Measure how easy it is for people to transition to Fusion360

[Anonymous]

I've seen some other suggestions related to features that would make this software more intuitive for people who are not machinists. I had a suggestion.

Apple used to do something very neat when evaulating how intuitive or easy to understand their products were.   When they introduced an interface change, they had a room where they would take users, give them a list of tasks to complete, and then film them (or watch through the 2 way mirror).  They had a lot of really amazing revelations with this approach (it's actually why the Apple symbol was upside down on laptops for so many years - when put in the room, customers would always turn the apple towards them and try to open it the wrong way.  Ultimately the fact that it looked stupid on TV trumped that, but there you go.)  

What I'm seeing with F360 is that you have a community of engineers and machinists who are already using similar tools in similar ways and are pretty much looking for specific refinements to the product, they already know what they are doing and what they want.  And then there are the other groups like me, coming from sectors like desktop publishing and are really having a hard time understanding how to do the simplest things (today I'm trying to bang out 16 different name plates for Christmas, something that would take me 20 minutes in photoshop, and I haven't finished on yet because I can't figure out how to select the top of my recessed text to make a chamfer on those edges...well, a way that doesn't involve me command clicking 20 times for each S in a name.)

I think it would be amazing if you brought in new users from different industry sectors and watched them, see what are the particular points and concepts that are causing roadblocks.  There's a whole world of people eyeing those 3D printers and CNC routers, with a whole universe worth of ideas.  Anything you can do to make the tool more accessible to us would be amazing.

[daniel_lyall]

interesting idea what would help is a compare of command name FAQ, this is one of the problems that needs solved, a lot of experinced user's have the same problem as new user's.

the learning material is and will be out of date for years to come, there are a lot of user youtube vid's out there that are more up to date just use a date filter.

[colin.smith]

Unfortunately this idea did not get the support of the community and as such we will not be pursuing it. Please feel free to rework and resubmit this one down the road. Thanks for taking the time to submit your idea.

[Anonymous]

I just re-read this response and realized what was bothering me about it.

Only pursuing something like this if it gets "community support" is silly.  They community I'm talking about doesn't even use your tools yet.  They download a copy, maybe spend a day or two fiddling around with it and then it goes right into the trash.

Let me say that again.  Right.  Into.  The.  Trash.

The community that would support this is throwing your software away right now.  It isn't even worth it for them to find a forum because the community I'm talking about are people who have a very high expectation that they can download a tool and it will be intuitive.  Someone who downloads Photoshop and uses it the first time won't be able to do what a professional can with it, but they can certainly reduce red eye and do some touch-up work and Print Something.

As long as you have the attitude that the people that are within your own community are the only ones who should be guiding the development of your product, you will continue to have technological inbreeding.