Developer Network™ Joomla User Experience (JUX) Team May 2016 Update
The Joomla User Experience Team has been working hard since the beginning of the year. We have a new team and new goals and we are looking to the future. We are making a great effort to interact with the community and our users so we may recommend and develop changes that will benefit our current and future users.
Much of our 2016 effort has been research and organization, our research survey campaign kicked off in April and we have some preliminary data to share with the community.
April 2016 JUX Survey Results
Our initial survey launched in April 2016 went well. We received over 500 responses around 200 volunteers for more research over a 2 week period. The goal of this survey was not only to collect general information about Joomla usage, it was also to find more volunteers, and both goals were accomplished. The data we obtained is very general but it paints a picture we can learn from and use for more detailed research.
These are the raw stats as collected between April 19th and May 5th 2016:
A few initial insights from the raw data:
- Approximately 75% indicated interest in further research. This tells us our users want to be part of this process. Not only do we want their feedback, they want to give it to us.
- The Survey was put out on Joomla social media channels, so we know that our audience is mostly long time Joomla users, and people that already support Joomla.
- Nearly all of the respondents indicated a high level of experience with Joomla.
We know our fans are the main respondents of the survey, and on the surface this data is skewed. If we look at it the other way, it suggests that we do not have many beginners to intermediate users, at least not on our social media channels. At the least, we can say our social media reach is not going much further than our own community.
Another analysis is that our platform is not growing. The majority of our user base consists of long time users and we are not bringing in many new users. Our current user base and contributors are always a top consideration, however, if we want to grow our platform we need to appeal to new users. We know Joomla has enough power to provide a great end user experience and still retain all the things make Joomla great.
More survey results and data coming soon. Thank you to all team members who helped make this survey happen, and thank you to all the users who participated. A more detailed analysis is in progress and we will be following up with all volunteers shortly.
JUX Recommendation
We strongly recommend that more resources be put into our team. Specifically for research, onboarding and marketing. In our opinion, there is nothing more important than bringing in new users and growing our community. Thus far, our research indicates that our current users face many usability issues, we believing addressing these concerns will not only keep our current user base happy, it will also facilitate the growth of our platform.
Growing our community is what we all want. If we can make even a minor increase in market share, we'll be adding thousands of new users & new contributors. This also means new customers for our extension developers and third party vendors. It means more sponsors, more resources, more clients for our site builders, integrators and everything else. A bigger market means a bigger community that provides more opportunities for our users. This needs to be our primary focus moving forward.
We can make our platform better and grow our community. This has to be a collaborative community effort, we cannot do it alone. Our users are demanding a better user experience and we can give it to them if we work together.
-- Cliff Pfeifer, JUX Team Lead
If you are interested in helping the Joomla User Experience efforts or joining the JUX Working Group, more information can be found here: