[Freedombox-discuss] Iomega iConnect lessons for FreedomBox
Dear all,
(I've been loosely following the freedombox idea and now project for 8
months or so, and am just starting to participate to what looks like a
fantastic project!).
>> Commercial gadgets are very good at hiding the guts, even when they
>> happen to be Linux-based. Occasionally, they tolerate some tinkering,
>> but only in rare celebrated cases (eg. the Linksys WRT54g)
>>
>> In our case, we're working from the opposite direction. That is, we have
>> a pile of Debian-based ingredients from which to tinker and build a
>> FreedomBox, but we'll at some point need a unified umbrella of user
>> interface and convention to tie together disparate parts. That seems to
>> go against the grain a bit, I think, but needs to be addressed in some way.
>>
>> At Mozilla, we have a UX design team: http://planet.firefox.com/ux/
> Yes, we need one of those.
>> Their decisions are sometimes controversial, but there are at least
>> people considering the issues overall and making the decisions.
>>
>>> Bulletproofing is important but can only take us so far. We have to
>>> think hard about end-user support. The usual "Find us in IRC and
>>> hope nobody insults you." isn't sufficient here.
>> +1
>>
>>> I'd love to hear ideas on how we support end users and prevent
>>> early-adoption failure.
>> FWIW, we have this at Mozilla: http://support.mozilla.com/
>
Speaking of which, I was wondering how did Mozilla tackle the help,
feedback & (fast) improvement problems at the very beginning of Firefox?
(first stable version, first public launch?)
IMHO, online help that the users must themselves look for (or search for
on a dedicated website, the point being that it's user-driven) will work
well once the product or software is established as an important player,
but maybe not at the start. Firefox started from little and is now
widespread, so clearly passed that first "make or break" stage
successfully ; maybe that too could be instructive? (although the
situations are of course different, and hardware is invovled here)
S?bastien
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