@josh I just finished your questionnaire. I have to say, it really annoys me when Bubble uses other services to do something that Bubble can do themselves (frankly way better looking). If you are too lazy to build it, farm it out to the forum as a challenge. I am sure someone would want to earn the work or get a credit to a few months of a higher Bubble subscription.
What this shows people is that you are unwilling to use your own very flexible software, and look to a simple option out of expedience. Or perhaps itâs too difficult to create (which it isnât), and in which case, you need to take a hard look at the features you have, and fix them so you can make anything (within reason), that other companies supply.
I get the forum thing, there are years of data in there, itâs user friendly, and 2015 bubble couldnât have built it nicely, and now itâs more trouble than it is worth to create something new. BUT, this should be the goal. Build up your platform so people can do whatever they want.
So to sum upâŚ
Engage your forum users to build tools for you, for payment or perks
Stop using (VERY CRAPPY) questionnaire systems that someone else made (if you need to explain how to reply to a question, it is not a well built interface⌠Just sayingâŚ
Improve your systems so that you NEVER want to pay another company to do what you just did
On a positive note, honestly I love Bubble. One of my biggest mistakes was giving it up for 2 years while my life was taken over by a crazy toddler baby, I should have kept up with it. Itâs a great platform, but as I have said in countless posts, you need to engage us. Here is a thought⌠Create a set of hackathon challenges. The prizes donât have to be crazy, I am sure a small cash prize and some free subscription credits would be more than enough for most people (along with a blog post about it).
Here are some Hackathon ideas off the top of my headâŚ
Questionnaire website with front and back end
Chat program
New Bubble Forum (whether you use it or not, whatever, just nice to see people DEV)
Best looking⌠XYZ (landing page, CRM page, chat screen, whatever), then a writeup of how it was made.
I could go on, but you get my point. Letâs elevate the people who are here every day, and have some common goals and fun!
Bubble editor needs a complete UI/UX remodeling in my and others opinion too. The system appearance have A LOT of inconsistencies and completely outdated looking.
Iâm not sure if itâs worth all that. It was simply a poorly designed questionnaire system. What I was most disappointment about is that Bubble didnât create their own system to do it, or hold a Hackathon to build it for them.
I personally think we should start replacing current systems with up-to-date designs based on Bubble. So a Bubble questionnaire, a new plugin browser, a new template browser, and rating systems for the builders of those plugins and templates. Itâs well within our reach, we just need a simple bubble API to allow us access to the template and plugin database.
Simple things can go along way to bring a community together, add value, and also bring to light great developers in our midst.
The UI/UX of that questionnaire was horrible and it was barely responsive. I was using my mobile, and a lot of text was cut-off, or intersecting. I powered through it because i love bubble and want to help the company as much as possible.
I love the hackathon suggestion. Some experienced bubblers can easily make a tailored survey app with better design, responsiveness, features and that scales well. Copies of the editors of the best submissions can also be shared with the community (without the database entries of the actual survey), so that people can learn from how the pages and databases were set up.
Yeah thatâs it, except I would also love to see some junior bubblers do it also. There could be a Tier for junior, mid, and experienced people. Again, it doesnât have to even be monetary, it could be for credits or whatever.
Anyhow, itâs possible this concept might get picked up if there is enough public support. Itâs really simple and nearly zero work for Bubble to setup.
I didnât see the survey, but apparently the UX was crap. So Bubble should definitely have used another solution, agreed. But I donât think they should develop every single tool they need on Bubble, itâs just not realistic, a complete waste of time, and there are other (better) ways to show whatâs possible with Bubble.
Itâs like saying that a âtraditionalâ web development agency should develop from scratch every single tool they use, just because they can. And not use Clickup for project management, for instance.
A useful skill as a developer is knowing when you should develop something, and when you shouldnât because existing solutions are satisfying. And Iâm glad they spend their time doing useful stuff instead of trying to rebuild every single tool ever made on the internet!
As for developing these tools as a challenge for the community⌠Well, itâs not that easy, and it would take at least days just to manage the project.
I donât think you grasped what I was going for. I am looking for Bubble to help people learn by initiating engagement, and offering valid opportunities for self development in a directed form based on a challenge that can be scaled to various skill levels. Heck yes, it will take time to manage, but, the whole point is to make better Bubblers. In the end, the ecosystemâs value goes up if the majority of users are higher skilled and performant designers.
The optics of not using your own software are not good, and that is the other aspect I was trying to flush out. Itâs like if Pepsi Co had vending machines in their facilities, that only had Coke products. It would be weird wouldnât it?
Thatâs all. I am looking for ways to empower the community through help from Bubble, and without saying anything else, I will say, it worked.
I completely got your point, I just think that you mixed two different ideas here.
I donât have anything against community challenges, I think it would be a great idea! But it doesnât have to be related to the tools that the Bubble team uses on a day-to-day basis. And it shouldnât be, as far as Iâm concerned!
Although, they use their own product, since bubble.io is built with Bubble (not the editor, but the page where we manage our apps). They might not use it enough, but I donât have any data to back this claim.
I wonder which user segment received this survey, I rarely receive any surveys or emails from Bubble (besides the marketing ones) and occasionally one from Grace re: certain feature requests on the idea board.
Anyhow, onto the Hackathon idea, love it! I think itâs great because:
Bubblers can help Bubble build tools low-cost
Bubble can see how Bubblers build on Bubble and the different styles of building there might be out there
Overall seems like a smart idea to engage with the community!
@pierre.simonnin.pont
Iâm glad someone else pointed out the holes in this argument. I thought I was being overly critical when I first started forming thoughts on this post.
Bubble has an entire tutorial section with ways to rebuild big platforms using the tool. These plus the how-to docs are completely free to use. There are also a plethora of paid for courses run by Bubble fans to go through pretty much anything not covered by Bubbleâs own guides, blogs, tutorials.
You pointed out that the forum was a good example of Bubble needing to rebuild something. Data aside, there is no point in rebuilding a tool actively managed by a company dedicated to that and only that. Bubble building their own forum would actually be an investment hole. The investment in âpeople hoursâ up front and then the fact the platform would need to be actively managed by a team. That means pulling hours away from the current team or hiring new peopleâŚAn investment hole.
Paying for third party tools saves âpeople hoursâ and is a quick way to get something spun up, especially during a time crunch.
"The optics of not using your own software are not good. "
Wrong, this shows that the team know what their priorities are. I for sure would rather see them continue to improve every aspect of the platform than take time away to rebuild self managed forum, survey, email etc, tools for the hell of it.
Great tools exist with dedicated teams. That investment pales in comparison to the investment of putting bums on seats to build a duplicate.
Donât get me wrong, there is a place for building solutions when the right tools donât yet exist, but to have this rule for everything actually shoots the Bubble customer base in the foot because youâre now placing Bubble as a company that will rebuild anything it needs to use. This isnât Amazon.
I havenât seen the questionnaire/survey and may be, yes they could have done a better job on the design but instantly jumping to say theyâre âtoo lazyâ to build something themselves is a little silly.
Also, hackathons arenât as simple as youâre making out. A bubble team member or members would still have to set up a post outlining terms, constantly monitor submissions as well as finally reviewing submissions. That again is a lot of time investment for something that doesnât actually need a hackathon.
Hackathons are a great idea but youâre minifying how much work actually goes into a well managed hackathon.
That then requires the Bubble team to review the tool from the ground up to ensure security, performance and Iâm sure many other things, are in place. That will cost them hundreds of hours and lost time on critical work to do.
This already happens by people posting in the forum and using hashtags on social sites. Theyâre actively monitoring all of this and this shapes how they work on the tool. Not to mention the surveys, and support requests.
Theyâve done plenty of community outreach in the past, including paying people to build & share on social sites using a dedicated hashtag
I havenât seen much lately, although Iâve been distracted by our baby, but maybe this wasnât actually paying off for them because of low engagement from the community.
We all have our opinions good sir. I simply believe that it would benefit the entire ecosystem to have home-grown features and systems, even if itâs built by users at the behest of Bubble (or Bubble itself). It will help each user to be able to show more powerful systems that can be made. It would help each person be able to sell the Bubble platform. There are far too many videos online saying âitâs only good for MVPâsâ.
That kind of mindset is enhanced with things like this. But if someone comes out with a full blown efficient questionnaire system or whatever XYZ app, it would be incontrovertible proof against the âMVP onlyâ mentality.
At the end of the day, the conversation is open, and benefits have come from this post, so that is all I care about right now. Be for or against it, but I am not entirely certain why someone would be against focused learning and guided projects that would benefit the entire Ecosystem. I mean, isnât that literally how every single education system is structured (give a bunch of students the same project and see who does what and how, and then have them explain it after)?
But hey, everyone has an opinion. I welcome all constructive thoughts, and keep in mind, yes administrating an event like I suggest would take a bit of focus away from one or two people, but they have over 100 staff. I am sure they can spare a few hours of work for a couple of people, every so often. The PR would be great, the increased knowledge would be great, and maybe I am wrong, but I am pretty sure the shared experience would be great too.
Bubble devs have been producing incredible work for years though and nothing has changed that mindset or that toxic mindset that no-code is trying to take software dev jobs. Rebuilding a survey tool or any current tooling isnât going to change their minds. We need to ignore those people and keep producing great work.
Be for or against it, but I am not entirely certain why someone would be against focused learning and guided projects that would benefit the entire Ecosystem. I mean, isnât that literally how every single education system is structured (give a bunch of students the same project and see who does what and how, and then have them explain it after)?
Again, this already happens through the tutorials, guides and documentation provided by Bubble and by the Bubble fans who run dedicated courses. Bubble link to some of these external resources in their help section. Itâs all there for people to find or for existing users to link newbies to.
Youâre asking for Bubble themselves to do more of the same thing that hundreds of people are already doing, when theyâve nurtured the community enough to do this for them.
yes administrating an event like I suggest would take a bit of focus away from one or two people, but they have over 100 staff. I am sure they can spare a few hours of work for a couple of people, every so often.
Number of staff doesnât matter. The numbers are representative of the amount of work they have. Taking people off of a project means someone else has to pick up the slack.
Remember that Bubble is a funded company and so there are deliverables they have to meet.
Someone else picking up the slack impacts their deliverables for their team and in turn the wider company, not to mention the mental stress of taking on more work.
