback is needed and what sort of response (and from who) users can expect (not every beta labs product is going to be the same). This might serve to clarify things for users providing feedback, and lessen frustration when they think they are being ignored.

Perhaps the feedback pages could be themed / topic - i.e. feedback around specific feature(s), future additions, questions about product, bug reports. This would help avoid the morass of current comment threads. Plus it makes it easy to extract feedback around certain areas. I suppose this would be bit forum like (with topics), but with a certain amount of central control over topic areas (rather than a forum which sees 5 people start the same topic area). I think some threaded view would help (i.e. hierarchical comments) so it easy to see if there's been a response / discussion). Perhaps there could be some sort of colour coding to indicate what had been replied too (has it been replied to by developer team, beta labs staff, user etc.). Also by counting responses in a thread potential hot topic areas could be identified (crossing over into wish lists?).

If you do get a reputation system up an running you could even pass out beta to these people a few days early and get them to help you define these topic areas for discussion on the wider release. Obviously there needs to be a miscellaneous topic for areas that aren't thought of in advance.

Personally I think maybe a focus on the core competency of gathering feedback and opinions rather than adding too much community stuff (though granted some times that's the same thing). e.g. chat might be nice, but is even more unstructured in feedback terms. Similarly wikis are really better for graduated products (how can we get the most out of this product rather than how should this product develop). I don't think a general discussion forum as such is the way to go (encourages creation of closed communities, intimidating to new comers). However as mentioned above threaded or similar feedback pages might be useful. More of a hybrid between blog and a forum with tweaks to indicate areas of interest / good feedback?

Well that came out of my brain a bit jumbled. Oh well!

Ich muß mich meiner Sprache sicher nicht schämen. Es wäre schön, wenn man Informationen zu den einzelnen Programmen und Projekten zentral finden könnte. Das ist leider nicht der Fall. Ein Blog ist dafür auch nicht der geeignete Weg, ein Forum - mit der Möglichkeit strukturierter Einträge - käme dem schon eher entgegen. Und dann gäbe es sicher die Möglichkeit, Bereiche in unterschiedlichen Sprachen einzurichten.

Bislang ist aber ein guter Teil der Welt abgekoppelt von der Kommunikation mit Nokia Betta Labs.

There should be a place to for everyone to post ideas by category, allow others to see them and vote on good ideas, collaborate, and comment on those ideas....ultimately the best ideas will bubble to the top. There should also be a place for users to update their profile and build groups to vet out those ideas further. We at BrightIdea have seen the successful results of deploying these features in many organizations. By allowing the community to drive innovation through this medium, Nokia can gain by users feeling like they have input into Nokia's business which build brand loyalty.

Paul
ptran@brightidea.com

My first suggestion would be that you make it a blog and less corporate. I interpret this site as a serious cross over. Yeah, you blog here, but its hardly blogposts and there is not much of a dialogs with the readers.

An excellent example is the NRKBeta blog for the Norwegian broadcaster NRK. (www.nrkbeta.no). They discuss everything with their readers, not only stuff that concerns them directly but also other related incidents, software, technology and so on. Make it interesting!

I wrote a post at my blog some days ago with some things i would like to have changed in the "sharing and blogging" application, however I have no clue where to post it. The discussion forum has tons of threads with no replies so that cant be the right place... (btw, ideas is posted here: http://www.christoph.no/index.php/archives/205)

When it comes to functionality such as a formal reputation system, wish lists and so on they are worthless unless you ante up the communication. A post like this is far more worth than sending in a list when I can post a comment to it. At least for me, and if I, the reader, is happy and posts feedback, thats more worth for you than a neat system that I wont use.

I'll check back tomorrow and see if anyone has replied on this post, if not, this project is doomed for all I care...

Yeah, and make your blog the frontpage, don't hide it!

Keep it simple, and focus on how you can build this site with the current tools.

How about just keeping it simple and base all feedback on a forum. Now that way you'll get real live feedback that anyone can read and comment on. Just keep it simple and have a small forum local to the Beta Labs.

You can have one forum group for general feedback, one for each application, etc...

Doing it this way you'll get a discussion going on each case, and not just a one way feedback system as this one we're writing to now.

Hi,

I think this concept is great.

What I'd like to see is a way to send feedback right from the phone. An app, that has the current beta apps available to download, similar to the 'Download!' client, and allows the user to send feedback right from the phone, either through SMS or internet.

Also, a wap based portal would be very cool as I often use wap.

Thanks,
Jamaalism

I like the way you do the blogging here, but as Christoph said there is not very much communciation here.
I certainly like that have a ranking just how beta the applications are, gives me as a customer/tester a good idea if I can test it just for fun, or if I can use it all day.
A good bug tracking system with feature request and some kind of a roadmap would be nice.
I like the way it's done here: http://trac.adiumx.com/roadmap

More videos, it's one thing to tell us about new betas, it is another to try and convince people to download and test new betas out.

Let developers themselves give feedback without having to use you as a channel. Makes your life easier and lets them engage with us directly.

First of all I must say thanks for the betalabs page. It's a source of much joy and very interesting and cool ideas. I think my Nokia N95 is great, but as usual, the problem is the syncing with the mac. I know Nokia has developed a couple of ok apps for mac, but it still works kinda wonky. The best thing you could do for me (and many others) is getting a mac to develop on.

Other than that, special kudos to the sportstracker. I'd love to see what you have in store for it next.

I skimmed through it, and didn't notice that the suggestions primarily were for the website. Sorry ;)

The biggest comment I have is that essentially, you have two different types of beta apps on this site and you need to separate them out or give some better indication of the apps' roadmap.

For instance, a program like Headlines seems like it will always be standalone and it makes sense as such. However, apps like Location Tagger to me are pointless as a standalone app, but wonderful when integrated with the device's built-in camera.

It seems that a lot of the beta labs apps fall into this second type of beta where you're essentially evaluating functionality that is being considered for integration into a device's firmware. For me, knowing this information about an app is critical because in the case of Location Tagger, I would say Thumbs Up as part of the device's built-in camera software, but Thumbs Down as a standalone app -- even though the functionality might be identical.

The current format Is good, it's simple and you can usually find what you want. It might be an Idea to add in a forum or at least change he blog system for the application comments. The current system can be a bit hard to sort through if you are looking for any helpful info, A forum, or something a bit more organised, would help with people reporting on bugs and giving suggestions.

As many have commented here and in the past a User Registration would be nice. Although NOT make it a mandatory registration as to keep it open to the casual surfer but giving others that put in effort to test and comment on products a way to weigh comments and provide a good base for evaluating further testing.

Also suggestions as to more input from the actual software writes. I think Tommi's noted on occasions that the coders are usually very busy, but an extra blog entry or 2 would be nice.

Getting people here the ability to stick up video of the product being used would be interesting. I'm not sure if the video thing would take off, but an idea is for a few respected testers to provide a single video for each product. Just to show it in use, this could bring in the casual user of Nokia phones and although the descriptions of the software are good, a good short video of the product in use can usualy say more in a smaller time.