Is there a Suggestion Scorecard?

Feature Requests & Ideas
1

I see a lot of postings here - does Formlabs keep track of how many (if any) of the suggestions posted here actually end up incorporated into software/firmware updates?

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Hi @gdmccormack,

Our engineering and development teams actively read the forums and listen to suggestions. We get many suggestions from the forum and directly from users (focus groups, repeated issues from tickets, etc).

From the hardware side (where I work at Formlabs), even minor changes to hardware can be very difficult and expensive once production has started (simple hardware changes can affect other components that would require additional design, testing, and tooling) . The Form 2 was designed with many user suggestions from the Form 1/1+ in mind and we will continue to develop future products with user input in mind.

Even though we may not reply to or obviously act on every suggestion, we take them very seriously and try to incorporate as much as possible. Please keep posting suggestions :slight_smile: .

Thank you all!

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Hi @Aaron_Silidker, thanks for responding! However you didn’t address my specific question. Of course you value customer feedback - it would be crazy for you to say otherwise :wink:

I’m asking if you collect and post DATA that shows a connection between a specific suggestion posted here and a new feature/function added to the hardware or software. I mean statistics, rather than assurances. For example, I learned the most recent firmware update for the Form 2 now allows the printer leveling UI to be run independently from starting a print job - @Cody said “we’re listening!”, which implied the feature was driven by user feedback that I could theoretically go back prior to the firmware update and see postings to that effect. If that’s all true, it should be easy to documents and advertise.

Without the scorecard the positive reinforcement (search Wikipedia for Ivan Pavalov) to taking the time to post a suggestion is effectively open-loop. I can post all sorts of suggestions, but what’s the payoff? However, if only one out of ten of my suggestions get incorporated (in some fashion) into a product update, then I’ll post ten suggestions :slight_smile:

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@gdmccormack I agree, a public consolidated feature list sorted by request score would be really useful. The number of times that the same feature is raised as a new thread is getting tiresome.

For example there’s at least 8 threads requesting 3D mouse support, and I don’t know how many threads on variable layer hieght, or Z resolution.

@formlabs It would surely be easier to track what users want - if feature requests were in a consolidated, scored list, maintained by Formlabs, but which was was public - and that users could just add “+1” and maybe also “+1 with prejudice” to ?

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Hi! Software developer here.

To answer your question directly: we don’t have any formal list of suggestions. The Autodesk suggestion site is a pretty neat way for them to track user feedback. On products that are more directly software oriented, I’ve seen JIRA used for tracking user ideas. In any case, thanks for pointing this out, and we’ll keep the “scorecard” in mind.

For more insight into how we handle suggestions, most of the software team reads the forums regularly, some more than others. We share in chat and discuss interesting ideas. To get developed the idea has to go through the gauntlet:

  1. If implemented, would it have the potential to break something on the printer? If it does, we either reject the idea or it bumps the complexity way up.
  2. Will the idea appeal to a large segment of our users or have high value for a particular segment of
    users?
  3. Is the idea compatible with our current process and machine? There are many ideas that just won’t work with what we currently ship. These ideas we’ll put on the shelf for a future product.
  4. How much effort is required for this idea? Both the effort to develop this feature and to maintain the feature in future releases is considered.
  5. Do we have the people available with the appropriate skills? Formlabs is pretty small. All of us have our specialties, and some features just don’t fit in any one person’s domain or the domain expert is busy working on other features. We switch things up, but it’s tough to do that too often. (ps: we’re growing fast, and we’re looking for great engineers! http://formlabs.com/company/careers/)
  6. Are there lower hanging fruit? If there is another idea that is easier to implement and has comparable reward we’ll tend to work on that first.

As we grow, we’re starting to broaden our scope. In the past we’ve been very focused on improving the print process and the reliability of the software. While we’re still committed to those, we’ve expanded to start working on making the entire workflow more intuitive, easy, and powerful.

Recent ideas that have worked their way into software are the multi-resolution layers and the return of the leveling screen. Check out the release notes: http://formlabs.com/products/preform/release-notes/. Scanning the release notes of the next pending release shows several more forum requests have been completed, and I’ll update once we release.

Edit: PreForm 2.7 is out with a number of new features (release notes). From that list, I found five items requested here on the forums:

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@Cody, thanks for the thorough response - perhaps too thorough!

I appreciate you sharing, but I consider 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 to be your job, and 2 to be our job. It’s the users’ job to like or not like what you do and communicate that opinion appropriately. There’s just some headwind however, and as @KevinHolmes points out, it’s very laborious to determine if any suggestion we’re about to post has already been raised. Threads are closed rather quickly, which forces another thread to start the topic over again. Like I said, “headwind”.

If I/we have at least planted a word in your head (“scorecard”) I suppose that’s progress. Here’s hoping the idea grows on you and your team, and a way is found to make some positive progress on it.

Thanks for listening!

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I would like to add to this conversation that is actually vital for your group to make what you are working on transparent to your user base. Formlabs touts the “Agile” policy, which fundamentally runs on rapid prototyping and customer driver feedback.

Adding to the forums a Roadmap of ideas, such as This would only benefit you as a company.

Best regards,
Anthony