SIGIA-L Mail Archives: SIGIA-L: Getting users to prioritize
SIGIA-L: Getting users to prioritize
From: BERNARD,KELLI KATHLEEN (kbernard_at_ucla.edu)
Date: Sun Sep 09 2001 - 17:43:57 EDT
Hi everyone,
My team has been struggling with an issue recently that I would love some
help with. We are in the very early stages of defining a new software
planning program and are struggling with which features to include in the
first release. The client wants to know the bare minimum feature set that
they can get away with in the first release. They want to use feedback
from users combined with a technical/money assessment to decide what to
build first. In the words of the ever so thoughtful client, "why give
them a steak, when they'll be happy with a hamburger". Wow. (I think what
he really meant is, we eventually want to get to the steak, but we only
have time for a hamburger now).
My question to everyone is- how do we ask users which features are
critical? If I ask users to suggest features they would like to see in a
software planning program, they tend to have a difficult time coming up
with more than one or two ideas. If I show users screenshots of all the
potential features that could be included in the program, they may love
all of the them and pick more that what is absolutely necessary (this is
what is happening now). If I ask them to prioritize, they may put the
"coolest" features first, while ranking the basic necessities lower. By
using all three types of questions I'm able to get a fairly good idea of
which features are valuable, but does anyone know of specific techniques
or questions I can use to get the most accurate feedback possible? Do
users even know what they want (isn't that the real pain of all of
this?!)? I would love to hear everyone's suggestions/experiences with
this.
Thank you for all of your help. I realize this is more of a usability
question than IA, so if anyone has suggestions for other mailing lists I
could post this to I would love to hear them!
Kelli Bernard
Enfish Corporation
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