Wishes & Follow-ups

[Mjules]

Who follow up on these wishes?

Is there an implementation mechanism established internally at Graphisoft which allows to take care of these wishes on time?

[Paul King]

Sadly, if the Australasian reseller / Addon developer Central Innovation (previously Cadimage) are anything to go by, user requests are nowadays simply ignored. 

The user is always told that the request has been 'added to the development database' - but I now know this is simply untrue.

This is clearly no more than a standard polite response intended to placate the user and quickly terminate a discussion that could otherwise risk becoming a management nightmare; i.e. actual user engagement with a developer, as happened frequently in the bad old days. 

The problem for corporate managers is that developers are natural and instinctive problem solvers - and problem solving is not like producing widgets on a production line where time and cost can easly be quantified.

So cynically winnowing down the real world problems that developers are exposed to and permitted to consider or incorporate into solutions, seems to be how new management have been gaining ever tighter control through the various corporate takeovers.

I now know for certian that user requests are simply not being recorded anywhere useful at CI at least, because more than once when I have requested an update on a longstanding problem with a tool reported years earlier,  I have been told they have no record of the original request - despite all the time and energy that went into formulating it.

I used to be quite active in bug reporting and engaging with developers - committing quite a lot of my own unpaid time - but following the realisation that developers are no longer likely to ever see let alone be given scope to meaningfully respond to any user feedback, I have pretty much given up these days. 

Through my time beta testing for GS, I am getting much the same sense from them in recent years.   

Developers are now clearly being actively sheilded from the expensive 'distraction' of user input and feedback on any feature not at a crisis level failure state.

In fairness GS at least do still record user wishes reported in testing, and both CI and GS still try to fix overt bugs that are reported, but with both CI and GS, these days there really is little chance management policy will allow wishes in relation to the design or operation of existing tools to be implimented - even when they are recorded.

It is clear that the early Archicad developer culture of active innovation, user responsiviveness and engagement has died, crushed under the heel of cynical corporate policy, both at Central Innovation, and at Graphisoft, in favour of short term profit extraction and develpment cost minimisation for the shareholders.

Any kind of developer engagement with users, or worse, developer initiative-taking in respose to user input seem to be the exact opposite of what the corporate administrators want, and they have certianly stamped any trace of this out in recent years.

All new development is now being stratigically redirected towards aquiring new users from other areas, knowing the existing user base is somewhat trapped in place by their own legacy of past projects and the platform specifc skillset of users.

This, in a nutshell, seems to reflect the problem with corporate takeovers - to justfy the aquisition cost, the new owners need to eternally seek substantive reductions in what is delivered to customers (i.e. reduce costs) while increasing the income derived per dollar spent on serving customers.

The vision, purpose and 'fire in the belly' driving the original founders towards innovation and quailty is replaced by corprate bean counters focused on minimising risk and securing their own positions and being seen to hit narrow corporate 'perfomance targets' for the next few years, before they move on.    

[DGSketcher]

This lack of GS response to users is an unfortunate position, because once you start clearing the backlog of bugs and reacting to day-to-day user feedback that is when your product evolves and shines above the competition. It becomes popular for its ease of use and as we know marketing is best delivered by reputation, not some oversell which only delivers disappointment. Ok we need innovation from any direction that is meaningful to the design process, but probably one of the more influential approaches is took look at customer frustration with the basic workflow and make it easier. Consider the choice between a new tool to show a widget or a change in workflow which halves the time you spent doing the same task 50 times a day, which would you rather see implemented? Its probably not as cool as bleeding edge BIM technologies, but a happy customer is money in the bank. 

[Mjules]

Many thanks, @Paul King and @DGSketcher for sharing your opinions on this topic!

Looks like Graphisoft is making the same mistake Quark made in the past. You can take a look at the following true story:

"How to Upset Your Primary Client Base: A Lesson from Quark

InDesign has become the industry standard for page layout software, but the history behind this is rather interesting—and amusing. Adobe InDesign was first released in 1999. Before InDesign, Adobe's primary page layout software application was PageMaker. However, PageMaker had lost most of its professional footing to its main competitor, QuarkXPress, by 1998.

InDesign may never have taken off so well without Quark making a huge mistake.

Before 2002, Quark had a 95 percent market share among professionals. When they released the then-newest version of QuarkXPress in 2002, they didn't care that Quark was incompatible with OS X. At the same time, the Quark CEO announced that "the Macintosh platform is shrinking," and suggested that anyone unhappy with Quark should "switch to something else." At that time, and still in the present time, most designers used macOS systems.

Quark's policies before this had been somewhat unfriendly for designers, but the announcement made it clear that Quark could care less about them. Infuriated by Quark's position, designers switched to InDesign in droves. And Quark took a huge hit. Once they realized the mistake, Quark tried releasing a version compatible with OS X. But the damage was already done—Quark was unable to coax many of the old designer base back due to the high price tag, strict licensing, and residual frustration.

So today, Quark is a very different company. As of 2010, Quark's US market share had fallen to below 25 percent. In order to maintain market value, Quark focused on embracing newer technologies such as web design compatibility, specialized automated workflows for large agencies, and variable digital printing for personalized marketing" (Source: AAU).

You can also share any other true stories similar to that. Maybe, Graphisoft could learn from them! This approach is proactive and aims to prevent Archicad from falling over the next 5 years.

[Laszlo Nagy · Accepted solution]

Guys, I can tell you that I am reporting wishes posted on Graphisoft Community on a weekly basis to GS HQ, which is then entered into a wishlist database and Graphisoft Product Owners and Product Managers are working from that database. But as you can imagine, the database is quite large as there have been many, many wishes over the years and many wishes are posted here every week.

[Mjules]

Thanks, Laszlo for this information. This makes me confident again!

[dcerezo]

This is my dream, to one day read this online or in my email:

"Attention Archicad Users! Don't miss our webinar next week where we will present our latest version of Archicad. We're calling it Archicad: You. This latest release is all about You, not us. We've spent the last year taking a break from trying to create a "game changing" feature or "revolutionary" new tool. No this year we rolled our sleeves up and got our house in order, for you...our clients. We fixed things like improving text tools. How about layer palette that stays open (or any palette for that matter)? Why not throw in multiple windows open at the same time so you can click on a door and see it in 3D, plan, and section? No problem. Can we get a shout out for the new Built in Keynoting tool!! Sorry to our dear friends at CadImage, but you folks have been carrying water for us for too long and frankly we're embarrassed about that one. Ooh, how about the ability to edit the right click context menu so you can have shortcuts to your favorite tools? Nice! Multi story stair via a simple checkbox? Sure why not. You want to change a door or window property via the Schedule window? Heck yeah! Change away baby! Even better, how cool would it be to drag and drop the doors and windows in the schedule, AND they auto renumber too!? Piece of cake. While we were at it, we improved all of those site modeling tools you guys have been asking us about for years. Of course, we didn't get to all of the bajillions of wishes and improvements you guys have begged us for, but geez did we make a serious dent in our to do list. So join us when we premier Archicad: You. The fact is this: we see You, we're here for You and let's face it...it's all about You. (Insert GIF of a mic drop here)

That's my dream.