A friend at work introduced me to UserVoice the other day because he thought it might be of use to Path of a Hero. This service is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. It has such a slick interface and was such a breeze to setup.
It allows me to track suggestions and bugs from the users of Path of a Hero. Users are given 10 votes to use on any of the existing suggestions and bugs and they are also allowed to add new ones.
This system has a lot of advantages including stopping duplicate suggestions, stopping suggestions from being lost and allowing the popular suggestions to rise to the top and be noticed.
From my point of view, this system (which will hopefully be embraced by users) really takes the load off of my shoulders. I have built the core Path of a Hero site, it is functional and people can start using it. Sure there are a lot of other cool ideas out there that could improve it however I need to make sure that it does not become bloated or overcomplicated. My main goal at the moment is to get the word out there and get more people using Path of a Hero before Lich King is released. The aim after that is to come back and look at the UserVoice site and start implementing the most popular suggestions. I really want this site to evolve over time however I want it to morph to better suit the users and not just me.
In my career I have seen a lot of situations where development work continues to add to a product and bloat it before the user is even brought in on the process. This sort of product bloat can be readily observed when using a Microsoft product for example. This reminds me of the YouTube clip below, a spoof of what would happened if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging.
I have targeted Path of a Hero towards provided very defined services and as a result it has remained light weight and simple. Moving forward, I need your help to keep it that way.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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