A quiet start

So, I launched my software, Friday a week ago. It hasn't been met with the fanfare I expected, to say the least. I have a grand total of zero posts into the system so far. And 57% of students have consented to be a part of the study (ie. 43% declined to participate). I was disappointed at first, until I thought about why it might be the case.

In my last post I talked about what would make the network a success, and one of the criteria I mentioned was that it needed to be embedded throughout the system. When I look at what I've rolled out, the interfaces I've created are quite visible. But they're on pages that are rarely visited. In fact, the add button, to share a resource into the network, is on one of the least visited pages on the system. Other pages will display the resources once they're there, but the use of the system isn't getting started, because the students haven't found that crucial "add" button. On the bright side, if I do add the buttons in more places, and students actually start using them, then I have some solid evidence to back up my claim that embedding is crucial.

Also, I haven't done a proper job of explaining the new features. I'll put this one down to a rather unpleasant bout of depression and stress I've been in over the last month (work-related, not PhD related), which has meant that I haven't had the emotional energy to communicate. In a lot of ways, talking to the participants (even via a bulletin system) is a lot more emotionally draining than any of the other tasks. Coding can be done in most moods - productivity can be affected, but the quality of the work ends up not too variable. Quality of communications, however, is greatly affected by mood. I assume this is the case for most people, except maybe professional comms people.

So, I guess the plan over the next few weeks is to remedy these teething problems. Luckily, I've got a couple of years for data gathering, so there isn't a huge rush, and a couple of weeks isn't a major setback.

Also, I went to a conference. It was great. I'll write about it another time.