(Archived) REQUEST: Feature request system with voting

[LKA 2]

Hi Every(Note)body!

Myself in short: After some back and forth for a couple of years, I moved from Onenote to EN two months ago. I really have a love-hate relation to Evernote. Evernote is amazing in so many ways, but some things are just so annoying. (And the things that annoy me, is the same as the other forum users is complaining about)

Where to start..., well the first thing you need is a Feature request system with voting. Why? Because Evernote is a 100 year company! (because of what?!...) I'll explain:

100-year companies are very serious about their customers, In fact so serious that they put customers before profit because the know that this will make the good profit anyway, and also long-lasting.

I'm not saying that Evernote is not customer focused, you are doing a lot of good and cool things, but when it comes to feature requests and development you can do better. Many of the forum users here also know that you can do better, because they have complained about the same missing features for years. There are customers who are pulling out their hair, trying to find a decent workaround because of their problems with bad text formatting, no picture downscaling, missing tag-hierarchy on mobiles, no note hierarchy, etc. These are just examples, there is no voting system so I don't know the ranking;-)

I came across a thread where a FR-system was discussed, here. It was answered by Evernote this way: "Some (requests) lie so far outside our wheelhouse that there's no way to actually implement in the near term." I really hope that those requests are not the good ones. If there is no way to implement a feature request that a lot of customers ask for, then you are in the wrong direction. Especially if you want to hang around for 100 years! Then you want to listen, check, analyze and put up a voting system just to make sure that the feature developing priority is reasonable.

So if you really want to know what the customers want you to prioritize, I can't see a better way to find this out than by a voting system. Then the customers almost build the backlog for you. It's not difficult, it's not expensive. If you don't want it, how can you say that this decision is the best for the customers?

Looking forward to an amazing customer oriented answer :-)

Lars Kristian

[peterfmartin 221]

Welcome to the forums, Lars. I'm just another user, not an Evernote employee, so I don't know that I can give a "customer-oriented answer." But I'll share that, from my experience as an Evernote user, watcher, and forum reader, the discussion you linked to is probably the last word (or one of the last words) on this. Evernote employees have said a number of times here and in media coverage of the company that they're not interested in polling users to determine what to implement, since they currently have ways of generating priorities that they feel are working quite well. My guess is they'll stick with that method, whether the company lasts for 10 years or 100.

Another useful perspective to keep in mind, this time from a fellow user, not an employee, reminds us all that what customers say they want is often not the best way for a company to figure out how best to serve its customers:

@jbenson2,

I'm surprised they do not have a method of allowing users to add Feature Requests and then Vote on which ones get implemented. The more votes the faster it gets implemented. That would let them know how many people want a certain feature. I believe this can be done via Jira's Bug System (Could be wrong on that).

Evernote has addressed the problems associated with a voting system.

Digg ran into a similar problem with their voting system.

Famous quote from Henry Ford: If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse".

As can be seen in countless examples, Evernote does listen to their customers and have implemented many improvements from user feedback.

[Metrodon 2,184]

It's been discussed lots of times before and they have been pretty clear that it's not something they are interested in doing at the moment.

To paraphrase the CEO - we build software that will be useful for us, because we are normal people like our users.

They are affected by the same stuff as us - text formatting (which is getting better), messing about with images etc, so that stuff is prioritised and built/fixed as resources allow.

As for the 100 year company....got to love marketing..........everyone loves an IPO....

[LKA 2]

"Famous quote from Henry Ford: If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse"."

This is true, but we are taking about essential EN updates her, not changing the game completely. Ford's quote are often misused by leaders who doesn't like to listen to customers, but run their own race. Ford are talking about out-of-the-box ideas. The time has also changed a bit. Now customers are often more engaged to the products they use, and they are also more updated.

In this case, the quote from Evernote will be more like: They say they needed better text formatting so we made Evernote Food and Evernote Hello instead ;-)

"To paraphrase the CEO - we build software that will be useful for us, because we are normal people like our users "

This sounds like a CEO which doesn't understand what true customer oriented is. I'm a normal person, does that mean that i don't need to listen to anyone? A 100-years company that builds software for themselves? Sounds like a strange ghetto.

[jbenson2 2,147]

I'm opposed to a voting system, especially when it involves users with considerable high-tech knowledge.

Digg.com tried using a voting system and got blown out of the water by geeks who gamed the voting system to favor their pet issues.

The Digg staff tried to construct new methods to control the voting fraud, but eventually lost the battle.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Digg.com tried using a voting system and got blown out of the water by geeks who gamed the voting system to favor their pet issues.

Sounds like Louisiana or 1950's Texas politics.

There are many factors to be considered when deciding future software enhancements and features.

Getting customer feedback is one of those factors. It is not clear how Evernote does this, nor how much weight they place on it.

Given today's technology, and the lessons learned from the Digg.com experience, I'm sure there are methods available to get customer feedback that is statistically representative of the user population. The real question is, does Evernote even want this data?

[deverill 54]

I also oppose a voting system. One thing most users who are not programmers don't realize is that there are a lot of factors behind changes to a product.

There are technical issues - especially considering there are several different platforms and they want to maintain some semblance of similarity between them.

There is the fact that what the majority of customers (or the ones that game the voting system) is not necessarily good for the company.

There is the truth that it's their company and sometimes they want to work on one feature over another.

I think a voting system would only give false hope to customers and an implied list of deliverables from the company. It would only be bad.

As for what needs to be done or what the customers want, I'm sure that between emails, these forums which are monitored, and other avenues, Evernote does know what people are asking for.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I also oppose a voting system. One thing most users who are not programmers don't realize is that there are a lot of factors behind changes to a product.

Well guess what, most users are NOT programmers, and they don't need to be to know what features they want/need.

As I said above, customer feedback is just ONE factor to be considered.

The software company management can make the trades between customer demand and difficultly/cost of development.

But you need to start with understanding the demand if you want to stay in business. No matter how great or smart the company is, if they don't have enough demand (purchases) of their product, they will go out of business. Ignore your customers needs at your own peril.

And, the flip side of that coin is that it is very hard for programmers (who know their system intimately) to understand how a new user, who maybe is a computer novice, will view and use the app.

[deverill 54]

Well guess what, most users are NOT programmers, and they don't need to be to know what features they want/need.

No need to get huffy that you're not a programmer... no one expects you to be. I'm merely stating that if 1 million users want a feature that is nearly impossible for the way notes are currently being stored then that voting system will:

1. Be gamed for any who have that as a pet feature.

2. Raise expectations for a quick solution by Evernote even if it requires a mass rewrite of everything down to the core.

3. Create a false priorities list for Evernote - "this has been on the list for 3 weeks and 1M people want it!"

As a non-programmer it gets hard to understand why the notes are stored in a doubly-linked list that's folded into a b-tree, or whatever, and why that even matters.

I'm also not saying it is unimportant to know what the customer wants, just that a voting system doesn't work well with vote gaming and other social issues. Customer service reps can use a little intelligence and minimize this sort of bias. When it goes through the liason to the dev team they can make intelligent decisions based on real "ear to the rail" reports and not what some voting booth says.

And, the flip side of that coin is that it is very hard for programmers (who know their system intimately) to understand how a new user, who maybe is a computer novice, will view and use the app.

This is very true, that is why every good company has programmers, lead programmers, designers, project leads, executives, human resources, testers, etc. as well as customer service people to keep in touch with all aspects of the product. As evidenced here.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Well guess what, most users are NOT programmers, and they don't need to be to know what features they want/need.

No need to get huffy that you're not a programmer... no one expects you to be.

You have two facts wrong:

1. I'm not huffy, just refuting your assertion that one has to be a programmer to request a valid feature.
   
2. I have been a programmer, as well as a developer, project manager, and company owner.
   
3. Oh yeah, I have been an end-user all of my adult life.
   

I'm merely stating that if 1 million users want a feature that is nearly impossible for the way notes are currently being stored then that voting system will:

1. Be gamed for any who have that as a pet feature.

2. Raise expectations for a quick solution by Evernote even if it requires a mass rewrite of everything down to the core.

3. Create a false priorities list for Evernote - "this has been on the list for 3 weeks and 1M people want it!"

You keep making assertions without any basis of fact. These are actually just your opinion.

Your conclusions are not well founded.

I did not explicitly state that a voting system is *the* answer.

My point is that the company needs an accurate assement of customer feedback and requests.

As a non-programmer it gets hard to understand why the notes are stored in a doubly-linked list that's folded into a b-tree, or whatever, and why that even matters.

The customers don't need to have a detailed understanding of the design of the products they buy.

We make informed decisions every day, choosing all kinds of products that have the features we want.

Technology is rapidly advancing, so what might be considered impossible, or not practical yesterday, is now very feasible.

Customer requests can drive the product manufacturer to break through today's barriers.

I'm also not saying it is unimportant to know what the customer wants, just that a voting system doesn't work well with vote gaming and other social issues. Customer service reps can use a little intelligence and minimize this sort of bias. When it goes through the liason to the dev team they can make intelligent decisions based on real "ear to the rail" reports and not what some voting booth says.

And, the flip side of that coin is that it is very hard for programmers (who know their system intimately) to understand how a new user, who maybe is a computer novice, will view and use the app.

This is very true, that is why every good company has programmers, lead programmers, designers, project leads, executives, human resources, testers, etc. as well as customer service people to keep in touch with all aspects of the product. As evidenced here.

Experience has shown that if you do not properly involve real end-users in your development and testing you run a high risk of failure. It is very difficult for anyone inside of a company to have the perspective of a real end-user.

BTW, just to be clear, I am speaking in general terms of software development.

This may, or may not, apply to Evernote. I have no inside knowledge of Evernote's development process.

The Evernote concept is sheer genius. The reason Evernote is so popular (aside from being free) is that it meets a need that many of us have been asking for (In various ways) for many, many years. I want one place to put all info specific to me, and I want to have it available everywhere I am.

There is a long list of companies and people who kept saying this is not practical.

Microsoft missed an opportunity to own this space. OneNote is a great app. All they had to do is solve the trivial ( ) problem of making it available everywhere, and make a profit doing it.

[jbenson2 2,147]

This may, or may not, apply to Evernote. I have no inside knowledge of Evernote's development process.

The issue is not insider information on Evernote's development process.

Evernote has made it clear that they will not release a roadmap to the public.

The issue is whether a voting system will be effective.

In my opinion, a voting system will be gamed and serve no one.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

In my opinion, a voting system will be gamed and serve no one.

You're just complaining because I always get to vote 10 times.

Not to mention my dead relatives.

[heather 604]

While we're not putting in a voting system, we're always happy to accept feature requests, here and through our support form.

We've recently made a few changes around here that will make it a little more obvious for users to see which posts are actual feature requests, by having our moderators and staff members merge posts that ask for the same feature into one thread.

If something has a lot of posts by different users (and you need to be an Evernote user to post on these boards), we'll be able to see what features are really important to our vocal userbase.

Recently, for example, we consolidated all of the requests for a Linux client on this board, and found that there were only around 90 posts in that thread spanning 4 years - around half of them from moderators or employees explaining why we haven't developed one ourselves and pointing out someone who has.

Feature Requests, though, are just that - requests, and there's never a guarantee that anything will make it into our overall product suite. We have opened up our API so that if there's something you really, really want, we make it easy to design yourself.

[LKA 2]

Onenote was also amazing in many ways. I don't understand how Microsoft could blow that big change to dominate this area. They had the perfect iPad app long before the iPad existed, but they ignored the demand for full multi-platform, and released bad Onenote products/sync on web, IOS and their own phones.

I think it's all about listening to the customers in the most possible ways.

All this thinking ended up in a new thread. I will contintue here:

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/25965-100-years-is-a-long-journey-evernote-but-where-are-you-going/