Instructions For Use Of Products
jake_f
Posts: 226
All items in the Daz store should indicate whether the product comes with instructions or not. If a product doesn't include instructions it should be marked as "For Experts Only" or "Not Newbie Friendly" or similar.
Most of the free content I've downloaded from Renderosity come with instructions of some kind. The instructions are often mimimal and brief, but 90% of the time they are sufficient to allow me to install and make use of the file without having to seek assistance.
The new character I just bought from the Daz store came with no instructions of any kind. I downloaded the manual install files as well as installing through DIM. Nothing, no instructions anywhere.
The product may be worth the $11 price tag, I can't really tell one way or the other yet. But it's not worth the hassle of having to launch a big investigation to learn how to use the product.
If the artists and Daz don't wish to do business with newbies, that's cool, no offense taken. But could you please label such products to clearly indicate that.
From now on my policy is, no instructions, no sale, product gets returned.
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Comments
Most complicated products come with PDF instructions that you can get from the product's readme page. They can be accessed directly at http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/insert_product_sku_here/start or by finding the product, starting from here: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/start
(Alternatively, there's a browser addon that will put the direct readme link on the product page. The addon can be found here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106296/announcing-daz-deals-browser-add-on/p1 )
I'm not sure characters will have too much extra information, though. I mean, you load them and that's it. What kind of instructions are you looking for?
Hi Ati,
I was making a general suggestion above applying to all products.
Here's the particular issue which generated the suggestion.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/311506/where-are-new-character-controls#latest
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SUGGESTION: Every product page in the Daz Store should indicate whether instructions are available or not. If yes, a link to instructions should be provided on the sales page.
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SUGGESTION: Every product page in the Daz Store should indicate whether the artist is available to answer questions or not. If yes, a link should be provided on the sales page. If no, that should be stated.
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SUGGESTION: Every product page in the Daz Store should indicate whether Daz support is willing to assist. If yes, there should a be a prominent link displayed which says "Contact Us With Your Questions". If no, there could be a link to the forum instead.
Generally, vendors are not available to assist, because they're creating content, and it is Customer Support who provide the support.
Support is available on all products, simply by using the 'HELP' button at the top of every Daz3D page, where you can use the 'Contact Us' to submit a help ticket.
You cana lso access the read me by clicking the circled i icon next to its entry in Install Manager, or by right-clicking on the product (the folder in Content Library>Products, or its icon in Smart Content>Products tab) and selecting More Information, or if you have the product open in Smart Content just click the thumbnail at top-left.
Ok, so add this to the sales page so that the shopper understands this from the start.
Ok, so add this to the sales page so that the shopper understands this from the start.
Every product page in the Daz Store should indicate specifically whether Daz support is willing to assist. Given that the answer is yes, why not just say that explicitly?
I don't know what the reality of Daz support is, having just submitted my very first ticket. I'm not commenting on that.
I'm commenting on what I do know about, which is the impression (correct or not) communicated to this newbie shopper by current structure of the store.
- Many technical terms on most sales pages for which no explanation is provided or linked to. Not a problem for experienced users. But it is obstacle to a sale for new users (who are after all the future of the business).
- No one on the sales page is communicating they are willing and able, perhaps even eager, to resolve any questions wihch the shopper may be experiencing. What is being communicated instead is something like this....
Or, an alternative could be to ignore all of the above, and then just accept that some number of shoppers are going to become confused, distracted, and annoyed on the sales page, and that they may solve that problem by hitting the back button and vanishing, perhaps never to be seen again.
Whatever option is chosen some price tag will be involved.
Thank you Richard, you are helpful as usual. I'm sure you are correct about all of the above, and am also sure that many newbies won't find the information you are pointing to because, you know, they are too new to know what you're talking about.
Thus, my suggestion is to put such information on the sales page (or link to it from there) where it is easily found by all, even those who haven't installed Daz yet.
It's just a suggestion in this suggestion box. I don't really expect it to happen and I'm fine with that.
I bought the character and I tell you there is a Chararacter folder with the character .duf file and a Ginevra folder with a ton of presets and an Iray Materials folder still more folders and still more presets. You have either installed wrong or don't have your library (or libraries) mapped properly in Studio's Content Directory Manager.
Whilst a lot of content does come with sufficient (sometimes very detailed) instruction, the OP is right, ALL content should come with at least basic instruction. For those new to 3D and DAZ Studio, there is already a steep learning curve so some clear instructions would be useful. For those with some experience it is also often useful to be able to refer to the vendors instructions for clarification.
Reading your other thread this seems more like a daz studio issue (needing to learn the file structure inside of DS) rather than a product issue, or maybe even a MAC issue since when you went to the content library you didn't see a folder with "Characters".on it in the genesis 8 female section
Looking at the file structure of this product in the readme it's a pretty standard setup like any other character if installed correctly
Here is what my figures setup looks like in my content library and you can see the folder options under the Genesis 8 female section
Was installed by Install Manager without incident. No errors reported by DIM.
If the location DIM installed to is not mapped (and mapped properly) in Studio's Content Directory Manager it won't appear in Studio.
Ah, I see, I have tell Daz where DIM installed something. DIM can't do that on it's own. Daz can't figure it out without human intervention. And let me guess, all of this is the user's fault, right?
DIM can be used to install content for other programs than Studio, so yes, you have to tell Studio where DIM installed something for it.
Download this script and drag it into the Daz Studio Viewport http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/file_io/install_manager_config_import/start
Thanks for your offers of assistance guys, I know you mean well, and that is appreciated. I really don't mean to debate, or to try to tell you what your relationship with Daz should be, for that is clearly your business. For me, just one of a million users, the Daz experience is boiling down to this....
I've only purchased one character so that's all I can speak to. It appeared to be little more than a very slightly edited copy of G8F. The price was only $8 (not $11 as I reported), so that's not an obstacle. But I just don't see enough value in the product to justify continuing down the endless parade of pointless complexity. Again, that's just a report of my situation. Of course others will view this differently and that's fine with me.
That said, the point of the purchase for me was to see what purchasing a character is like, and now I've had that experience. And now I'm on to testing how well the refund process works, so that will be educational too, whatever might happen.
Not that it really matters, but I can report that in the case of Ticket 292709 the refund process did not work. The support ticket was never responded to, the requested refund was never delivered. I'm content to leave it that way.
I've noticed DAZ emails have a nasty way of getting sent to my spam folder. Have you checked Store Credit in your account?
You say the ticket was not responded to, Are you saying that you didn't even get the auto response saying that the ticket had been received and placed in "to do" queue? If you did not receive the auto ebot mail then your ticket was not sent properly.
Ha ha! As I submitted my last post I turned to my wife and said, "Watch, within 24 hours somebody will try to blame this on me."
And you just proved me right, so thank you for that.
I got the auto response. I didn't get any reply at all. I didn't get the requested store credit refund.
I no longer care. I'm posting just to let readers know, you might or might not get a refund if you request one. I assume most people do, but obviously not everybody.
How long did you wait for a response? Sometimes it takes awhile..i had an issue with a clone product last year and it took over a month to get it resolved and get a refund.
March 1 - March 15, as documented above.
Hopping in on the conversation.
I second that there should be some sort of written instructions included in products. I know I have returned at least one item in the last 30 days because the only instructions consisted of a video and nothing else.
The DIM option is useful, but only when I have an internet connection. Which is about half of the time.
The lack of an internet connection also means going to the website will not work either.
Finding products isn't as much of an issue with me, I've gotten past a lot of those issues by using a combination of the Smart Conent search, Windows search, opening up DIM and doing a "show installed items," etc. However I can see how a new user wouldn't have any idea about all of these options.
I miss the days of the ReadMe directory and the text manifest files. Having a PDF of more complicated products is almost essential though.
In this case, the OP bought a character, and couldn't find where it was installed.
I understand that. And wanted to agree that locating items / using items with out instructions makes things unecessarily difficult.
I also understand that there are ways to get around it.
However, if DAZ is serious about getting new customers to use the software, this would be one way to hopefully not loose first time and novice users.
If you didn’t get an automatic email then it’s possible the request didn’t get through.
You should check the list of your requests in Help Center to see if it's actually there.
To do this go to Help Center and use the login button, then you should see "My activities" in the dropdown which appears where your name is. Direct URL to the page is https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests
The ticket is there. I can see it and read it.
We don't need to solve this particular situation. I'm content with it as it is. I posted only to alert readers that they probably shouldn't automatically assume that refunds will be provided. If someone wishes to dispute that, I'm ok with that too, no problem. I'm just reporting what I see from where I sit, do with it what you will.
Although I don't claim the ability to read anyone's mind, as best I can tell Daz is serious about getting new customers who are already comfortable in the 3D realm.
As example, Daz does a lot of advertising and has a big store, clear evidence they are interested in selling. However, the store is largely unintelligble to those without 3D experience, and the sales pages do little to direct novice shoppers to explanations of the terms being used, and the sales pages don't explicitly state that Daz staff welcomes questions.
The forum is indeed very helpful to novices, but there is little connection between the store and forum, so many novice shoppers may not even realize that the forum exists. A solution of sorts might be for whoever is creating the sales page to also create a forum thread for that product. And then the sales page could have a prominent link which says "Click here to ask questions about this product".
That sounds like a good idea. Perhaps DAZ3d could do this automatically for every new product. It would necessarily mean a dedicated new Forum, but it would be very helpful.
"Forums" is one of the big links present at the top of each and every page of the site, it's rather hard to miss...
Agreed. I feel that having some basic knowledge of 3D should be a prerequisite for using DS or any 3d app. They all have learning curves and most don't have a 3D 101 class attached to them. if a user isn't willing to invest the time and effort needed to learn, then that is on them, not the company selling the app or content.IMO.
DAZ has a new users forum and myself along with many others go there to try and help and answer questions for those new to this.