Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Urs Hunkler -
Number of replies: 10
Picture of Core developers

This morning I read the short article The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important and got some understanding how Moodle may evolve.

Jared Spool analysed that development stages mostly can be described with a simple four-stage progression:

  • Stage I is Technology
  • Stage II is Features
  • Stage III is Experience
  • Stage IV is Integration

I see Moodle as a relatively young and very successful program in Stage II - features. I work mostly in the area of experience and really don't understand why features are more important than experience. Features may be good for the product - experience is important for people.

Following the framework I would pinpoint Moodle to be proceeding towards the end of the features stage II. I at least hope so. Moodle version 2.0 might be a nice signal like "We are mostly complete now." and in a casual coincidence with the framework manifest the closure of stage II.

So it's time to prepare for the third stage - Experience. When I am not wrong stage III is waiting before the doors. All efforts to prepare a focus change towards the Moodle user experience will be well invested. (I'll repeat this insight to be able to stand the "torture" of the hopefully dieing away Moodle features stage wink

My activities will focus on base work for the Moodle experience area now.

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In reply to Urs Hunkler

Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Urs,

Thanks for the thought-provoking reference to The Market Maturity Framework article. I also recommend Experience IS the Product...and the only thing users care about By Peter Merholz.

As regards Moodle, how do you yourself view the transition from stage 2 (Features) to stage 3 (Experience)? It would be a stimulating challenge for Moodle users (and developers) to list some concrete examples of "fewer functions / better experience".

One example immediately springs to my mind, the new "roles" introduced in version 1.7, which I view as both a desirable feature and a true "experience nightmare".

All the best,

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Urs Hunkler -
Picture of Core developers
Joseph, "Experience IS the Product...and the only thing users care about" is a great article. Thanks for sharing it.
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In reply to Urs Hunkler

Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Such a progression may be a little simple, as there are various parts of Moodle in all those stages, and all those stages can happen at once in some areas.

However, like you I totally want to slow down the refactoring and new features after 2.0 and concentrate heavily on bugs and improving interfaces so I'm with you!
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Just H -
+1 for what Martin said smile

I'm one of those people who love new toys and functionality and tend to jump in at the deep end assuming I'll somehow fix something if I break it (soon as I was lucky enough to stumble over Moodle went straight to CVS and still update 2 or 3 times a week - and had basically never heard of CVS, PHP and SQL before then).

But I must say I've recently become a bit of a coward and am starting to fall behind (after a bad experience with initial 1.7 release I rolled back to 1.6 and am still on it).

I still want all that new functionality and more . . . and I want it NOW big grin but taking a few deep breathes at the moment before catching up. So, a short consolidation period would be nice . . . I guess! ;)

H
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Joan Codina Filba -
A bad experience can throw away a full product.
So, stability is a very important issue. Moodle is being used in places where some people likes it and wants to use it, but a lot more of them just use it because is the tool chosen by the school or university, or just because they are students. And all these people who use moodle because they have to, are not so tolerant to bugs, as the ones who have push for this wonderful tool.
When this happens is very difficult to move things forward. If we come back in 1.5 or 1.6 because it has proven to be more robust, then we are in trouble.
The alpha and Beta releases need to be checked more deeply,and maybe this is our (the community) fault. But once in production is difficult to set up a real test scenario, where not only workload is check, but many user tests are performed. It seems to me that the stable versions are 1.X.3+... so 1.x, 1.x.1 and 1.x.2 are the real beta versions, now 1.8 seems to me more unstable than 1.5.3 (the one was using before) some improvements are there, but a simple bug causes a big step backwards in "sceptic" users
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Kiril Ilarionov -
Moodle is a new application of mine,
and I peruse docs and forums.

I read
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Database_schemas
> Because every database is very different, there doesn't yet exist any way to do this in a platform-independent way.

In connection with refactoring
maybe there are some platform-independant ways?
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/dbixmyserver.html

The above article describes a proxy server about

  • Implement customized logging in the same server or remotely;
  • Automatically generate tests on demand;
  • Implement macros for the most common SQL expressions;
  • Let your database server execute shell commands and use email;
  • best of all: use other database server tables within MySQL

In practice, the web application + proxy server
can use database tables
from Postgres, SQLite and any DBMS
with DB module, http://cpan.org/

i.e. from 3-tier architecture to 4-tier architecture.

It is a small step to Stage IV (Integration)
and at the same time it moves to Stage III (Experience).

Is the refactoring in any
platform-independant way
an opportunity abput Stage III (Moodle experience)
and Moodle stability?

All the best,

Kiril


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In reply to Urs Hunkler

Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by Bryan Williams -
Well put Urs, and most timely! I agree with Martin also that Moodle is not simply in one of these stages at any given time and trying to grow into another. Much for example has already been done in Stage IV and a number of interesting integration projects are on the near horizon.

However, at the 50,000 foot level this is fairly accurate IMO. It would be refreshing to leave the break-neck emphasis on Features stage for a little calmer period of Experience. It seems to me the community was actually more Experience oriented in typical postings in 2004 than it has been this past 2 years since many new features have been added to core. Training new users on Moodle should become easier when there are predictable Features around which users gain Experience, without major changes disrupting the competency cycle coming every 6 months.
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In reply to Bryan Williams

Vast: Re: Article "The Market Maturity Framework is Still Important"

by lasse utti -
I agree with your opinion !

In old days posts were experience oriented. There was lot of "How-to-use" posts ... nowdays more "Where-is-bug" or "What's-wrong" stories.

It's good to read that there will be "calm" future in Moodle ... users can collect experience and deal it, taste features and find good ways for teaching/learning... that's our goal ( I think so wink ).

Urs's question: How to manage jump to next level is very important. It makes the difference between technical environment ( one of zillions ) and usable pedagogical environment ( like chalkboard wink ).

..Lasse..
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In reply to Urs Hunkler

Feature Richness and User Engagement

by Urs Hunkler -
Picture of Core developers

Writing about the relation of user engagement and features Jakob Nielsen offers some interesting insights about different feature levels of tools. Less is more - but not always.

Feature Richness and User Engagement

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In reply to Urs Hunkler

Re: Feature Richness and User Engagement

by Kiril Ilarionov -
Yes, the users have to extract a good conceptual model of a system through both a documentation and an user interface.

The good conceptual model is related to a good conceptual database schema.

The good conceptual DB schema is a platform-indepentent way to a
normalized DB core.

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