Hey platform folks, couple of questions: 1. Has anyone here found a way to gather user feedback without having to send out surveys or conduct interviews every time? Currently, we have a Slack channel for support requests, and I was wondering if it might make sense to use it for "open" feedback as well (managing it through a separate flow). 2. We’re currently facing some challenges with documentation (no standard / different tools), also because there are different types (ranging from general ones like "how to set up a service" to specific ones for individual repos). Do you have any advice on how to tackle this issue?

Hi! I have a few thoughts that I hope may be useful. With # 1, we haven't found a replacement for surveys/interviews, but have found value in monitoring signals that help us focus our interviews/user-journey-mapping like lead-time, ci-time, desired/undesired-pattern-usage, etc. Often this supplemental data is helpful to contextualize survey results in a given cohort. (ie: Why is lead-time lower with Typescript changes than Dart changes). Another thing we've started to do is to prompt for feedback within context. For example, we provide some CLI tooling to engineers and when they run it, we periodically ask them for feedback as part of the CLI running. With # 2, we face a similar challenge with documentation in that we have multiple systems that house it and no real common thread or standard throughout. We're in the process of implementing a 'Golden Path' model, similar to Spotify. In this, we're consolidating and curating documentation into a single place, and cataloguing all of the steps engineers need to follow to accomplish tasks. This will be useful in two ways: 1. Engineers will have a curated documentation experience that supports the tools and processes we recommend and support 2. Product with have the equivalent of user-journey maps that will help identify which parts of the path are less-than-golden and where opportunities for improvement can be found. Hope this helps! Who else has ideas to share?

we provide some CLI tooling to engineers and when they run it, we periodically ask them for feedback as part of the CLI running.

that's very interesting, we've something similar we can leverage thankyou 1

Yes! You can create feedback forms using slack emojis! I have a guide here showing how it is done

For #1 - It might also be worth considering what metrics you can use to inform the “feedback” - Like, if you deploy a new service, what can you glean from the logs about: • How often is it being used • Who is using it consistently • Who used it and stopped using it A direct message of “Hey, I was looking at the thing and I noticed you haven’t used it in a while, would you be interested in sharing what wasn’t working for you” goes a long ways compared to a blast email of “Hey everyone, we’re interested to hear what you think about the thing”