Feature Question - Comments?
I'm stuck on feature. 2 of my beta testers have asked for it, and 2 products that play in the same "space" as Pudding have it.
The feature is....
Commenting on the uploaded image.
There seems to be some open source code that will give me a huge head start in trying to implement it. But I'm not sure if it's "what's best" for designers.
Here is my sticking point.
You're a designer. You've made a creative piece for your client. You've uploaded it to Pudding, and sent an invite to your client to review it.
As Pudding works now, there is an intentionally small comment box (hidden behind a link). My hope would be that the client would leave only short comments, and not long drawn out explanations about how and where they want every pixel of the piece to be. (That's what they hired you for, right?)
If the client has the ability to comment on the piece, they'll do just that, and they'll do a lot of it.
They'll do all the things a client shouldn't!
On the other hand. Am I trying to fight a flood with single sandbag? I mean, my tool won't stop clients from demanding that this green dot NEEDS TO BE RED!!!
:)
Please let me know your thoughts. Comment below, or join me in the Pudding Discussion Group.
The feature is....
Commenting on the uploaded image.
There seems to be some open source code that will give me a huge head start in trying to implement it. But I'm not sure if it's "what's best" for designers.
Here is my sticking point.
You're a designer. You've made a creative piece for your client. You've uploaded it to Pudding, and sent an invite to your client to review it.
As Pudding works now, there is an intentionally small comment box (hidden behind a link). My hope would be that the client would leave only short comments, and not long drawn out explanations about how and where they want every pixel of the piece to be. (That's what they hired you for, right?)
If the client has the ability to comment on the piece, they'll do just that, and they'll do a lot of it.
They'll do all the things a client shouldn't!
On the other hand. Am I trying to fight a flood with single sandbag? I mean, my tool won't stop clients from demanding that this green dot NEEDS TO BE RED!!!
:)
Please let me know your thoughts. Comment below, or join me in the Pudding Discussion Group.
Labels: pudding
posted by Michael Sica at
11:37 PM
5 Comments:
Are you familiar with FogBugz? This is Joel Spolsky product, and he frequently explains that he intentionally doesn't put certain features into the product, for this reason exactly, because while the feature has no technical problems, it has the potential to cause social issues.
Hi Ayende,
Thanks for the comment.
I've followed JoelOnSoftware.com for years, and that mindset of making sure your software has the correct social response is definitely sticking in my brain.
I really need to talk to some more designers. One friend of mine, who is a designer, was asking me about the feature. But I need to pull from a larger pool.
I'm not too familiar with what the interface looks like, but I think you should make a small box that has a scroll. This way the client can write as much as they want, but it will be annoying for them to leave a very long comment. Long comments are sometimes bad, but personally I'd rather get all the feedback at once and avoid changes down the road (if possible).
-Chris-
In my experience how comments are given depends on clients preferences and how complex the jobs are.
I don't mind the small comment area for the reasons you mention. However, if you severely limit a client's ability to comment they may either get frustrated and start emailing or faxing comments, bypassing Pudding.
Personally, I like the Footnotes style comment tool -- and the reason I think it might work is that eventually clients will run out of space on a piece to put notes. In fact, can you even make the Footnote size a certain minimum size, like 25x25px or even 50x50px, so that eventually the piece will have limited space for comments?
The reason I think Footnotes may be useful is, I have a client just this week who had changes but she's an old proofreader, so she is all about writing *on* the proofs. She had a very hard time with emailing me changes -- and instead faxed me her changes written on printed proofs. :-)
So, we have to realize that there are many differnt clients out there, who have different preferred methods for commenting. Some might be OK with a small text field for the whole piece, while others might prefer in-place notes.
Here's an idea: What if you made both options part of a toolbar? The simple comment as an item and the Footnotes option for more comments?
Just thinking out loud here really -- my conern mainly is that if you limit clients too much and cramp their style of commenting, you risk them not liking your product or bypassing it with faxes. :-)
Maybe what you need are more, different kinds of clients testing the app to determine how they react to the options you'r talking about. And in particular, find people who are "write ons" rather than commenters, on purpose.
Chris/Mike - you're the second and third designer who has said it's needed.
I'm not sure it will be in my 1.0 launch, but it's probably going to be the first thing I add in.
Thanks for your insight!
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