Feature Ideas, why is this a thing?

[jbeyer1]

What is the intent behind submitting feature ideas and how did this get to be a thing? 

The reason I ask this question is for few reasons

1. If the feature idea is such a great idea, then why is it so hard to find one to vote one.
2. Feature ideas are like posting a video of my cat in YouTube and hoping it goes viral.  I feel that the chances are about the same.
3. I teach biology and environmental science.  I actually have a very hard time writing a proper feature request because I don’t have the technical background to do so.  
4. It absolves Canvas of poor design if I have to submit a feature idea every time something doesn’t work as intended.  The tech person can just say, “It was designed to function that way, you will have to submit a feature idea.”  
5. If my feature idea goes viral then Canvas doesn’t implement it. The dreaded, “This idea will not influence this developmental cycle”. 

[Renee_Carney]

 @jbeyer1  

Thanks for sharing your perspective with us through questions.  Most of the answers to your question are provided in the 

How does the feature idea process work in the Canvas Community?  guide.

I will add a bit more detail to address your top level question - the overarching why. There are very few companies that allow users to submit feature ideas in the way we do.  Most require users to go through a single representative at their school or organization and then most of those ideas are submitted through a black box that is not public.  We believe in openness, which means we want the opportunity to hear from any user, no matter their title or role. We're not looking for technical descriptions or solutions, but instead, we're looking for use case examples of how things can be improved or innovated upon. We find it much more beneficial when an instructor like yourself describes what it is they're trying to accomplish than to present us with their technical 'ideal' solution. 

And please don't feel like you need to find and vote on an idea just to do so.  That's not the intent either. If something is important to you, then please do search, vote, and share your use case as a comment. 

[jbeyer1]

Hi Renee,

 How does the feature idea process work in the Canvas Community?  guide does not really explain how this got to be a thing.  According to the guide though, I do have to find the idea and vote on it, hope it gets into the 10th percentile or after six months it will be archived to make room to new ideas.  However as I stated before, I can't find them. 

   There are also loads of companies that welcome feedback from their users.  I don't really know a company that doesn't.  They typically have web portals set up for company feedback and idea suggestions.  Whenever I have submitted an idea, the company representative get back to me.  I actually have a better track record of change using this system then viral votes.  Why heck, they have even called me on the phone.  I didn't have to have my idea go viral before they considered it. 

    I am not saying this there isn't value to the system.  However if you go back and ready my points, I am making a case for how the system is flawed and why it leaves me feeling so frustrated and powerless.  I have tried to submit feature ideas and during review they were rejected.  I have tried voting on ideas only to see that have haven't been adopted (printing quizzes).  I have tried to let Canvas know when the system isn't functioning in a way that is beneficial to students and faculty only to be told that it was designed to work this way. 

    The current system leads to more frustration on my part.  The changes I am asking for are things that Blackboard made years ago due to customer feedback (i.e. I can make changes on a quiz).  However, Canvas refuses to do because of philosophical ideals which results in twice as much work to fix the issue or it's a third party app they have no control over. It's even better when people have to post on how they wrote a greasemonkey script because ultimately Canvas will not fix the issue (i.e. Sorting rubrics, yes Canvas designed rubrics so you could not sort them). 

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @jbeyer1 

I would like to add to what the estimable  @Renee_Carney  said. If you review the Release Notes, they identify which changes were prompted by Feature Ideas (FIs), and it is a rather large percentage of them. In fact, sometimes it is all of them!

You are correct in that it sometimes feel like you are hoping your Cat video goes viral, but this is actually a reflection of the staggering numbers of feature ideas submitted. There are a lot of "viral" FIs that never get implemented, and often for very good reasons.

And Renee was spot-on in her advice that you do not need to be a techie to submit an FI. Canvas really wants to hear about how you use Canvas and want to use Canvas; rather than a bunch of technical gobbledygook.

I have used five LMS over my long online career, and this is the first one that ever cared about the user's ideas for improving the product! I likes that! I likes it a lot!

Kelley

[jbeyer1]

I agree that it's nice to have a system that listens to you but at the same time if they will only listen if I get into the top 10% (viral cat video territory here), then are they really listening or did the feature idea just anger enough people that they decided to do something about it.  

As to the functionality in Canvas, I have never seen a system where there are so many work arounds posted by folks because that basic functionality is not baked into the system or the feature idea wasn't adopted (i.e. printing a quiz).  I have to vote on printing a quiz.  I mean I would think this would be considered a basic feature that any LMS would adopt but not Canvas.  No, it take it's a feature idea and apparently it hasn't gone viral because I still cannot print a quiz. 

[vanzandt]

Even the most viral ideas don't seem to always get the attention.https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1055-printable-pdf-exportable-quizzes" modifiedtitle="true" ti...

2100+ votes and counting... Highest number of votes in Ideas and originally proposed in 2015.

[jbeyer1]

Hi Todd,

This is a great example of what Canvas for all intent and practical puposes ignores.  There is no feedback on why this idea was not adopted.  This is an example of basic functionality that should be addressed.  Why? I have students that need a printed copy of an exam due to accessibility issues.  My testing center also requires a printed copy just in case the internet goes down or something else goes wrong.  We have students that sometimes drive 2 hours to take an exam in our testing centers.  They do not want to be told that they have to reschedule and a printed copy of the exam is a great method of backup. 

This is a basic fault of the feature idea system.  

[venitk]

 @kmeeusen   @Renee_Carney  D2L has the same system as Canvas where people can submit ideas (the Product Idea Exchange is what they called it). It's no longer unique in the LMS world. 

 @jbeyer1 ‌ I totally agree with what you're saying. 

I like the ability to submit Ideas, but I think there's a time and place for Ideas. An Idea should be something like, "wouldn't it be nice if..." (and yes, the song always plays in my head when I think of that phrase). In other words, the product is fine, but this additional functionality would make it work just a little bit better for me. I feel like this idea of mine falls under that category: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15153-make-allowed-threaded-replies-the-default

However, the Ideas system breaks down when something negatively impacts my ability to teach effectively, but it functions as designed. In other words, when something is poorly designed (but "functioning as intended"), or designed well initially but is not up-to-date with the current ecosystem.  

For example, the way that Announcements are sorted is coo-coo bananas and definitely NOT intuitive to anyone who didn't design it and doesn't study and look up and practice. This negatively impacts our instructors and students and negative impacts their learning. But it's functioning "as intended" so my only recourse, even though it makes the student and instructor experience WORSE, was to make an Idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/14433-fix-unexpected-behavior-un-delay-announcement-announceme...

But it's not a flashy idea, and I doubt it will get to the required 100 votes or whatever to get to the next level, so as far as I know this will never be addressed. And that's a shame because it really works very poorly.

Here's another one: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/13801-put-everything-with-a-due-date-on-the-calendar-and-sylla.... I'm sure that when the Calendar was designed, it worked great. But now there are practice quizzes with to-do dates on them that aren't showing up on the calendar (I'm guessing because practice quizzes with to-do dates came after the Calendar was designed, or the Calendar was originally just for graded assignments, but now it also has calendar events, so the purpose of the calendar has changed).

These are major problems that aren't apparent in Canvas unless you really dig into it. It took me months to figure out what was going on with my announcements being out of order (or being sent to students in weird ways), and I couldn't figure out why students weren't acting on practice quizzes that had to-do dates because nothing tells you when you're giving that practice quiz a to-do date that it won't appear on the Calendar. These are actual functionality issues that Canvas really should fix, regardless of how many people up-vote them. 

So I like Ideas, I like it a lot, but I think there should be a different stream for things that are higher priority that impact student learning.

[scottdennis]

Hi All,

First off I want to say that by responding in this thread I am not trying to downplay your frustration.  Frankly, we have a lot of room for improvement and we are constantly working with that in mind.  On the other hand I would like to clarify that only top voted ideas get a formal, written response, mainly due to workload.  However that does not mean only top voted ideas are read, considered and may influence our development priorities.  For example, when we make a decision to work on a given tool or functional area in Canvas, we will often read through all the use cases and comments on all the feature ideas that pertain to that thing in Canvas, trying to understand how people use it today, how it could be better etc.  Also, input via feature ideas is often considered alongside input from Customer Success Managers, Support technicians and security auditors.  It helps us get a more well rounded perspective.  Don't get me wrong - I have my own list of personal pet peeves but I wanted to point out that it is part of a bigger picture.

[venitk]

Thanks for your response,  @scottdennis ‌. The document linked to above makes it sound, to me, like ideas that aren't in the top 10% after six months are irrelevant and discarded (the doc uses the term "archived" and "cold storage"). Perhaps some of the language you used here might make sense in that document? I appreciate the chaos that would ensue if all ideas were kept open, but the impression I got from that document is that only ideas in the top 10% will be considered for implementation. 

For example: "Following six months, ideas in the top 10th percentile of the vote will remain in the general forum and open for voting. Ideas in the bottom 90th percentile will be archived and moved out of the general forum..."

"Honoring our commitment to not delete Community content, your idea may have made the journey to Cold Storage because of one of the following factors:

• The idea was not in the top 10 percentile of votes within its lifespan..."  [and cold storage is a different area altogether]

"Although all ideas are equally considered, the votes will help Instructure to better prioritize to meet needs." (This touches on a little of what you were saying, but it still sounds like ideas that aren't flashy enough to get the top 10% of votes, even those those issues are pretty important, will be de-prioritized.) 

[scottdennis]

Hi Katie,

It can be a little tricky to get all the ins and outs of this system (or maybe I am too close to it to be objective) but the fact that an idea moves to cold storage doesn't mean its time affecting the roadmap is necessarily over.  We have to try to strike a balance between not stifling people's voices and trying to keep the collection of ideas that are open for vote manageable.  Believe it or not there are people who keep track of allllll the ideas that are open.  Cold Storage is not visible to you in search results unless you choose to join that join that group.  Our hope there is that for casual observers content in cold storage will not surface but for people who want to see it in search results, it is still accessible.  There are the really highly voted ideas that lots of people want to see built that are all things that would be difficult to make happen for one reason or another - the easier ones get picked off before they get to high vote counts.  What is less immediately visible is that when we are getting ready to work on a given area of the product or are contemplating whether to embark on building something new one of the first things we often do is read through all the related ideas, including the ones in cold storage.  Oftentimes the use cases, problem statements and imagined solutions are invaluable in helping us understand why a certain demographic may want a feature or UI/UX improvement.  Because people log into the community via Canvas we can often tell a fair amount about who they are.  This often lets us tease out, for example, why people who teach in a community college might want a feature more than, say, someone at a university.  All in all the entire body of ideas that have accumulated over the years is a very valuable resource for us in seeking to better understand our users.

[venitk]

Thanks  @scottdennis . I was sharing my impression of the documents I've read about the Ideas process to let you know how they come across (not just to me but to other people, as evidenced by  @jbeyer1 's post). If that impression does not match Canvas's truth and intentions (as it sounds like it doesn't from your description here), then Canvas might want to change the way you portray and describe the Ideas process to correct that misunderstanding and help your users feel more heard. In other words, I appreciate your clarification and the time you took to respond here, but it's a widespread misunderstanding that isn't going to be solved by a comment on a single discussion.

My rhetorical question for you is, why isn't some of the language you used here also used in the description of the Ideas process? I know you don't want to clog up the page with a lot of text, but the text there gives the impression that Cold Storage is basically death to an idea and unless it's in the 10%, it doesn't matter. In other words, now that you have explained it, I don't have a problem with your process. But the language used in the documentation doesn't match your explanation here. 

If you want suggestions, I have some below. If that's not of interest, then feel free to skip the rest of this note.

One suggestion in the page I linked to above would be to expend on "Select ideas are moved from the general Community to keep the Community search results precise and uncluttered. If you want the additional chaos of more abundant search results, you can elect to join Cold Storage in order to see ALL idea submissions." A sentence could be added after this: "Cold Storage is used just to keep our users' view of the Ideas area uncluttered. Before we work on a given area of the product or are contemplating whether to build something new, we study all the related ideas--Open Ideas and in Cold Storage--to get the best idea of our users' experience with the product and to decide whether we should implement those, regardless of how many votes they received."

On this page: What is the feature development process for Canvas?  

This bullet point can be expanded to say "open ideas, cold storage ideas, discussions, questions..." 

• Review community content (ideas, discussions, questions, CanvasLive sessions, etc.)

This paragraph on the same page sounds like only those ideas with a lot of support are considered, so you might want to adjust this one as well to include a note about showing love for unpopular, but important, ideas:

"Community input is very important in all stages of this process. The Community Team meets weekly with the Product Team to translate and advocate for ideas that align with defined priorities or are rising to the top of the open forum. Feature idea relevance to a priority, voter demographic, total votes, and comments are just some of the factors taken into consideration."

Just some suggestions that might improve your new users' understanding of the process.

[scottdennis]

Hey Katie,

Thank you for these suggestions.  I don't have time today to read through our guide and consider updates but I will next week.  Thanks again for your time and for helping us think through this.

[venitk]

Actually, in light of Joressia's most recent comment above, I'm going to change my statement: I don't have a problem with the idea process anymore in light of how you described it for things that are "nice to have." But for things that truly negatively impact student learning and teachers' abilities to do their jobs (or make instructors seem incompetent because there is no warning that something in canvas couldn't work as intuitively expected--ie, practice quiz due dates not showing up on the calendar), there should be another pathway. 

[James]

This is a repeat of an oft-voiced theme. Much of it has been addressed before in other places. I would like to focus on something that I haven't seen much mention of (and bring up a few of the other points).

The chance of an idea mentioned in the community influencing development within the next three months is necessarily small. It's the wrong thing for people to look at.

Let me explain. I'm acknowledging up front that I'll get some of the details wrong.

Canvas has a roadmap that goes out much further than the next 3 months. The further out things are, the less crowded the space is and the more available time and resources there are. When you're 1.5 years out, there are some big ideas but still space for other things. When you get down to 1 year out, some of the space has been filled in by other projects or by better analyzing how much work is required for the big projects. Those big ideas get listed in the Priorities and Ideas area. They also change over time. The closer they are to implementation, the better defined they are. That also means they have a better idea of exactly what is involved and how much time it will take. They also take a bigger chunk of the available resources since they're past the "let's figure out what we're going to do" phase and moved on to development. By that point, it's difficult to change how things are going to be implemented.

By the time you get to six months out and even three months out, the available resources for introducing new things is a small percentage of the overall time available. 

In other words, Canvas doesn't have much time or resources to allocate to new ideas that haven't already been considered when they get to the three month mark. By the time they can say "this will influence development this quarter," or the more-frequent "this will not influence development this quarter," there's very little room for anything new.

The most recent change is that now Canvas is responding with a more definitive result than they did before.

Before we were left in limbo. There was a period of time where it was on "Product Radar" and that meant that they were aware of it and, I think, that they had at least talked about it internally. It didn't mean they were working on developing it or that if they were, that it would be developed exactly as described in the feature idea. It might have even meant that they had discussed and decided that it wouldn't be going forward at the current point in time. All we had in the Community was "product radar."

Product Radar was better than what we had before that. They keep adapting and revising the process and it gets more open each time.

With the move from product radar to where we're at now, they decided they would let us know what was going to happen within the current quarter. They can't do that for every idea that's out there, so they picked an arbitrary amount (10%) to let us know about. They also don't want to be too prescriptive because there are a lot of ideas that they may want to implement but they're not as high of a priority and they don't know when they're going to get to them. If they promise that something will happen in the next year and it doesn't, then everyone who wanted that idea is upset because Canvas didn't deliver. If I were Instructure, I would be wary of promising too much too soon after what happened in the first three years of New Quizzes or SpeedGrader 2.0. But by the time they get down to three months, they have a pretty good idea of what's going to be worked on.

The process is not perfect, but it is better than it used to be. They're telling us the long term projects in one spot and they're telling us the immediate projects in another. Instructure keeps improving the way they present information to us. The documentation team is now disseminating the information in multiple documents. It used to be that we would get release notes. Now there are multiple release notes, formatted and organized in several ways, and it's much easier to find information.

There's also the issue of community ideas being just one of the places where the ideas come from. The documentation team has addressed all of this previously.

Probably more important is whether those ideas fit into the bigger picture. People hold beliefs about things that come from their experiences. If you have different experiences, you believe differently. You think Canvas should do one thing but someone else thinks that's the stupidest idea ever and that it should happen another way. Canvas has to reconcile those and come up with something that works for most. Or it may be so polarizing that there is no good solution.

There have been some ideas here that got a lot of votes because instructors had all of their students sign in an vote for it or because a Canvas admin at a very large school got many of their faculty to vote it up. Some of those ideas have been highly specialized that would benefit one particular school or perhaps a particular state, but it wouldn't have much use outside of that. Canvas is bigger than one school, state, or even country. By the way, one of those ideas I'm thinking of finally did get developed, years later, and there is now a calculator in New Quizzes. It's not the one that was suggested in that original feature idea and I believe I read that the people who made the request aren't even using the same calculator anymore that they were when they made the request.

Other times, people have ideas that improve the functionality in a small way. In fairness, Canvas has steered us that way by telling us not to write a kitchen sink requests and if there are multiple requests within an idea, then it's difficult for Canvas to track which ones really have traction. But if Canvas is considering overhauling an entire area, such as communications, then making short-term changes to allow HTML within submission comments may not line up with the long-term goal. It also means that Canvas now has to support that going forward for a while, even if it was a temporary solution.

One of the most insightful statements I've seen is when Canvas said "we're not developing [legacy] quizzes any more." Then you knew. You didn't have to worry about it. There was no more questioning. No more anxiety. No more scanning through your favorite requests every three months with the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there would be movement. Of course, they went and broke it because they were developing internationalization support, but that's a different issue. They also have started commenting on why ideas are archived. That was better than them just being moved to cold storage without an explanation.

It is really frustrating to see the thing that you're passionate about sit on the sideline and not get developed. It may seem that Canvas is intentionally rubbing a sore when they keep reiterating that it won't be worked on this quarter. They're not, but the underlying processes make it difficult to ever say something will be worked on within the next three months when it hasn't already been flagged somewhere else.

[cdoherty]

What Instructure doesn't get is that a usability bug (user experience that is so poorly designed, it causes users to fail) does not equal a feature idea. Everything about the way the company handles usability bugs is dead wrong. Support should not brush off user feedback by saying it's working as intended and go log a feature idea. I think that is the company's way of avoiding fixing their bad design, since they don't have time to implement most feature ideas. Only 'nice to have' improvements should fall under this category.

[jbeyer1]

This is why I do not like feature ideas.  This "idea" is in the top 10% and yet Canvas refuses to address it.  This comes down to basic functionality.  Again, why is this a thing? 

[lauren_sayer]

I think the big issue for me with the community is when you live in a region (such as Australia) and our regional needs do not often get to the top of voting lists because our education system is different.  I hope that this is taken into consideration 

[scottdennis]

Hi Lauren,

Regional needs actually do get taken into account although that isn't as transparent here in the community.  There are product managers tasked with trying to figure out specific regional needs and get them inserted into the priority process.  For instance lets say that before people in, say, Wales could begin using Canvas we would need to add a given feature because of a specific law that governs online education in Whales (again, making that up for sake of an example), then Welsh people are are not going to be voting in any larger numbers.  That is why we have Product people who research given regions and before we decide to start supporting Canvas in that region we try to figure out the deal breaker functionality for that region.  Going back a few years, double blind grading would be a real example.