Building our future — together: Graphisoft Insights Follow-up

[Gordana Radonic]

Grow your influence

Following-up on our post on Graphisoft Insights, tell us your suggestions and ideas about the best way to move forward with our plans to involve you on various activities - such as beta testing, analysis, and exploring new product ideas.

Share your suggestions and ideas below!

[Alison_007]

Good ideia. I want to contribute. 

[scottjm]

Alot of the below is re-iteration what other have also said, but just my 2cents worth:

1. A public road, with fine grain detail on actual specific items / tools that are being planned to look at.  The current "Roadmap" is just buzz words, that doesn't actually tell anyone where the software development is heading.    Release the list of IDEA numbers and their status.  What about all the finicky little bugs we've been talking about for years, or the features that aren't quite 100% finished and appear to be abandoned.

2. Genuine user group consultations session.  Get input from the people who are actually at the coal face on how a new feature is going to be utilised or how the current workflows are causing issues. Consultation needs to actually happen before, not after a change/new feature is almost done and then told too bad can't change it now. The new Attribute Manager debacle from AC26 during Preview testing  should be proof enough on how important that is.

3. The ability for users to provide feedback / voting on planned features.  Refer the enscape feedback portal for a great place to start: https://portal.productboard.com/enscape3d/7-enscape-portal/tabs/17-feedback-wanted 

4. A better structure for the Wishes Forum.  It just seems to a bit of a wild west and some of the really great suggestions just get lost. I know sometimes a wish gets allocated an IDEA number, but this appears to be quite rate.  How is this determined? How often are the forums reviewed for potential suggestions?  The wishes forum seem a bit like giving the users the illusion of input without any intent of actually following through on it.

5. A significantly higher presence of Graphisoft developers and experts on these forums is needed.  If these forums are intended to be the primary portal between users and Graphisoft, a Graphisoft representative needs to be providing input on almost every topic.  The current moderators do an amazing job, but at the end of the day, they are individuals, not actually from Graphisoft.  From what I could deduce there are only 2 or 3 GS reps active on here. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Lastly, I am very keen to be involved in being able to provide input in how our firm works with Archicad, the struggles we currently face and how we believe they could be addressed.

Regards,

Scott

[Csongor BIRTOK]

Hi all,
I'm interested in anything related to GS products, so yes, count me in.

[thesleepofreason]

It is welcomed to see some action regarding this. Obviously - I'm interested in the future of Archicad and would like to participate in any initiative for user engagement/collaboration.

The interface between users and developers is crucial for the initiative to succeed. Yes, there are a lot of examples that would be better than the current situation but putting things on a board is far from a panacea (as shown recently by Autodesk/Revit). The interface needs to span the entire development process and facilitate collaboration and accountability at every stage from idea to implementation. Delivering on that would make GS best in class regarding this and their marketing would start to ring true. I have already put forward a outlined foundation of such a interface in an earlier post. 

Going forward it is important that GS presents a coherent and detailed proposal of the interface for user review before implementation as to avoid what we now have with the Community platform.

My priorities would be something like this:

1. Get a wish/idea feature in place. Don't spend resources on indexing or transferring the current list but commit to having the new feature under active management, playing a central part in the development process.  Apart from proper functionalities this means making sure that top voted wishes/ideas either get elevated in the development process or determined unfeasible or put on hold.

2. Get a research/feedback feature in place. Create a hub for all ongoing research/feedback of potential and already implemented features/functionalities which makes it easy for users to overview and partake. The current format of community posts is really not feasible - they get lost in amongst other posts and it is impossible to follow or have a associated discussion. 

3. Get an active development list in place with estimated time frame.  What can we expect to see in the coming year(s) and release(s)?

[DGSketcher]

---

@thesleepofreason wrote:

1. Get a wish/idea feature in place. ...  Apart from proper functionalities this means making sure that top voted wishes/ideas either get elevated in the development process or determined unfeasible or put on hold.

If it is "determined unfeasible" at least give a valid reason.

And please do not just put everything on "hold" under "Long Term Backlog"! This has been used too frequently to bury a lot of legitimate concerns aired during Beta testing. 

[thesleepofreason]

Yes, I assume some sort of procedural agreement that would entail actual change to how GS work. I don't see the initiative going forward without that.

The purpose of the unfeasible status would be to make GS accountable for their decided direction and priorities. For example, one question that got answered during the last Q&A was regarding AC's lack of support for methods/concepts fundamental to defining/describing a building efficiently. The answer was basically - yes these are very efficient methods but some come with a high price tag.

Well, if wishes for element types, multiple instance groups, reference planes, dynamic spatial constraints/configurations were marked as unfeasible then the user not willing or able to take on the cost of inefficiency or pass it downwards could make their judgement of the price tag of the by GS chosen direction and priorities.

[jl_lt]

As we collectively look into a binary star system sunset, eyes full of hope, lets take a moment to acknowledge Graphisoft finally at least wanting to have this conversation.  Good things should come out of this

[Erik Bjornhage]

I think that @Nathan Hildebrandt has stated exactly how a lot of us feel about the situation.

Like most that have replied I would also like to participate and be able to continue my involvement through Beta and Graphisoft Futures forum.

Community involvement should be staged with initial workshops/review/feedback taking place under an NDA (which already exists) before suggested workflows and solutions be elevated to full community consultation.

Again, it's great that there is more engagement from GS with the community - please don't drop the ball on this one.

[Erik Bjornhage]

Talking about GRAPHISOFT+Community interaction - I find it worrying that this discussion stopped. Would this thread not be a great place to keep the discussion going about how the users want to interact in early stages and how GS are looking to involve the user base?

...or are we looking down the same old road...

[Rex Maximilian]

I think your last sentence in your previous post was prophetic... they "did" drop the ball. Four months since the Building Together event, and nothing has changed, nor announcements of anything changing.

[gpowless]

I remember a saying Graphisoft once promoted but no longer true.

"By Architects FOR Architects" 

Now it would be more accurate to say:

"By programmers for Architects.....but only if coders agree it is useful."