Running a Guix User and Contributor survey

Running a Guix User and Contributor survey

[Steve George]

Hi,

I've designed a 'Guix User and Contributor Survey' which I'd like to run to 
explore what users love about Guix, and how contributors interact 
with the project. I would love feedback on it.

The rationale for a survey is that it's a way to build up an understanding of 
our users and contributors which can inform our thoughts and decisions. As a 
project that's focused on user-freedom we don't use telemetry or have the 
resources to run professional user research. A survey provides a broad picture 
across our community, it standardises the questions that are asked and can 
show trends across our community. The proposal links to surveys by projects 
like Nix and Fedora which I've used for inspiration.

Informed by those surveys, and my own interations with Guix users I've selected 
questions that delve into how people are adopting and using Guix. The second 
part explores how people contribute to Guix and their interactions with the 
project. Please see the design document for the various considerations and 
constraints.

Some specific ways you can help are:

* The tricky part of running a survey is keeping it to a reasonable length, you 
quickly find there's lots you'd love to know, but the balancing factor is the 
more questions someone has to answer the lower the completion rate! Ideas on 
how to shorten the design while keeping the same areas of enquiry would be 
welcome.

* I'm sure there are alternative word options that might be clearer, along with 
the inevitable typos: either a PR (it's on Codeberg where anyone can create an 
account) or a patch would be welcome.

* If anyone has skills/experience in analysing results and would like to get 
involved I would love help.

Depending on the response/feedback I'll then move into implementing and running it. All the details here:

https://codeberg.org/futurile/guix-survey/src/branch/main/guix-user-contributor-survey-proposal.md

Thanks,

Steve / Futurile

Re: Running a Guix User and Contributor survey

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi Steve,

On 30/10/24 12:03, Steve George wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've designed a 'Guix User and Contributor Survey' which I'd like to run to
> explore what users love about Guix, and how contributors interact
> with the project. I would love feedback on it.
>
> The rationale for a survey is that it's a way to build up an understanding of
> our users and contributors which can inform our thoughts and decisions. As a
> project that's focused on user-freedom we don't use telemetry or have the
> resources to run professional user research. A survey provides a broad picture
> across our community, it standardises the questions that are asked and can
> show trends across our community. The proposal links to surveys by projects
> like Nix and Fedora which I've used for inspiration.

I gave it a first look, and I want to see the results already :)


> Informed by those surveys, and my own interations with Guix users I've selected
> questions that delve into how people are adopting and using Guix. The second
> part explores how people contribute to Guix and their interactions with the
> project. Please see the design document for the various considerations and
> constraints.
>
> Some specific ways you can help are:
>
> * The tricky part of running a survey is keeping it to a reasonable length, you
> quickly find there's lots you'd love to know, but the balancing factor is the
> more questions someone has to answer the lower the completion rate! Ideas on
> how to shorten the design while keeping the same areas of enquiry would be
> welcome.

Personally, I think it is a bit long. Would it make sense to make it two 
surveys instead, one for users and one for contributors?

I'm thinking that if it is perceived as lengthy, people might omit the 
free-form questions at the end or be too tired to express themselves as 
they'd like to.


> * I'm sure there are alternative word options that might be clearer, along with
> the inevitable typos: either a PR (it's on Codeberg where anyone can create an
> account) or a patch would be welcome.

I only noticed one typo:

+ decison making → decision making

And two trifles⸮:

1. "Guixers" used to refer to "Guix denizens". I would omit it because, 
to my knowledge, the community hasn't decided on an English demonym yet 
(/me runs and takes cover).
2. Use of "Linux" in the first and other questions to refer to GNU/Linux 
distributions in general. I'd use the latter, to follow the same 
convention used in Guix documentation.

That's all for now.

Looking forward to survey publication :)


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