Candidate Questions for Creative Commons

Here're a list of questions I'll like to discuss with Creative Commons. Goal is to figure out if CC is a likely early adoptor of Kibble and their decision-making process about adoptor new productivity software. Thus, we need understand the needs and pain points of CC and to see how well it matches to what we are planning for Kibble.

In the first section, I try to understand the basic workflows of Creative Commons staff, irrespective of tools used. The second section covers the PIM domain and electronics tools used in more specific detail and acts as a checklist for items not covered in the first section. Finally, I cover competitive issues and try to understand the decision making process for adopting Chandler itself.

Basic Creative Commons workflow understanding:

• What kinds of activities do you do on an everyday basis? What are things you do frequently and repeatedly?
• Where are the different places you work at (e.g. by your desk, travelling (commute, air), on the phone, in the field (e.g. schools), meetings internal/external)?
• What are the different kinds of communication and information you receive? What comes in electronically through the computer vs. other manual means?
• How do you collect, organize and review all these communications and information? How often do you do this?
• What tasks require organizing and reviewing of this information?
• How do you keep track of your tasks and measure progress on the tasks? Do you try to get all your tasks in one place?
• How do you jot down stuff you want to keep around? If on paper, do you ever file it into the computer? Why or why not?
• What are your biggest frustrations about how you perform your current tasks (not the content but the mechanics)? Ideas for improvement?

• Who are people you work with frequently, both within CC and outside?
• How do you work with them (e.g. phone, meetings, 1:1 discussions, email)? How do you coordinate your meetings?
• What are the stuff you work on together? Are there regular processes you follow?
• What are some end results of the collaboration?

• [Make note of how users transform their data they receive and collect to the form that they find usable for their different kinds of work]

Basic PIM workflow checklist

Do you and how do you use:

• Calendaring for
  • Reviewing/edit daily events
  • Reviewing/edit weekly events
  • Scheduling a new event for self
  • Reviewing/editing a shared calendar
  • Determining how busy you are (reviewing to see the forest)
  • Scheduling an event with someone else
  • Finding out if someone is free or busy
  • Are collaborative work different
    • between small groups (< 5 ppl) and larger groups?
    • for recurring vs. one-of events?
    • is one person "in charge" for coordinating a shared event? how so? [distinguish need for multiple authors]
  • Do you have a need for multiple calendars? e.g. do you separate work and home events?

• Email
  • What kinds of email do you get? Are they mainly action-oriented, conversations, for coordination, collaboration or just FYI (e.g. jokes)?
  • How often do you have email conversations? How effective are they? Do you end up switching face-to-face meeting?
  • Do you subscribe to mailing lists?
  • Do you feel you have a problem coping with all the emails you get? How do you mitigate this info overload problem?
  • Have you ever looked for an email you can no longer find?
  • Have you ever started replying to an email that you forgot to send out?
  • How do you determine which emails need follow-up?
  • How do you determine which emails need filing for later review or retrieval?
  • How often do you search for a particular email? What are the common scenarios?
  • How many email accounts do you have? If multiple, do you view them together or in different apps? What would you prefer?
  • Do you send documents back and forth through email? How well is that working? What are the frustrations?
  • Is Spam a problem? How do you cope with it?
  • Have you received viruses through email? How do you prevent such attacks?
  • Can we get a snapshot of your sidebar?

• Task Managing tools for:
  • Creating tasks
  • Reviewing and editing tasks
  • How do you make sure your task lists are up to date and reflect reality?
• Interoperability
  • What kind of information would you need to migrate over to start using Kibble?
  • Do you use a PDA? How do you keep your data in sync?
  • Do you use Outlook Web Access?
  • Do you have a need to interoperate email, calendaring or task info between applications?
  • When working with outside people (home or work), do you know what other PIM clients people have? Are there specific Outlook features that have not worked with any outside people?

Competition

• What do you like about your current tools?
• What are you frustrated about? What have you tried using and found not useful?
• Did you set up your own account settings? Do you know how to change them?
• How often do you ask IT staff for help?
• What kinds of tasks do you require of IT Staff?

• Have you used Yahoo! calendar? Would it fit your needs? How so or not so?

Group Adoption Dynamics

• Are you considering a new PIM now? Would you?
• Who are the key decision makers in considering whether to adopt Kibble?
• What would the decision making process be like?