Changemap - keeping users in the loop
Sam Toland
Public
Seen by 75
Hi All,
Just to recap I'm a pretty heavy Loomio user (I'm the co-ordinator of 2 groups, for two relatively big co-ops, we use it for board meetings and member forum functions). For context, Loomio is often the top daily 'productive' app according to RescueTime :)
The two groups are Gold subscribers too incidentally. (I am also an active member of two other groups which are Gold too).
While Loomio is proving very useful for what we are trying to achieve, there is still obviously a lot of scope not just for an increased feature set but refinement of a lot of the existing features.
As a user I am not particularly interested in participating too heavily in trying to steer your development plans - which under Loomio's structure is very much in Loomio's hands. But I would be really keen to have some understanding of the pipeline, timelines, priorities etc. - and some sense of what kind of features/refinements have been considered, what is being prioritised, what has been ruled out and what is upcoming.
I'm using a cool little indie app - Exist.io - and they have developed Changemap (I think they are offering beta access to other developers), which gives me a great sense of their engagement with user requests/suggestions and where they are going with the product at the moment.
I haven't found Loomio using a similar approach (could be wrong, if so - please link to it :) ) but it is something that I would consider implementing if I were part of the Loomio team.
As I have mentioned before on another thread - with at least one of the organisations, we are starting to have scaling issues with Loomio and certain flows with the platform get a bit tiresome at times. Knowing that features/refinements were in the pipeline, or that quality of life improvements were under consideration - would do a lot to keep me on the platform, and less likely to consider some of the alternatives out there (which occasionally I am tempted to do).
Still loving the product, and looking forward to further development and refinement! :)
mike_hales Thu 19 Apr 2018 7:41AM
It’s good to see this vision, thank you.
One small thing - am not convinced about wysiwyg, am happy with Markdown, would be pleased to see a halfway house like Ulysses' editor(which is excellent in the IOS version).
Regarding layout, would like to see inter-paragraph space reduced, so more of comment can be read without scrolling.
Julien Carnot Fri 20 Apr 2018 2:45PM
Thanks Robert for this insight. Seems like using the project view on GitHub would be a good way to keep this roadmap updated without spending time writing/copying explanations (they usually are in issues or PR descriptions). It could be linked from here and easier to comment or to contribute to...
Sam Toland Sat 21 Apr 2018 8:29AM
Thanks for the response, and the vision for the next while.
The inviting refinements are a definite want for our groups! :)
And the general refinement of decisions, to include draft + versioning would be a real game changers I think (Looking forward to testing it out). :)
Luke Flegg Thu 19 Apr 2018 9:56AM
Crumbs. That's an exciting roadmap mate.
Robert Guthrie · Wed 18 Apr 2018 10:03PM
Hi Sam, thanks for the thoughtful post and your support over the years.
We're currently in the final stages of a refactor that makes inviting people into a group, discussion or poll all use the same code. The new ability here is that you can invite people into a thread or poll without inviting them into your group. This paves the way for private threads between people.
After this we want to bring the decision tools into the main column, differentiate between polls and decisions more clearly, and enable people to pin individual items in a thread, so facilitators can make anything (a comment, or proposal or whatever) the focus of the discussion.
We're going to make proposals more flexible with draft mode (where votes are not binding (or disabled.. not sure), and you can get feedback to shape the proposal), versions (where you can update a proposal and increment it's version, and votes will show which version of the proposal they were for), and basic support for decisions processes other than consensus by letting people choose what options are available. There is a longer term plan in place to bring high level support for named decision making processes with linked help documentation.
The ability to give people titles/roles within a group is in there too.
The other big ticket is app support. With the thread changes mentioned above we feel ready to properly support mobile apps and also a desktop app. I think the app project will drive out the synchronisation issues people experience.
A wysiwyg text editor (which may bring collaborative document support), ability to record audio and video are also listed as goals for the year.
Finally there is also work going on to gradually rewrite the app with Vue.js (starting with the slowest components first).
That's my personal, unofficial, view of our roadmap for the year or so.