BIMx Survey

[Roland Szabo]

Dear All,

You’ve given us valuable feedback in the past… now we’d like more input from you! Please help us by filling out a brief survey about BIMx.

With this survey, we’d like to learn more about your experiences and needs regarding BIMx. It should only take you about 15 minutes. The survey is anonymous, and your responses are confidential.

Please find the survey on this link: https://forms.office.com/r/7vLqwRHk11

If you have any questions regarding the survey, please contact Adam at Aszimilko@graphisoft.com.

Thanks for participating! Your feedback is key to our research, and it’s going to help us make BIMx better for you.

Best regards,
Roland

[jl_lt]

hi!. thanks for the survey.
i mean no disrespect but this forum is full of topics that need atention from you guys, many of them more important than bimx as bimx is for the most part at the tail end of the design process: to use bimx you need to have modelled correctly and confortably and there are very pressing issues in this area (there is also an open thread on bimx with valuable insights). hope you can check them out.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

jl_lt wrote:
hi!. thanks for the survey.
i mean no disrespect but this forum is full of topics that need atention from you guys, many of them more important than bimx as bimx is for the most part at the tail end of the design process: to use bimx you need to have modelled correctly and confortably and there are very pressing issues in this area (there is also an open thread on bimx with valuable insights). hope you can check them out.

I'm going to take the opportunity here to disagree with you and take the even rarer stance of siding with Graphisoft on this one.


My reading of this is that the BIMx development team, having seen the less than positive reception and feedback on the latest iteration of BIMx pro (or BIMx Labs) after eroding a lot of the features that most are already familiar with and rely on, took it upon themselves to pro-actively try to engage with users to try to find a better way out of this.
I can't really fault them for this specifically (the method, I have issues with. More on that later....).
I wish other development heads and development teams for other aspects of ArchiCAD (particularly on the main program itself) were equally as proactive themselves.

As a user who's spent many a year after year during releases bemoaning their lack of interaction with customers and users and their anemic customer relations and PR, I really would hate to discourage them if this is a new approach they're taking. Even if at the moment it seems to be (just?) the BIMx team doing so.

Sometimes you have to give them credit when its due and to the degree - ANY degree really - that they try to engage directly with customers, I am all here for it.

Having said all that ,.....( I DID warn there would be a "but"), I can't say I'm too enthused about the "survey" and "polls" methodology of going about it.

There's that old joke from politics (Actually, I believe from an old episode of that great British sitcom of years yonder - 'Yes, Minister' - just to show how old I am, or at least how old my tastes are) of how you could use a public survey or a poll to justify just about any result you want the outcome to validate. And in it the Secretary to the Minister played by the inimitable (and late great) Sir Nigel Hawthorn gives an anecdote of how he could get different polar opposite responses from a public survey when asked the same question, but having it asked in completely different ways. Which was just a corollary of the modern day situation where politicians today can use public poll results of an issue to "spin" it to mean whatever they want it to mean.

I'm not saying Graphisoft are politicians who use these polls and surveys to manipulate user sentiment (or at least I hope not).
But to draw the example and comparison to the Wishlist section where I believe it's biggest failing is the poll-based feedback solicitation system, if you have a user posting a wish that receives 100 responses of which 70 responders say it is vital for GS to address it versus the rest of the 30 users who range from "yes its important but not vital" all the way to "No, it's not important at all" - in other words, a 70% response - on the one hand, and on the other you have another user post another wish that receives only 15 Reponses but all 15 list it as vital (i.e 100% response rate), which Wish does Graphisoft prioritize then?

The 70% response one with more responders or the 100% response one with far fewer responders?
And further how does their system account for Wishes that receive high response rates only because (for whatever reason) they got higher visibility and exposure, versus Wishes which, although they received lower responses, it was mainly because most people were not even aware that it was a wish posted up (even if they deem it important).
I'm sure they have they system for sorting it out (one that prioritizes their own internal roadmap and priorities), but therein lies the rub with the whole, placing greater importance on what you want or need to in seeking feedback that you get back in the form of compiled cold data and numbers.

I've always found surveys and polls to be problematic means of eliciting information from masses - even while I realize and appreciate the difficulties and complexities of having to deal with large volumes of data and information to do so and get useful information.

I'm not sure what the way out of it is, but at the very least, dialog and interaction is a good place to start.
To get better feedback and information from which, and with which to work with, and to better and more efficiently be able to use your time focusing on things that are really needed and to have an all-around beneficial process for both ends of the development-to-user cycle, I believe.

I'm all for this,....is what I'm trying to so, in such a long-winded way. And I would hope you would infect other folks at GS to think this way and not be shy to get better feedback from users like this (preferably BEFORE you go developing the features and not after you've expended all the valuable time and resources doing so, when any of many would have simply told you "We don't need this feature".)

[jl_lt]

Bricklyne wrote:


(preferably BEFORE you go developing the features and not after you've expended all the valuable time and resources doing so, when any of many would have simply told you "We don't need this feature".)

Hi Mr. Bricklyne, i dont disagree with any of what you say here. You are right: I apologize if my first response sounded a little bit rude.

But it is your last sentence that is the basis of my main gripe: why, of all the possible issues that need attention, all of which have been mentioned ad nauseaum in the forums, they choose to focus on a feature that, while useful, is not vital? As you say, any initiative from them should be encouraged, but user engagement BEFORE they make that desicion would be nice. A poll about a poll?

[Bricklyne Clarence]

jl_lt wrote:

Bricklyne wrote:


(preferably BEFORE you go developing the features and not after you've expended all the valuable time and resources doing so, when any of many would have simply told you "We don't need this feature".)

Hi Mr. Bricklyne, i dont disagree with any of what you say here. You are right: I apologize if my first response sounded a little bit rude.

But it is your last sentence that is the basis of my main gripe: why, of all the possible issues that need attention, all of which have been mentioned ad nauseaum in the forums, they choose to focus on a feature that, while useful, is not vital? As you say, any initiative from them should be encouraged, but user engagement BEFORE they make that desicion would be nice. A poll about a poll?

I can't argue with you on that point.
You're of course, right.

The only thing I can postulate or say (partly in their defense and partly as an attempt at an explanation), is that from my reading of it, Graphisoft, much like a lot of other software development companies, are divided and organized into different teams dealing with different aspects of the program, and that in this case it seems like it was the BIMx team that are taking the initiative to do this - not necessarily as a directive from GS HQ or from the top, or as a priority over the other aspects of the program that probably and arguably need more attention, but rather because as a team they feel they need to do better for their own part that they're responsible for.

Which I can't fault them for (as the BIMx development team), but which I would hope the other teams take note of and actually take a leaf from and take some proactive initiative themselves to do similar with the main program.

I could be wrong of course, in how I'm reading it. But that was how it felt to me.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Bricklyne wrote:
I'm all for this, ... is what I'm trying to do so, in such a long-winded way. And I would hope you would infect other folks at GS to think this way and not be shy to get better feedback from users like this (preferably BEFORE you go developing the features and not after you've expended all the valuable time and resources doing so when any of many would have simply told you "We don't need this feature".)

Guys,

Graphisoft is planning on launching Customer User Groups so users will have a lot more chances to directly talk to the product managers of Graphisoft about future features and development:

https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=74388

[Francois_MCD]

Hi @Roland Szabo 

I actually came to the community site to post a BIMx feature request and came across this great survey. I submitted my completed survey and included my feature request, I hope it is not too late to get into the priority queue?

I  also posted my feature request here: 

New Feature Request for BIMx for better "Project Info" control when publishing a BIMx Hyper-Model.

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishes-forum/Wishes-New-Feature-Request-for-BIMx-Project-Info-co...

We need better / full control of "Project Info" in Archicad when publishing to a BIMx Hyper-Model which we can not do at all at the moment. We can not exclude "Project Info" fields. It has become a priority for compliance with privacy / confidentiality legislation.

The rest of my notes and suggested solution  / feature request is in the post. 

[Roland Szabo]

Hi Francois,

It is not too late, many thanks for filling out the survey. I appreciate your detailed descriptions!

Project info control for BIMx export is a great idea. It has been added to the related wishes, the reference is IDEA-4383. We'll consider your requests when deciding about future developments. 

I encourage you to contact us through our support channel if any questions encountering. 

[Strawbale23]

The one thing BIMx requires and does not need a survery for as we have been asking for it for years now: please reverse the mouse input in freelook navigation!!!! Or at least give the option to inverse in the BIMx setup.

Freelook navigation is so utterly painful as it currently is set up, move to the right and the camera turns left and vise versa. My clients give up using BIMx because of this.