Question about Ideas

[OceanHydroAU]

The "All Ideas" link (Look to your right on this page) does NOT have Fusion 360 listed a a product (at least for me).

https://forums.autodesk.com/?interaction_style=idea

Despite that, I've tried to post there, but I'm blocked (red message says I do not have authority).

However, There does appear to *be* an "ideastation" board for Fusion 360, which I notice others can post into, even though it's not listed as existing:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/idb-p/125/tab/most-kudoed

Is that a bug (forgotten to put Fusion360 in the product index) or a feature (blocking certain kinds of customers, of which I guess I'm one, from seeing/using that?)

Also - is (or can there please be) an "ideas" board for non-product-related feature requests (e.g. general website, or manuals/doc ideas)?

Basically - I want to suggest that you let customers "reply" or "comment" on product documentation pages (e.g. https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-159d94b4-b7e1-4388-8232-90fc1b713cb3 ) because almost all of them are screaming out to have just a little bit more information in them.  e.g. in the above, it tells you what you get, but does not tell you what that actually *means* [almost all your doc suffers this same problem] - if readers can add comments (suggest: moderated by staff or other trusted users) we can add useful hints for everyone that way - like in the above "Every sketch is edited using X and Y only, regardless of the orientation of the sketch to the whole design.  xDirection informs you of that orientation if you need to know it".

That would be a feature idea for all Autodesk doc, not just Fusion 360.  Consider the success of "stack exchange" etc - you could bring the power of crowdsourcing all your own customers, to auto-improve your products with just a tiny bit of effort...

@brianrepp - for you maybe?

[jodom4 · Accepted solution]

Hey Chris,

Earlier this year we retired the IdeaStation and replaced it with the Feedback Hub. Here's a little blurb on why:

Now that Fusion 360 is six years old, and although there’s a wide array of improvements and additional capability in its future, it is becoming a more mature product. In this time, the IdeaStation has been a valuable source of feedback, brilliant new ideas, and improvements to existing workflows. It has played a crucial role in shaping Fusion 360’s roadmap and has helped us balance our priorities. Your input has been a critical part of the development process.

The IdeaStation now has an incredible amount of customer input, with over 8,000 ideas. However, due to the sheer volume of ideas, there are often great nuggets of feedback that get lost, and are frequently repeated in multiple posts by different users. Even for the idea’s we’ve accepted, it’s become difficult to draw attention from the community to influence our active development projects. This, combined with the product’s maturity and our clarity of vision for its future, mean that we need a new way to gather feedback more constructively and efficiently, for you and for us.

Today we’re announcing the new Feedback Hub. This will be a new forum, with an experience similar to the IdeaStation, but with a few key differences. Autodesk staff will be soliciting your input on specific features, improvements, experience, bug priorities, conducting studies / surveys, and previews, to name a few.  Autodesk Product Managers, User Experience designers, and Researchers will have posting privileges on this new forum, and everyone will have commenting privileges.

We believe this new approach will make for more productive conversations about the product, will ensure direct contact between you and the Autodesk staff responsible for specific aspects of the product, and will ultimately make for more meaningful user input in shaping the future of Fusion 360.Given this new approach to gathering user input, we plan to archive the existing IdeaStation early next year. Product Managers and other staff will be replying to the top rated ideas as we launch the Feedback Hub, but it’s our belief that at this time, the IdeaStation model has served its purpose.  The archive of the IdeaStation will be something the Autodesk team will continue to reference as we move forward, but voting and commenting will be disabled.

That said, commenting on product documentation is an interesting idea. I'll make sure the people responsible for it have a look at this post.

Thanks for the idea, and thanks for being so active on the forums lately- we've noticed!

[jodom4]

Okay, looks like you can comment. You just have to click "No" under "Was this helpful?" The documentation team actively triages these comments and makes improvements based on feedback.