Fitbit please review ideas more regularly

[coldfact]

Not technically a feature request, just a request for Fitbit to make an effort to review our ideas in a timely fashion. I am sure whoever contributes ideas and comments here wants to have some kind of sense that Fitbit is considering their thoughts (whether or not they are accepted or rejected).

As it stands the idea statuses are:

IDEA STATUSES

• New (2,342)
• Reviewed By Moderator (250)
• Under Consideration (36)
• Implemented (40)
• Declined (21)
• Existing Feature (65)
• Duplicate (96)
• Archived (0)

Can Fitbit moderators/developers address the 2,342 new ideas?

Thanks!

Moderator edit:Labels 

[MatthewFitbit]

Thanks for your feedback! Hopefully it helps to hear that we completely agree with you, and are currently working to improve this section of the Community. Along with a redesign to better organize the posts within this board, we'll also be making a large effort to classify and merge the content that's already been posted.

We've recently added a new moderator to our team - you'll be seeing @DerrickS present in these threads as this process moves forward in the coming months. He shares our team's excitement of making this a more effective and organized space for collaboration and user feedback, which we all see as one of the most beneficial facets of the Community at large.

[CarlPoole]

Thanks, @Matthew!

[coldfact]

Cool - thanks @MatthewFitbit and @DerrickS 

[Bjustis22]

That sounds great it's really is confusing on what yall are actually implementing or not. Would be nice to know so we are not wasting our breathe

[DerrickS]

@coldfact No problem, I am glad to be on board!

[Zookster]

Since this went up, there have been 161 new ideas posted but the reviewed number has gone up by 3.  Is 1 idea every 2 or 3 days the limit they can be reviewed at?

Cheers

Matt

[DerrickS]

@Zookster I am going through the feature request board daily reviewing ideas, merging duplicate feature requests, reading the comments, and researching ideas on ways to improve the Fitbit Community. There's no quota for reviewed ideas, but my bandwidth is gradually increasing as I learn more about the Feature Request board.

[Zookster]

Thanks Derrick,

It's good to receive responses, I appreciate it.

Matt

[KevinjWells8]

Do you know when we will start to see movement on this. It would also be nice when new items will be released. I haven't seen anything new for IOS in over 4 months. 

[DerrickS]

@KevinjWells8 Feedback from the feature request board is passed on to our product developers and engineers for consideration. There has been a a bunch of iOS updates, a timeline of them can be found here.

[KarynWms]

I was so glad to see this thread about responding to our request. My heart goes out to you, Derrick, as well as the other moderators -  I realize that you are inundated with requests. I am interested in one that was originated on 12-13-2013 for an Idle Alert. It says it is "Under Consideration", but there has not been any further input from FitBit about the status of the consideration. Seeing how so few have been reviewed and even less that fall "Under consideration", I am not complaining about that at all. For this request thread, I would like to suggest that there be some type of system in place that would remind FitBit to post an update to those in this category. Afterall, with only 39 requests that are currently "Under Consideration" it seems that some type of update would be possible sooner rather than later, especially 15 months. 

[Wildacre]

6 weeks since the original suggestion was posted and there are more than 660 additional ideas. An additional 17 have been reviewed by a moderator, 4 more are under consideration and just 1 implemented. This doesn't inspire confidence.

Over 10 weeks ago an announcement was made that multi-device support was "coming soon". In the world I work in if I recated that slowly to a request for action "soon" I would be looking for another job very quickly. I am sure that like me, a Fitbit user for almost 2 years, other users have bought an additional device to allow flexibility of use only to find they have been duped and wasted their money. At the very least, Fitbit should withdraw the "coming soon" announcement unless release is imminent, and, make it clear on the store pages that only 1 device can be linked to an account at any one time.

We need more transparent and reliable information from you. How about a table showing all new features under development with a status indicator, updated weekly. I am sorry but "under consideration" and "coming soon" mean nothing.

[Penno]

There are now 3073 new ideas. Is there anyone home at Fitbit? Hello?

[KarynWms]

@DerrickSI was going to suggest that you keep a blog of the status of  the ideas, so the contributors can feel acknowledged, but mainly for better transparency of what ideas have been acknowledged, reviewed, etc. I realize there is a numerical list on the side panel, but I think it does more harm than good, because the numbers are negatively staggering. However, I do want to say that I appreciate the Timeline of FitBit iOS Updates.  that is available for contributors. I found this helpful. Thank you.

[coldfact]

I guess even worse metrics than my original post counts as "implemented"? 

• New (3,749)
• Reviewed By Moderator (311)
• Under Consideration (34)
• Implemented (59)
• Declined (26)
• Existing Feature (76)
• Duplicate (89)
• Archived (65)

I don't care much about the numbers - the frustrating thing is I see NO signficant new features, even with some highly requested, very old and likely easy to implement ideas (like idle alert, optimal sleep cycle wake up).... just some bugs and other tweaks. I have lost any interest in actually asking for features.

Really, is fitbit at all serious about implementing anything we ask for?

[Jasper8888]

Product road map! Most software developers have one that shows release dates and functionality for release say every 6 months and a year out. This is pretty standard and would be greatly appreciated!

[ColinHTown]

The tone of entitlement on this thread cracks me up. Most of us bought one fitbit device (for not a lot of money) and paid fitbit once for that device and are enjoying its existing features.

We can hope for new features of course... but that one time payment does not entitle us to anything new at all! It doesn't entitle us to a paid moderator for this forum or the hiring of more software developers at fitbit or anything other than honoring the warranty on our current device.

I hope fitbit is ignoring this thread and spending their time and money on making cool new software and features rather than managing the statuses of forum postings.

I was amused and happy to see the status of this particular thread get changed to "implemented." Touche!

[coldfact]

@ColinHTown right - they have a forum called "feature requests". Which to logical people means that is where you go to.... request features. Users then go to this forum and request features with some expectation that they will be reviewed and some even implemented. And you call this 'entitlement'.

If they had no plan of actually listening to and acting on feature requests, they could just save us the time and energy by closing this forum. Then we can all go back to really 'enjoying' our existing features instead of reading pointless replies like yours. But then where would you go for your amusement AND happiness?! 😞

Follow your own brilliant idea and ignore threads that get you all worked up. 

[ColinHTown]

Well that's not very nice... I like having this forum to submit feature requests too!

Where we apparently differ is that I don't have any expectation that Fitbit should be required to spend a bunch of time and money managing the statuses and outcomes of these postings. They should just read the forum and pluck out the good feature ideas. I never said anything about getting rid of this forum or not listening to ideas. It's the meta-work of status management and feedback that this thread is asking for that I find silly. That stuff takes a lot of time and money!

This thread itself is not a feature request (and therefore, doesn't actually belong in this forum!)... it's just a bunch of complaints about wanting feedback about prior feature requests. Just give the ideas away to Fitbit and let them go... We aren't entitled to adjudication about what happened to our ideas... It's their company and their business. They can take or leave our advice as suits their business strategy.

Anyway, this is the Internet, so I encourage you to reply with more rudeness and sarcacism since that seems to be what we do here. I'm sure that's coming next! Just remember, someone is always wrong on the Inter tubes: https://xkcd.com/386/  so we could be here awhile! Or, maybe this time will be that first time in the history of the Internet where ridicule and insults actually change a person's mind and I will be convinced of the merit of this thread. Anything is possible...

[nevercast]

@ColinHTown is right, there is a lot of entitlement on this thread.

Though with that said, maybe another category in between Under Consideration and Implemented, 'Under Development' ? Would keep people a little more quiet as they can see what is being worked on. 

At the end of the day, We in the community don't really know how much work load developers already have and how little time they have to review 3000 requests. Most of which are duplicates. The moderators/developers jobs might actually be easier if those submitting ideas would actually search for a duplicate first and then vote on it. I've seen 4/5 different "Ideas" for the same feature, each with 40-80 votes. Now if that was a single idea with all those votes it might get implemented faster.