Re: [LAD] [LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?

An idea is to make a popup that comes up occasionally (maybe once a month or so) when starting/closing the application. This popup could do several things that could increase the participation of users, for example: a) Provide encouragement for involvement. Like "Do you like this application? Help improve it by visiting our forums and let us know what you think!".

b) Provide direct links to ongoing user surveys. This is a golden one for any application I really think. In UI-design, contact and feedback from the end-user (the people that actually use your application) is golden. Especially for smaller development teams, where you've been developing/designing the same application for very long, which of course makes every part of the UI natural and intuitive to you Since it's free and open source, people hopefully/likely won't mind helping out this way. Not everyone has the economy to donate actual money to all projects around there, but anyone can sit down and state pro's, con's and perceived issues with the software. You just need an incentive (that the dev actually care about what you think, and the fact that you can use the software for free is probably usually very well enough) and an easy way of doing it. An ongoing, shorter survey (5-10mins maybe) can give tons of very very valid and good information form your actual users.

c) Provide an easy way to donate. Some people actually have a good income and can without a doubt donate money. Nicely asking to donate spare cash if you're satisfied could probably generate some donations this way, if people also are somewhat frequently reminded of it.

I have some experience of both UI-design and the principles around that, and also constructing good surveys, and I would love to help out in any way I can. Like someone else in this thread said, not everyone can code, but that shouldn't stop them from being able to contribute.