Nokia Beta Labs, Shaping the future together

Any chance of a "go to last" at the top of the page when openning a thread.

Saves me having to scroll to the bottom of the page to get to the link to the last page. I am going to the thread to see what the latest post is afterall.

Hmm, I thought I had responded to this. Seems I haven't.

I do see the point in telling the user more prominently what the status of the application they are commenting on is. I'll need to pass this wish to our UX / visual design guys.

What do you feel would be the best way to communicate the user / nokia interest? What comes to my mind are perhaps the amount of nokia staff posts to a forum and highlighting the pre-commercial / experimental status. What do you think?

We normally require one person from a dev team to take the responsibility of at least listening to the users here. After graduation / archival this is no longer required. I see it difficult to demand interaction, although we could emphasize its importance more.

And to your additional suggestion, we'll be renewing the forum post commenting feature soonish. It has currently some drawbacks we don't like much. let's come back to this once the commenting is renewed, shall we?

My thoughts on the way of communicating Nokias interest or priorities could be multi fold:

1) You could have a top 10 applications list. This could be linked to information provided by the development teams to advise what there priorities are.

2) You could have a sticky at teh top of each forum for the project team to enter information on either what their present focus is or what they need from the betalabs users.

3) You could have an application of the week.

4) I'm not sure if using number of staff posts is the best way. Number of staff views would need to be involved. The information would also need to be based on a rolling period to indicate the current interest rather than historical interest.

I realise the dev teams are very busy, but they need to decide how much they want to get out of betalabs as the less interest they show the less interest the betalabs users will show in the long run. I someone reports a bug and sees no response they may be a little disapointed, but when a number of bugs are reported and none are responded to then people will loose interest and motivation and will start to think there is no poitn in providing feedback. At the end of the day the only reason people post in the threads is because they assume someone is listening and the dev team have a huge team of FREE testers, but not all of them outwardly appear to want to make full use of them. Yourself and a number of other not included.

We do try to emphasize the importance of talking back in the forum and explain how it affects positively to the feedback the dev teams will receive. Some teams find it sufficient to simply have the application in Beta Labs for download and listen to the reactions on the forum. I know this is not the optimal situation from the community's view. We could try to do a little better job at persuading them to spend more time in the forum...

Appologies if I seem to be preaching on my soapbox, but being on the forums as much as I have been, I notice there are alot of people asking why in some forums none of the comments ever seem to get a comment from anyone with a staff icon. Is this to any degree that some of the dev teams have there own separate feedback routes on there own sites. (for example Nokia Sports Tracker (naming no names))

Keep up the good work.

I'm glad to see that there is some internal feedback happening somewhere on these threads.

mbrett has brought up a good point. As a Sports Tracker super-fan myself, I have been confused about where the most effective place for me to interact with other users and developers is; Beta Labs Forums, Nokia Forums, Sports Tracker Fan Group, Feedback forms, directly emailing or commenting to the key developers, etc.

I've posted over and over, making suggestions, starting and participating in discussions, answering other's questions and reporting my user experiences with no feedback ever from anyone officially Nokia. -edit- I have had a comment or two on the NST website Fan Group from Yka and Jussi. -end edit-

I can only imagine how busy my favorite Nokia developers are over at the Sports Tracker division and they know how much I love their project. However, no professional interaction has me wondering if our threads are being read or if I'm not contributing in a manner which benefits the hard-working efforts of the developers.

I just want to help with my favorite application, but only if I my help is wanted.

mbrett: With certain cases, this could be the reason, yes. Some might have different feedback routes that they prefer. Some are simply less active for some reason. Some are unsure how to communicate in such a public domain. There can be many different reasons for this.

Previously, when we only had the private feedback channel, it was easy for the dev teams to just listen and never talk back. We noticed that this resulted in very low feedback loyalty and decided that a public forum would suite the community better. This way users could see if there is somebody responding or if - like in the less fortunate cases - there isn't.

I don't believe it to be easy to force the teams into a dialogue. I don't think closing the forums of non-responsive dev teams is the answer either. I guess best would be if we could make it easier for users to see if there is a dev team responding to issues or not and keep on emphasizing the importance of such dialogue?

I'd never suggest forcing nor persuasion of dev teams into dialogues with us common folk. They are busy, have their own scientific methods and shouldn't have to make time to entertain the ideas and attentions of the general public. Besides, I understand the beta caveats and simply enjoy the privilege of testing Nokia apps.

However, when the new Nokia Beta Labs was launched I assumed it was something the dev teams wanted, (More and better user feedback). I immediately signed up and began participating thinking I was being a useful tool as the new site seemed to encourage. This new Nokia Beta Labs seemed to imply detailed interactions were a necessary part of the site's concept.

In the case of Sports Tracker, perhaps a sticky post from someone official stating what/if they want/don't want to see from their users and where best to share such information. That way, when questions come my way as I heavily promote the service with fellow runners, I can feel confident about where I to direct inquiries I haven't the support to handle on my own.

Thank you.

Alright, we'll try to do something about this. If nothing else, then at least a sticky post.

In the spirit of the other suggestions and comments in this thread my feedback and questions are somewhat similar.

A "status" of sorts would certainly assist the user community in determining if the discussion/suggestions/bug reports are useful, wanted and/or received.
Perhaps encouraging development teams to repond in a more general way to the discussions that are taking place in a particular application forum. This could be done via the Blog page for that particular application. A kind of "update".
Potentially this could be less time consuming than responding in every thread, to every query/comment.

Or another suggestion might be... not sure how the user community would respond... however could a particular developer for a project, click a "yep I've seen it" type button. As we all understand the workload development teams must be swamped with, it could act as a type of... "Yep development team saw it... thanks... keep it coming." Basic feedback... but at least it would give a sense of "seen by someone working on the project."

Is there also a 'process' for applications that pass through the Betalabs?
For example, could an explanation be given on the main betalabs page that details some of the general movements of applications.
Eg. Current are those that are being actively developed.
Archived are those that have died... or been replaced.
Graduated... are those that are considered 'finished' ??

On the subject of graduated apps.... would they then move into another discussion community? Or could they still exist in a Betalabs style environment? I for one have a keen interest in an application that has "graduated" but from my personal point of view is far from reaching it's full potential yet.

Regards,
Paul

Again, I agree we need to increase communication regarding the application status. This process has already been started and is in its planning phase. You might be thinking "why on earth do you need planning for such a simple thing?" but it's a bit complicated: we have the "status", i.e. current/graduated/archived, then we have the kind of "nature" of the beta, i.e. is it an experimental beta or a pre-commercial one with a set future and then there is the maturity status indicating how stable or buggy or whatnot the beta is. Communicating all of this in a concise manner is tricky and needs to be planned. Otherwise, it would be a huge mess.

"I've seen it" is to me very problematic, and I'll explain briefly why. If it was a button you needed to press, then that would be quite cumbersome, quite a lot of clicks. People wouldn't bother using it all the time anyways, which would result in us seeming like we seldom bother to read your stuff. "Seen it all" button would I guess work, but it would definitely be used without seeing it all => thus not really valuable for the users again. An automatic "seen it" would show the necessary info, but would result in dissatisfaction among those who ask something and don't get a reply. There simply isn't enough resources to reply to each and every question. I know this is something that you as members of the community would want, but unfortunately such a feature would have negative results for us and also cause dissatisfaction.

We sometimes do use blog posts to offer status updates of betas. However, within the timespan of a beta (which can be several months to over a year), this is used only a few times with a decreasing frequency towards the end. Therefore, perhaps a monthly status update containing the situation of all current betas in beta labs could be used. To us, this seems feasible and we'll perhaps try this out.

Pauleaton, you've got the current/archived/graduated right. I'll add this information at least to the FAQ. I don't see this as interesting enough to lift up to the main page.

When an app graduates from beta labs, the discussion is no longer continued here. The proper place to continue the discussion varies by application. Often for example http://discussions.europe.nokia.com

Thanks IIkka.

Great to hear there is a plan to fine tune status.
I understand the difficulty in "I've seen it"... just an idea I wanted to 'throw' out there.

If the "graduated" apps do indeed head to the discussions site or another site, perhaps that could be indicated or annouced when the Graduation ceremony occurs. Also, please take this as a HUGE compliment to the betalabs site designers, can the betalabs web team share some code with the discussions site ;)

Concerning communication with the Dev Team and the beta labs community members.

-My suggested approach
Create a Sticky Introduction of the team member/s.
In this sticky please communicate the aim and goals of this project.
What feedback are they looking for.
To further improve the use of the sticky it is where regular update information is logged but not in the normal fashion that gets lost in the thread but stays on top(so kinda a mini sticky that follows the first one, if possible) or just update the original.

-Further more encourage other team members to use the forum.
Communication my not be their strong point, but its a learning experience. Not their style? To bad, this is the purpose of Beta Labs

I was not happy they way with how nokia maps3 went so i wrote up my review, titled "Maps Team Fail @ Communication" (no pun intended) http://betalabs.nokia.com/forum/topic/1256
I would like it to be a form of feedback nothing more intended.

First, I apologize for not driving this forward lately. I promised earlier to djh.sthlm that Sports Tracker would at least get a sticky to their forum. Still, nothing has happened thus far. We hoped the team would have more time to spare on the forum, but apparently they are too busy. In the mean time I managed to forget this promise.

I might ask all the dev teams to post such a sticky on the forum. We can't do it ourselves (since we don't have the information), so the best way could be to ask all dev teams collectively. Still, the decision whether or not to do it would be theirs. I'll come back to this topic shortly.

Thanks again for the NST forum sticky post!

It provides nice assurance that our participation is monitored and appreciated. Without interaction, I was beginning to lose interest. Perhaps others feel the same?

btw- How are accolade badges awarded? Some folks get a bug killer right away. I've assisted numerous NST users with bug issues and work-though's and nothing. I'm not asking for anything, I just want to be sure I'm contributing in the best way possible for you and the dev teams. I don't know if my innovator accolade was for a specific idea or ideas in general. It would be nice to know what decorations are given for specifically.

Thanks a million, Iikka!

-David

Current setup: e61 unbranded product code 0529654 Euro-B1 Silver. Firmware: 3.0633.09.04. Theme: Ovi blue. Service provider: 3 Sweden. Peripherals: Bluemax ext BT GPS module

Currently there is no automation for this, so it requires me to check the forum and actually browse it quite heavily. And honestly, not being one of my favorite things to do, I forget to put time for that quite often.

The easiest way to do it is to search the forum and open a large amount of profiles of users who have for example started a bug report chain. Then, if a profile seems promising, to try and see what the user has actually written (this has been made fairly difficult at the moment) and so on. I would guess it was because of this cumbersome process I have probably missed your profile while doing this. But I admit, you should have been given the bug buster badge a long time ago.

We have scheduled the development of an automatic bug rewarding system for later this spring. I'm hoping to develop this aspect of the community then a lot: perhaps new kinds of badges and/or the possibility to earn "ranks" for badges etc.

I was under the impression it was by all staff members who have such rewarding access.

Since we are under this topic, i remember a long over due suggestion or more along the lines of a bug report.
Selecting mark read read under one of the three category's(current, grad, arch) the function marks read for all three rather than the selected category.

For simplicity's sake, we give the staff badge to practically every Nokia employee (if asked), but I am afraid to decentralize the right of giving out badges to all of them.

There is a way to give a specific role for certain users, which allows them to grant badges. But this would require picking out the individuals, educating them on the matter, motivating them to exercise this right etc. It would take time and effort and honestly, I'm not confident it would work much better.

If you feel somebody deserves a badge, you can nominate them with the "Notify" button for now. I have to highlight, this is not the proper way to use this button after we have the automated system implemented.

And to the latter comment of snowy, I'll let the development know about this. Although being awfully busy with some other cool stuff, I agree that fixing these kind of inconveniences are high in the priority.

Sorry Ilkka i should have been more specific than just saying nokia staff members when i actually mean the project team members. Anyhow your explanation says it all...

When you say "Notify" automated system and busy with some other cool stuff, i sure hope its going to be things me and you have discussed. :D

I feel I should lower your expectation on this. Our schedule for the spring does not leave us much room for many of the things I'd like it to. So, unfortunately, very many important things have to be postponed to a later time. It's a constant struggle between the "new things" we've envisioned and ironing out the wrinkles in the existing stuff. Due to the agreed schedule, there is unfortunately little time for other things than developing the missing stuff.

Edit: I'm not saying none of the improvements we all have discussed here on the forums won't happen during the spring. We should have time to do some of them, but not just yet :)

lol, thx IIkka for your share. All in due time...

It's nice to see the evolution of the site and forums over the past coulpe of years.

As you say snowy all in good time.

Look forward to seeing what "cool stuff" you'll have for us next.

Agreed with the wasted effort it could and probably would be enabling all project members to award badges and as regulation would be harded and many probably just wouldn't have the time.

Look forward to seeing how auto badging might work. Could be interesting. This will return the the past discussion of dues recent inactivity result in fading badges or just badge removal or are badges permanent. Interesting that your refer to levels aswell, based on umber of posts.

My only issue with auto badging is that it could/will result in badges being awarded based on quantitiy and not quality if not managed carefully. Would this then maybe require some sort of middle ground where some badges are automatic, but other are manual?

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

We've thought about how to enable the social aspect of giving the aspects. It's not just about the quantity, but also about the quality. And therefore, the way it could possibly be done is by letting the users give a thumbs-up (or down?) for a post / comment.

This is a tricky topic. We don't want to encourage spamming, so we shouldn't reward for the number of items directly. We don't want to punish for being active either. And then we would like to be able to let the development teams have more power than other users.

It is tricky, but I believe it can be done.

Yes i remember a color coding system we discussed for the badges and developers leaving a plus or minus status(something like that)

I agree with the thumbs up system, to a degree, but have issues with the an option for thumbs down as this could be open for abuse.

Thumbs down has it's uses, but could be used by some users when they just disagree with someones opinion. Could bring negativity to the forum.

Depends on if thumbs up and thumbs down act against each other towards an overall score.

Just my opinion. Im' sure you guys will have run through all the senarios already. Depends on if the thumbs up/down is enabled for everyone or just the developers. Just developers would require the training for which you discussed the issues earlier in this thread.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

You're right, thumbs down does make abuse easier. And there are examples where it has gone awfully wrong. I don't want us to end up in a situation where we need to develop a system that identifies systematic voting patterns where a user gives a thumb-down systematically to another user, etc. (a real-life use case of an abused reputation system)

What we most recently talked about was that the thumbs down would not affect the user's badges (or the "reputation" if you wish), but could affect the way how the comment was displayed. For example, if we wish to highlight "good" comments and suppress thumbed-down comments visually. This way, one person alone would not be able to do much harm. What do you think?

Being an Xbox 360 Gamer or at least I was until my little boy arrived and my free time started to dwindle away.

Microsoft use a user feedback syste, where a user can leave positive or negative feedback on another user. My understanding is that nothing is done until the user has ammounted a certain number of instances of negative feedback. At this point the user is invsetigated as negative feedback opens up a multiple choice screen for adding the reason for the negative feedback. The Microsoft xbox administrators make the final decision on what action to take if any. The reason this is done is that negative feedback is often given by some as a result of dislike of a person. Also you often hear of people getting others to give negative feedback to try to make up the numbers to acheive the minimum number for action to be taken as your account can be blocked. I realise that the user case for a gaming system like Xbox Live is quite different to that of Betalabs, but there may be lessons to be learnt.

I assume the thumbs down system would be somewhat similar as much as when you said:

For example, if we wish to highlight "good" comments and suppress thumbed-down comments visually. This way, one person alone would not be able to do much harm.

Suppression of comments would be resultant of a minimum number of instances of negative feedback and possible review.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

Something along these lines, yes.
One thumb down shouldn't be enough to suppress a comment.
Showing the number of thumb-ups is probably a good idea, as it motivates the user to keep up the good work and ties the reward directly to the desired behavior (my god, I start to sound like Ivan Pavlov). However, I'm not sure if it is a good idea to show the number of thumb-downs, as this could give those users some gratification who look to abuse the feature: "I don't like you, here's a thumb down for all your stupid comments!" We'll have to see about that and experiment a little.

Sorry Ivan I didn't realise I'd made that many stupid comments

Thanks llkka

PS. Thanks for the new barcodes aswell.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

Thanks, btw, for the bug buster.

I'd like to suggest not having any "thumbs down" feature. Rather, why not a simple "Other users found this post helpful" count?

Bad posts can already be flagged if needed. "Thumbs down" only would encourage wacky users with grudges to create multiple aliases.

-David

Current setup: e61 unbranded product code 0529654 Euro-B1 Silver. Firmware: 3.0633.09.04. Theme: Ovi blue. Service provider: 3 Sweden. Peripherals: Bluemax ext BT GPS module

i believe support badges should be given ie, mbrett for ovi maps. So an ovi maps badge is awarded.

The same goes with out saying goes to djh.sthlm for sports tracker.

Don't forget your good self for a support award aswell.

Maybe we will here more about the SWAT team soon.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

I can live without the thumbs down button. I was thinking it could be used to suppress bad comments (i.e. grey color, smaller font or something) and it wouldn't give any minus points for the user. But I agree, it would be still too easy to be at least annoying in the forum, so let's drop that for now. It can be introduced later if wanted.

I completely agree that a support badge would be great. I don't think each application should have one, as that could become a bit messy? Also, how do we quantify support? Is it good comments that people vote "this was helpful"? Then for example, should bug buster badge be rewarded on started bug threads only? This probably isn't the right approach?

So the question is: do good comments contribute to the support badge or to the badge of the thread category (bug/review/suggestion)? And again, how do we then quantify support?

It would have to depend on the context of the comment I suppose. i.e.

Mine is the same (NO)

Here is the solution to your problem / answer to your question (and it works) (YES)

This might help [and the person with the problem/question responds sayimng it did] (YES)

With new posts. The quality of the post is a big factor. The post needs to be of use (has enough information within it to follow up on) and needs to be new (not duplicate) and posted in the correct category etc.

I'll stop before I suggest too many more rules and make things too complicated. I'm sure you get my drift.

@llkka (Pavlov) Was that my food bell I just heard?

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

hmm interesting.
The reason why i choose support badge or a mini badge for a certain project was that everyone has their certain interest an knowledge.

I will use mbrett for an example(sorry u guys kept saying morning so pig came to my mind).

He is an outstanding supporter through out the so called maps "forum" not just to the community but to the project team (Kee in this case)

So thats alot of leverage to him and Kee. Members would be quick to recognize mbrett saving him time and other by reading his comments and take a more serious consideration. Again a leverage to the dev team to ease thier work.

Than this brings me to assigning these "mini badges" can be left for the development teams, without the need of "training". Its so simple, i see this member helping out the team, so heres a mini badge son.

I see the SWAT idea something way bigger an much more discussion needed.

It was discussed may moons ago in this thread and I thought I'd inquire if there was any update on this?

mbrett
N97 RM-505 FW 10.0.012 (Vodafone UK)
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.015

If you are referring to the possibility of a closed beta testing group, we are close to finishing the technical implementation. That will enable us to launch closed betas for some apps (naturally). At the moment, there is no real use-case for it, but there will.
If you are referring to the topic discussed here: http://betalabs.nokia.com/forum/topic/2732 about a group of trusted users, empowered to moderate the forums, it has been planned to implement these during the 2H09 (can't say with more precision at this point).
Hope I answered the question! :)

Thanks

mbrett
N97 RM-505 FW 10.0.012 (Vodafone UK)
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.015