Yesterday’s “Importing” Poll Results, Plus I Think I Know Why This Happened
Let’s get straight to the results from yesterday’s poll, because I think I’ve figured out why this whole Importing Process issue came about in the first place. Here ya go:
In short: 88% feel it won’t help at all. Ouch.
In short: 81% don’t like it or really hate it. Double-ouch.
By the way — the numbers for answer #4 were actually much LOWER (like 1% for question #2) when it was just the folks here on LightroomKillerTips.com d0ing the voting. Once I posted the link to these polls on Facebook, Twitter, etc., the positive numbers tripled.
OK, to sum up the combined poll results, we all pretty much:
(a) Don’t think it will help new users at all and will be either as much, or more confusing for them, and…
(b) As existing users, the vast majority (81%) of us pretty much hate it.
You probably didn’t need a survey poll to tell you that, but at least now we have one.
OK, so what do I think caused this whole Importing Process issue in the first place?
In short: for previous versions of Lightroom, even back to the original Lightroom 1.0, Adobe would release a free downloadable public Beta version so we could try it out months before it shipped. That way we could give the Lightroom team direct and immediate feedback on new features and the overall user experience. This unique community-based approach to development helped mold and shape the program the way we wanted it because Adobe really listened, and Lightroom wouldn’t be the program it is today without that community input.
Adobe has since stopped that public beta program, and it seems they have now taken the approach of We know what’s best for you and that’s how we wound up where we are today — with a major change to our workflow that exisiting users pretty much hate, and there’s little hope it will help the very people Adobe had redesigned it for in the first place — new users. Had Adobe asked the entire community beforehand and gotten their real world feedback, we all wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place (and we are all in this together).
The Import thing is what it is, but what surprises me most is….
The new Import Window doesn’t do a single thing the old one didn’t do. This new import scheme doesn’t add any new features whatsoever — so why did Adobe have to take away features? It’s not like Adobe couldn’t have kept the old window because the old window design wouldn’t support some new great new feature they introduced last week. That would make sense (i.e.“We had to redesign it to bring you this great new feature…”) but they didn’t introduce a single new Import feature — instead they actually took some away.
So, it does what it always did — import photos into Lightroom, but now it does it with less features than before and in a way that makes most users unhappy. I don’t get it.
More when I get more info
I’ve been talking with some folks at Adobe and hopefully we’ll hear more soon about the thinking, the vision, the missing features, and stuff like that, and when I have more I’ll share it here (or on “The Grid” if I hear anything by Wednesday at 4pm).
Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll – we have a great community here and we all want to help, and that’s a really great thing. 🙂
Best,
-Scott
