People’s Choice LabVIEW Idea Implementation

[vitoi]

This idea came about from a discussion at http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Require-LabVIEW-R-amp-D-response-to-any-idea-over-N-ku...

The idea is to give LabVIEW users some say in which ideas are implemented. The key components of the idea are:

1) Set aside 5% of NI’s R&D staff to work on the “people’s choice” LabVIEW idea. That’s over 100 R&D staff, so a lot can be done.

2) Take LabVIEW ideas with kudos of 200 or more (there are 39 unimplemented ideas with 200 or more kudos).

3) Put together a poll of these 39 ideas and ask LabVIEW users to vote for their favourite.

4) Keep the poll open for 2 weeks and at the end of the period, take the idea with the most votes and implement it.

5) Once the idea is in beta, another "people's choice" poll is conducted and the process repeated. (Small ideas get implemented quickly, bigger ideas presumably are worth the wait.)

The 5% R&D staff, 200 kudos, etc figures can be played with to get the desired result.

I think we'll get more smiles on our faces from the 5% of R&D staff working on the "people's choice" project than we'll get from the 95% working on the "marketing's choice" projects.

[vitoi]

I should add that any ideas that are in conflict with the look and feel of LabVIEW should be excluded from the poll. The last thing we need is a disparate design.

The main things I see users screaming for are connectivity and more targets. For connectivity we have requests for standard web browsers to act as clients using HTML5 and such (with no client side plugins). For targets we have requests for LabVIEW code to run on mobile devices such as tablets and phones, microcontrollers such as Raspberry Pie and Arduino Due and inexpensive OEM-friendly FPGA boards. None of these take the look and feel of LabVIEW in a conflicting direction, they just expands the connectivity and applicability of LabVIEW.

Just like academics need to publish or perish, I think LabVIEW needs to extend its reach both in connectivity and targets or perish. (Actually, NI had this same philosophy 10 years ago with LabVIEW Everywhere, but it never happened. Maybe there will be a renaissance soon.)

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> Set aside 5% of NI’s R&D staff to work on the “people’s choice”
> LabVIEW idea. That’s over 100 R&D staff, so a lot can be done.

You're not going to get much value from assigning electrical engineers or mechanical engineers to write features, so let's leave out HW R&D when calculating that 5%. You probably don't want us to stop producing instrument drivers or TestStand as that would leave those products unstaffed. So if we modify your request and limit to just LV R&D, there's already a team dedicated to the Idea Exchange. They have been for two years, and, if my count is right, they're right about 4% of total LV R&D.

They work on ideas, but they don't go charging through in the kudos order for a long list of reasons. LabVIEW adds a few features every release for new users, a few for intermediate users and a few for power users. We pick the ideas that match the expertise of the folks who are working on the Idea Exchange each release (it's not always the same people). We try to pick ideas that are in the same region of the code base so as to not destabilize the product overall. And we pick ideas that have marketing splash and that people say, "Yes, I would pay money to upgrade just for that one feature." Finally, some ideas just take time, and by time, I mean years, because of the sheer amount of refactoring of old code necessary to make them happen. We're not going to put an idea as "In Work" and then tell you "it'll be ready in LV 2017 (we think)." Yes, there is one idea in the 200+ list that is being ooched along that actually appears to have that kind of time horizon... we do a bit of work in its direction every release, and we'll get there eventually.

> I think we'll get more smiles on our faces from the 5% of R&D staff

> working on the "people's choice" project than we'll get from the 95%

> working on the "marketing's choice" projects.

That's your theory. We evaluated that approach when we were creating the Idea Exchange and we rejected it based on our own experience with feature request up to that point and based on our observation of other companies' idea exchanges. We have gotten lots of smiles from the features from the Idea Exchange that we have implemented. There are lots of forces to keep in balance when allocating our developers (a more scarce resource than many of you seem to believe). Making the kind of promise you are seeking would keep us from making the necessary business tradeoffs that keep LabVIEW a viable product overall. In fact...

> I should add that any ideas that are in conflict with the look and feel

> of LabVIEW should be excluded from the poll. The last thing we need

> is a disparate design.

That would be one of the forces. I assure you, there are many others. *grin* We are lucky that we have a marketing and R&D team that evaluates the ideas and plans which ones should actually be worked on.

[vitoi]

AristosQueue, I really did mean 5% of NI R&D staff (and we do need electrical and mechanical engineers - see below). If we are talking of only LV R&D staff then the figure would be 10%.

Having said that, even 5% of LV R&D staff working on the people's choice would be better than none.

I'm looking for the next innovative and compelling LabVIEW feature. The last LabVIEW features of any note occured more than 10 years ago (Events and FPGA programming). I understand LabVIEW is a mature product and it is difficult to advance it, but the ability to have remote access using a standard web browser, target mobile devices, target microcontrollers and provide compact/inexpensive FPGA hardware would make LabVIEW more popular. None of these appear to being worked on. The voice of the customer appears to be ignored. And the NI share price is down 17.7% so far this year relative to the market (Nasdaq). I think these are related.

We used to have about six LabVIEW programmers in our company. Including me, we’re now down to two. And I’m currently programming microcontrollers using C, since NI does not provide a solution (although there was a suggestion that a solution exists). I note the number of attendees at NI Day in Sydney are declining. I note that the NI share price is declining (relative to the market). I can’t help but think that there needs to be a paradigm shift in NI’s marketing strategy to save the company and our careers. I’ve tried to help with this idea, but it has been declined. Sadly, we will now never know how important some customer-driven LabVIEW features are considered by LabVIEW users.

Here’s the four areas that need urgent attention:

* Remote access using a standard web browser: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Support-for-HTML5-and-SVG-in-Web-Publishing-Tool/idi-p...

* Target mobile devices: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-module-for-Android-and-iOS/idi-p/1437506

* Target microcontrollers: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-for-Raspberry-Pi/idi-p/2082026 , http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-for-Arduino-Due/idi-p/2082196 , etc

* Compact and inexpensive FPGA hardware: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-for-Arduino-Due/idi-p/2082196

Do we get innovation or more of the same?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Dear vitoi:

You are my customer. I want to keep you as a customer. So let me begin by saying that when I read your post, I clearly understand that you personally are unhappy about something that NI is doing or not doing. Since it is hard to get things right for every individual customer, normally, I would just accept that and hope that the next version is more to your liking. But in this case, you make claims about trends larger than yourself, and you assert evidence for those claims such that, unrefuted, they are more likely to be picked up and echoed by other readers, so I am going to spend some time debunking your claims.

Please do not take any of the following as implying that NI is perfect or that LabVIEW is perfect or that we wouldn't like to do more than we already are doing. But you paint a picture of NI incompetence that is totally out of step with our customers, and that's flat-out false based on all of the data we collect and the public accolades we are given.

Let me start with the easy claims.

> Having said that, even 5% of LV R&D staff working on the people's choice would be better than none.

Not "would be better." It *is* better. That percent of staffers (+/-0.5%) are,  as I said, already working on the Idea Exchange posts. And many more than that are working on new features that happen to hit lower down the list ideas without even intending to do so because, surprise, we actually are aware of customer needs and places where we think LV needs to improve. We have a very broad platform. The list of potential upgrades is endless. We push on those that are most valuable, giving some attention to those that are particularly spotlighted by the Idea Exchange.

> I note the number of attendees at NI Day in Sydney are declining.

I note that every single NI Week has been larger than the one before it, and that is an event that reflects global participation. I also note that we have added more events like Dev Days, NITS and other, smaller conferences around the world. Attendence keeps rising at the USA CLA Summit, and we've started a second such summit in Europe. Perhaps your local decline is caused because there are more options to attend? Or it could just be that budgets are tight since 2008 and the global recession. I don't know. But, without going into NI Confidential information, last chart I saw showed seats of LabVIEW are up significantly across the planet.

> I note that the NI share price is declining (relative to the market)

and

> And the NI share price is down 17.7% so far this year relative

> to the market (Nasdaq). I think these are related.

Having recently seen the actual NI financials (again, avoiding anything NI Confidential), I note that relative to all of our competitors, we're leaping ahead, taking an ever larger slice of the smaller pie. *Manufacturing* is globally in decline, and so the pie itself is smaller relative to the *total* market. NI has earned record profits for all of the last four quarters (and the vast vast majority of all quarters for the 30+ years prior to those). Your basis for the claim that NI is declining is based on a faulty analysis of the scope manufacturing sector.

> None of these appear to being worked on. The

> voice of the customer appears to be ignored.

Well, considering that we do not disclose hardly any of our research efforts before they are somewhat mature and demoable, such an appearance is to be expected. Having said that, for mobile, perhaps you've missed the new features related to web services or the new products (both FREE) Web UI Builder and Data Dashboard. And we do appologize on the mobile targeting... it's been a bit of a moving target during the last year, what with the sudden cessation of existence of Silverlight in favor of HTML5. And before you criticize our use of Silverlight, keep in mind that HTML5 looked like it was dead just two years ago, and we started work on that project 5 years ago, when Silverlight was the only tech that seemed at all likely to be viable on all platforms. It will take us some time to recover from that setback. As for FPGA, you'll have to talk to that team, but LV FPGA is selling like ice water in Hell. They're clearly doing something right, and if targeting platform XYZ would help, I'll wager it's in the pipeline.

And then there's this statement:

> The last LabVIEW features of any note occured more than 10 years ago

Wow. I'm going to assume you were joking to make a point, because if you were serious then you aren't actually using LabVIEW and I'm not surprised that you're working on C code. I would too if I had to use LV 6.1.

Here's a list of topics you might want to investigate (in no particular order) that have been introduced in the last 10 years:

Timed Loop. DAQmx. TDMS. RT Jitter Analysis. LabVIEW OOP. XControls. Remote Debugging. Massive strides in compiled code quality. Parallel For Loop. The entire project management system. Desktop and Real-time Trace Toolkit. .NET interoperability and compilability. Network streams. Custom probes. Shared variables. Web services. Comment structures. Actor Framework. MathScript. PID tools. Asynchronous Call By Reference. C Code Generator. FPGA Cloud Compilation. Express VIs. Diagram Clean Up. Silver controls. Reentrant front panels. Shared reentrancy. Recursion. LEGO Mindstorms integration. Massive expansion of the Analysis library. I-don't-know-how-many new VIs in vi.lib as standard libraries. Bluetooth communication. Signal Express. Veristand. Requirements Gateway. VI Analzyer. DLL Wrapper Wizard and other DLL interaction improvements.

And those are the ones I can think of from LV 7.0 forward. I am probably forgetting most of the changes coming out of the module teams (RT, FPGA, DSP, etc.) because I don't work with those folks as often.

> Do we get innovation or more of the same?

More of the same. Which is to say, more of the same innovation that has driven test and measurement, industrial control and embedded systems development to new heights all around the globe. And, along the way, you'll get as many of the Idea Exchange features as we can pack in.

-- Aristos Queue

[vitoi]

Dear Aristos,

We both want to see NI succeed. You for the chance to promote LabVIEW and increase company profits and me to increase what I can accomplish and my marketability. We have a lot invested in the success of NI. Our approaches differ, but we both want the same thing.

My background

I have been using LabVIEW for about 8 years. I've programmed using LabVIEW desktop, LabVIEW Real-time, LabVIEW FPGA and LabVIEW Embedded for ARM. I also read the NI annual reports and quarterly reports and keep a close eye on the NI share price. I'm also a significant contributor to the various NI forums.

5% of LV R&D staff working on the people's choice

You mentioned that about 5% of staffers are working on the Idea Exchange posts. This is different to 5% of the staffers working on the people's choice item from the Idea Exchange.

NI Week attendance numbers

Do you have NI Week attendance numbers going back well before 2008. I suspect the numbers have been increasing since the dip in 2008, but what are they like when looking back 10 years?

NI Financials

You stated that my “basis for the claim that NI is declining is based on a faulty analysis of the scope manufacturing sector.” I can’t see a better indicator of NI’s financial heath than comparing its share price to the appropriate index. I’ve used the Nasdaq since I think it’s the most appropriate index. National Instruments, in the 2011 Annual Report, claims that it is difficult to find the appropriate index, but that the Russel 2000 is the best option. So let’s use this index. The National instruments share price relative to the Russel 2000 index has fallen 15.9% so far this year. That’s a significant fall. If we compare it to your main competitor, Agilent, we have a fall of 11.7% so far this year.

These suggest to me that the current marketing strategy is not working.

Web browser user interface

I’ve looked at the “new features related to web services” and I’m well aware of the (both free) Web UI Builder and Data Dashboard.

I played with the address book example yesterday. Most of the code was hidden behind password protected VI’s, so I could not see how easily I could adapt it to my applications. In addition, the user interface on the address book example was poor.

Web UI Builder is an interesting animal. Am I correct in saying that earlier this year is cost $1500 + $300/year and now it’s free? What is going on here?

Data Dashboard is limited to only six string, boolean or numeric indicators and no controls. Very limited at this stage. I understand things have recently been improved for the iPad, but from memory this was not much and it leaves the iPhone and android users behind. One day, this may be a good solution, but at this stage it’s wait and see.

What I’m after is:

1) The ability to use a standard web browser (without any plug ins) as the client

2) No client side programming or configuring

3) The ability to create user interfaces that look as impressive as current web pages OR the ability to “reflect” a VI’s front panel on the web browser.

4) Easy to implement

This is captured in the following idea: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-mobile-device-user-interface-using-web-browser... and is similar to several other customer requests.

Target Mobile Devices

I’m not after a Silverlight / HTML5 solution here. What I’m after is LabVIEW code that executes on a mobile device. From what I can gather, nothing has been done in this arena.

Target Microcontrollers

You didn’t discuss this, but there is effectively nothing on offer in this arena.

Compact and Inexpensive FPGA hardware

I’m surprised that LabVIEW FPGA is selling like ice water in hell. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have an OEM friendly board as per http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-mobile-device-user-interface-using-web-browser...

Game Changing Innovation

National Instruments has introduced some great game changing innovation in the past:

1) LabVIEW’s Event Structure

2) compactRIO (and its new packaging known as sbRIO)

3) LabVIEW Embedded for microcontrollers (since allowed to lapse)

These all occurred about 10 years ago. Since then no game changing innovation.

You mentioned the following list of new features over the past 10 years:

“Timed Loop. DAQmx. TDMS. RT Jitter Analysis. LabVIEW OOP. XControls. Remote Debugging. Massive strides in compiled code quality. Parallel For Loop. The entire project management system. Desktop and Real-time Trace Toolkit. .NET interoperability and compilability. Network streams. Custom probes. Shared variables. Web services. Comment structures. Actor Framework. MathScript. PID tools. Asynchronous Call By Reference. C Code Generator. FPGA Cloud Compilation. Express VIs. Diagram Clean Up. Silver controls. Reentrant front panels. Shared reentrancy. Recursion. LEGO Mindstorms integration. Massive expansion of the Analysis library. I-don't-know-how-many new VIs in vi.lib as standard libraries. Bluetooth communication. Signal Express. Veristand. Requirements Gateway. VI Analzyer. DLL Wrapper Wizard and other DLL interaction improvements. “

Apart from the project management system, which is an IDE feature, not a LabVIEW feature, I have never used, nor need to use, any of those features. And I’m, as you can appreciate, a demanding customer.

The lack of game changing innovation from NI is not just a single voice in the wilderness. Take a read through the comments in http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Make-labview-everywhere-a-reality/idi-p/1994483 . You can even ignore my comments. The general chorus is that NI is no longer innovating.

I would like to see the LabVIEW user base multiply by four times in the short term and ten times in the medium term. I would like to see LabVIEW Everywhere. In particular I would like to see LabVIEW:

1) Ability to use a standard web browser as a user interface (without any plug ins or client side effort)

2) Ability to target mobile devices (that is, LabVIEW code running on a mobile phone or tablet)

3) Ability to target microcontrollers (that is, LabVIEW able to run on an Raspberry Pi, Arduino Due, BeagleBoard or similar)

4) An OEM friendly sbRIO (credit card size, no connectors and lower cost).

Any chance for any of these?

[crossrulz]

vitoi, you are not the only customer.  I use at least half of the new features all the time.  They are needed.  One I didn't see mentioned is the Desktop Execution Trace Toolkit.  This tool has saved me hours, if not days.  And that was with just one use when I was playing with it to see what it can do.

Yes, NI should look into getting onto these opensource controllers.  But that's a market they have to tread carefully with.  My understanding with the mobile phones is that the market is in major flux and NI can't go after a system when it could just disappear suddenly.  It is likely the same for the open source boards.

I have been asking for the standard web browser iterface for as long as I've been using LabVIEW.  They are making strides.  But it is a long process.

NI has been innovating.  They have come up with great features and tools that I need.  We put our ideas out there and we voted to show the need.  It is up to NI to decide what they are going after.

[dthor]

Have you really never used a Timed Loop, DAQmx, custom probes, reentrancy, or OOP? I'm wondering what you program that doesn't use any of those things...

Anyway, the Idea Exchange is essentially the "people's choice" already, so frankly I'm glad to see this Idea declined.

[vitoi]

>Have you really never used a Timed Loop, DAQmx, custom probes, reentrancy, or OOP? I'm wondering what you program that doesn't use any of those things...

Haven't used any of the features. (I have used the Timed Loop with LabVIEW Real-time, but that feature pre-dates the period in question.) My applications are not trivial, but all the features I need are available in LabVIEW 10 years ago. I use LabVIEW 8.6, since the Project IDE makes life easier, but no LabVIEW features post-date the introduction of Events and cRIO. I've programmed in LabVIEW desktop, Real-time, FPGA and Embedded for ARM for about 8 years, so quite a bit of breadth and experience.

>Anyway, the Idea Exchange is essentially the "people's choice" already, so frankly I'm glad to see this Idea declined.

The Idea Exchange is essentially the "people's request" followed by "Marketing's choice". I was just asking that LabVIEW users were able to prioritize 5% of the NI R&D staff and the other 95% could be prioritize by NI Marketing.

Don't get me wrong, I like LabVIEW desktop. It's a great way to program. I'm just hoping for a renaissance of the LabVIEW Everywhere "promise", which never eventuated. Take a read of http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Make-labview-everywhere-a-reality/idi-p/1994483 for some insights.

[vitoi]

>Have you really never used a Timed Loop, DAQmx, custom probes, reentrancy, or OOP? I'm wondering what you program that doesn't use any of those things...

Haven't used any of the features. (I have used the Timed Loop with LabVIEW Real-time, but that feature pre-dates the period in question.) My applications are not trivial, but all the features I need are available in LabVIEW 10 years ago. I use LabVIEW 8.6, since the Project IDE makes life easier, but no LabVIEW features post-date the introduction of Events and cRIO. I've programmed in LabVIEW desktop, Real-time, FPGA and Embedded for ARM for about 8 years, so quite a bit of breadth and experience.

>Anyway, the Idea Exchange is essentially the "people's choice" already, so frankly I'm glad to see this Idea declined.

The Idea Exchange is essentially the "people's request" followed by "Marketing's choice". I was just asking that LabVIEW users were able to prioritize 5% of the NI R&D staff and the other 95% could be prioritize by NI Marketing.

Don't get me wrong, I like LabVIEW desktop. It's a great way to program. I'm just hoping for a renaissance of the LabVIEW Everywhere "promise", which never eventuated. Take a read of http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Make-labview-everywhere-a-reality/idi-p/1994483 for some insights.

[vitoi]

I notice that there is a National Instruments Q4 2012 Business Update Call on December 10. If my reasoning is correct, it won't be good news.