Mar 09, 2021 08:00:00

What was the idea of one developer to collect feedback on software that tends to be lacking?

Open source software , which allows its modification and distribution regardless of commercial or non-commercial use and publishes the source code to a wide range of people, has contributed greatly to the development of technology by creating numerous projects. However, software engineer Simon Willison cites 'prone to lack of feedback' as a challenge in open software development, and has devised a solution to this challenge.

Open Source Project: Consider Running Business Hours
https://simonwillison.net/2021/Feb/19/office-hours/

The idea is to set up an 'office hour ' at a specific time of the week to actually talk to people who are interested in or are using the project. Office hours are the time that professors set up in the professor's office, that is, the office, to receive questions from students at universities. Willison thought that this would give users ideas and feedback, and put it into action.

Mr. Willison prepared 'Datasette ', an open source software for collecting and publishing his own data, as the subject of office hours. Every Friday from 9 am to 5 pm is divided into 30-minute units, and 30 minutes including a 5-minute break is set as office hours.

Then, use the schedule management service '

Calendly ' to solicit reservations, and set up so that you can have a conversation with the online conference tool 'Zoom' linked with Calendly. After limiting the dialogue to a maximum of 5 people a day and trying for about 2 months, he said that he succeeded in a total of 35 dialogues.

Through dialogue, Willison spent a very exciting time learning that his software was used around the world and for big projects such as historic graveyard records and library collection records. I'm talking about it.

'Without feedback, open source developers will spend a lot of time,' Willison said, while the office hour proposal was 'incredibly motivating, especially for startup projects.' I think it's very effective, 'he said, and encourages other developers to try this idea.