How ChinesePod is Dealing with Technical Issues

@xiaophil,

I hear you. I am assuming what you mean by 'disarray' is the the complexity and, frankly, awkwardness of the lesson management features on the site. In retrospect, the team tried to support too many types of users with only one type of tool resulting in something that was confusing for everyone. I am guilty of letting this happen.

To address this we are taking two actions. First, over the next few weeks we will be trying to remove some of the 'stupid' with the current system. Look for John and Catherine to kick off a discussion about the changes we are thinking about implementing late next week. In brief, the thinking is to separate the lesson presentation for My Lessons and My Courses into two separate pages and two feeds with the result that My Lessons will go back to how it worked in the past and My Courses will continue to support our Teacher Service students while not affecting our Subscription students.

Second, we have been thinking a lot about the process in how changes do get made. What we don't want to do is stop innovating because we are afraid of what might result. Instead, we want to be able to continue to roll out new types of web and mobile technologies to make the learning of languages easier. That said, we must be able to avoid disruptions and confusion over poorly designed initiatives like the Dashboard. As a result, going forward any initiative that isn't a 100% obvious improvement will need to go through a much more disciplined process of A/B testing and qualitative feedback to ensure that the change is actually having the expected impact that it was designed to. 

I sympathize with your frustration and am grateful that despite of it you continue to support ChinesePod with your feedback.

Thanks.

Hank,

I haven't had much time to check in recently, so I'm only just now getting to this.  Thanks for your detailed response.  I'm also glad to see the main server seems to be back online.

Let me just say my mind.  The website has been in disarray for over 8 months now.  I'm a basic subscriber.  I don't have the other functions and specialized services that other users have.  I basically have the podcasts and some online feedback via CPod staff and other users.  Therefore, having the glitchy website is perhaps more irritating for a person like me than others.

It is especially hard to accept because CPod significantly increased the price of basic subscribers some time ago.  This is after watching other users get new functions such as Skritter.  Now we find out that the Dashboard change was to help facilitate communication between teachers and their students.  I know that you guys feel the price increase was justified because there hadn't been an increase in some time.  But take a look at it from my end.  Where is that extra money from the basic subscribers going to?  Paying to have had Skritter and other functions added to the website which I can't use?  Paying for the creation of the dashboard and the fallout from it just to benefit teachers and their assigned students?  Also I can't help notice that we are not given a timeline for when we can expect these difficulties to be cleaned up.   We are only told that staff is working very hard.  It feels so endless to me.

Can you understand why I would be dismayed?  I really don't want to give you guys trouble.  I don't want the staff on your end to groan when you see that I am pointing out a flaw.  I really do like, liking CPod.  But dang.

Hankfdh, I'm curious about where site improvements such as the Progress tracking beta are in these four categories.  It looks as if the Publications team is responsible for site improvements.  I see the progress tracking beta as a helpful potential improvement with the incorporation of user feedback.  I realize that the beta may be rethought with other priorities now being worked, but still would love to see further development and user feedback incorporated in the beta.  Thanks.

matthiask,

John Biesnecker is handling issues regarding mobile development (iPhone and Android) as well as our API. He is coding out the iPhone app himself and working with the Chinese Android developers in our team. They are working to get both apps to support the groups architecture on the site (version 2.0) and then they plan to release a version with minor updates every week. Feature requests are funneled through a variety of our communication channels and added to a "Feature Wish List" that the team evaluates and prioritizes every week.

As for bugs, these are filtered through our customer support team and acted on ASAP. A lot of issues are the result of poor design and they take a little longer to work through as we are trying to be more methodical with our future updates to avoid creating new problems.

As for academic issues, internally we produce a daily report that highlights discussions that our academic team need to respond to. If that is not happening, Catherine Mathes the head of our Publications team will look into it.

Hi Hank,

thanks for your clear words on how Cpod is handling issues.

A few questions are left open for me:

Who will handle requests for mobile apps? The recent android update was a disaster and nobody seems to care or communicate about it.

Will it ever change that bug reports, problems on site or feature requests feel like begging? It needs severe repetition of an issue before there is even an answer from the cpod team - if any.

What is the policy regarding academic questions? I often see over the last months that questions will not be answered when asked in the community.

Matthias