How happy are we with feature request and bug handling at Articulate?

The use of buttons (particularly the Storyline default buttons) and states is an example of code due for an overhaul. On the Articulate forums, I see many issues regarding the quirks new users experience when using buttons - e.g. hover appearing above selected state (logged 2014).

In a Jan 2023 tip from longtime staffer on how to combine hover and selected states the Bibby cut and paste button states technique (logged 2017) is demonstrated as a workaround to override default button behaviour, along with other ideas that users tend to figure out themselves over time (such as changing the appearance of hover to make it more subtle when it appears above other states).

Tidying up the default button behaviours to be more consistent and straightforward to program  would lessen the random outcomes that new users complain about. I have several workarounds to the button issues and use whatever is required at the time, which often involves testing and editing until it works; if it simply worked consistently every time without looking for workarounds that would be an improvement. Users often create their own *.png buttons externally (in an image editing app such as Adobe Illustrator) then import, which I often do also for working around the look of default hovers without having to use extra triggers. I often do this because others may end up having to deal with these later when making future updates to my courses.

When I have logged tickets and provided files, the initial response has often felt like the representative responding is providing content from a how-to-guide rather than responding directly to the issue encountered. The improvement suggestions I have logged with Articulate result only in a vague and non-commital autoreply email in my inbox. Some fellow users I know have given up logging issues with Articulate, other than the occasional support ticket if they require assistance on workarounds that are not well documented on the forums already and have a tight deadline to meet.

Hi all,

First, by way of introduction, I’m Kerry Munz, CTO at Articulate. I joined Articulate in December 2022, and one of my first initiatives was a listening tour among our Engineers, Support Team, and other key internal stakeholders. A key takeaway from all those conversations was a need to bring Engineering closer to our customers. As engineers, we have a duty to know our customers and understand their challenges ourselves so that we directly experience the impact of our work and our choices.

Reading through this discussion, I hear the frustration and am saddened that you’ve lost faith in our communication, our quality, and are feeling abandoned. So, I would like the opportunity to listen and learn from you directly.

I’ll reach out to everyone who has posted in this discussion to schedule a group conversation to hear your concerns, ask and answer questions, and gather feedback from you on the changes we are making.

I am interested in hearing what changes are being made at Articulate towards improving Storyline.
As a longtime user of the software, I expect issues as I'm developing. I'm not saying that I plan for issues, because I can't do that as I'm not sure where the problem(s) will pop up or what workaround will need to be implemented when Storyline doesn't work as expected. Which is frequently! 
While I appreciate many of the improvements Articulate has implemented, those improvements would be more effective if other aspects of Storyline weren't so buggy. 

Here's my wish. i wish that whoever makes priority decisions for what gets coded would be forced to go through this forum, and read every post from the release of SL2 until today. Place every post in one of two categories: "How can I do ...?" and "This no longer works or doesn't work as it says it should". Leave out the feature requests entirely. You will find that before SL3, the vast majority of requests were for "How can I do this?" Since, the vast majority are for "This doesn't work (any more)." I think that should point the way very clearly to where coder's time should be focused. Once the app works, features can be added. I recognize that there are a lot of requests for features that are far more difficult to implement than they are worth, or if implemented can benefit only a small niche.

Kerry,

You can't hardly be surprised that a message thread like this has started, much less drawn the amount of traffic from as many hard-core users of the tool as it has. A brief tour through Discuss > Articulate Storyline will yield many more examples of the topic of this thread. What IS surprising is there aren't MORE of these threads, either here or off-site.

Canned responses from Articulate's mouthpieces followed by...absolutely nothing...sooner or later tend to catch up with you. The standoffish attitude I have seen harkens back to the days of Adobe long before they bought their way into the eLearning development toolspace by swallowing up Macromedia. As a beta tester for Macromedia for a LONG time, and a charter member of the Authorware Inner Circle (a curated group of power users from outside the organization who contributed, skunkworks-style, to the NEXT version of Authorware) it was obvious how much Macromedia was invested in not only in gathering user feedback, but APPLYING that feedback to the product line, at a time well before company-hosted, web-based user communities. From the early-90s through the mid-2000s, there was no other game in town with the depth and breadth of Macromedia. It is thanks to their licensing Flash that you were even able to get your product off the ground. If more Macromedians and less Adobe-ians were running the show now, Storyline may well have never gotten the market position it has now.

Hi Kerry, good to see an Articulate rep on this thread.

As others have mentioned, this isn't a new problem and something we've been dealing with for years. I had a look through the forums recently just to look through examples of the frustrations I was feeling to make sure I wasn't alone. Nope, this has been going on for a long time. I've joked in the past that I think Articulate have one developer working on Storyline. It really does feel like that. I saw your email and am keen to meet and talk through some of the frustrations we feel with our interactions with support, such as the stock standard "That's a great suggestion, we recommend submitting a feature request". People stop doing that when they don't feel they are being listened to. Whether this is the case or not, it always feels that feature requests and bug reports are not publicly available for a reason. It means the users have less power to hold Articulate accountable. 

For example, I can submit bug reports and feature requests and as an account holder, I have no record of those, other than an email response. In my account, I should be able to view the feature requests and bug reports I've submitted.

It would be to see publicly feature requests, so that users can give them an upvote, This is all done via the forums at the moment with people just chiming in with a "+1". It would be great to see some of these things make it in to the roadmap too.

Also, recognised bugs need to be available publicly listed so we don't waste time in the forums and can first review if a big has been acknowledged and when a patch is likely to be released so we can communicate this to clients. 

I put a tongue in cheek video together recently to entertain myself and also illustrate a common experience on the forums.  I hope you can appreciate the funny side to this, but also the bang your head against the table frustration too.

Look forward to catching up.

Thanks for the ideas Sam. We’ve got multiple talented crews of engineers working on Storyline and we are committed to its success.

I like your idea of including feature requests and bug reports in your profile, plus adding feature upvotes. But today that would mean diverting engineers from working on the feature requests and bug fixes that help the community build courses. So we’re not prioritizing that at this time. More community features will be planned for the second half of the year so we should be able to give guidance then (instead of unhelpful vague platitudes).

The feedback I hear though is you are looking for more transparency on what’s coming, what’s not working, how we prioritize, and want to make sure we don’t have just one engineer working alone in a cave with no friends deciding on random things to work on. Got it.

By the way, the video seems to be private.

Here is to head banging together in 2023. Looking forward to meeting you.

Wow. Tumbleweeds even? Got it. Rolling up my sleeves and getting to work!

Matthew,

Man, why don't you tell us how you really feel? Instead of beating around the bush? (Or whatever the appropriate idiom is.) :)

Hey Matt, Understood. I didn't mean to imply I was asking for consulting. I thought you'd like to be included in the conversation for transparency but I understand I was wrong.

Thank you for the impact you had on a lot of the accessibility work the team did last year. Your feedback helped.