OpenSearch Project Q1 community survey results

Thank you to the OpenSearch community members who responded to our Q1 community survey! Our first quarterly survey focused on understanding who our users are, what they use OpenSearch for, and establishing a baseline for how they feel about the current OpenSearch user experience. We are thrilled to report a net promoter score (NPS) of 57.8 and a UX health score of 77.2, with 97 community members taking part in the survey.

We’ve recently launched a research program in order to get a holistic view of the OpenSearch user experience. The program is designed to evaluate a user’s journey comprehensively using various research methodologies, including a quarterly survey. In addition to quarterly surveys, we also use “deep dives,” which are qualitative research studies that include conversations with users to understand their use cases, requirements, and OpenSearch experience. The quarterly surveys will ask community members to provide feedback on new features, existing OpenSearch experiences, and more. This will help us prioritize improvements to best serve the community. After our Q2 survey is released this month, you will be able to access it at OpenSearch.org, as shown in the following image.

Here are some key insights from the Q1 survey:

• We obtained our first NPS and UX health scores and will use these as a baseline against which to compare future results.
• Previously, we were unsure about the split between search and analytics use cases and were curious whether there was an overlap in the way the community was using OpenSearch. Around 1/3 (one-third) of the Q1 survey sample indicated that they use OpenSearch as both a search and analytics solution.
• Users identified with four roles in OpenSearch:
  • Infrastructure Setup – Responsible for deploying OpenSearch, for allocation of resources, responsible for allocation of initial resources, and any action that impacts the billing and usage of resources
  • OpenSearch Admin – Responsible for asset and user management
  • Dashboard Creator or Data Producer – Responsible for preparing data or dashboards for their own use or end user consumption
  • Dashboard or Data Consumer – Responsible for consuming data or dashboards
• 48.8%, or almost half of the community members who took the survey, self-identified as being in an administrative role, and almost half of the sample self-identified with all 4 roles.
• 34.1% self-identified as being in an infrastructure setup role.

Based on these insights, we concluded that close to half of our users have complex needs that span across all four roles, from infrastructure setup to administrative to producer to consumer. Our offerings, therefore, should focus on providing consistent end-to-end workflows and transitions that enable users to perform tasks seamlessly. This finding is also a good indication of the sample who accessed the survey on OpenSearch.org, that is, respondents were primarily in infrastructure setup or admin roles. In future quarters we intend to expand recruitment for the quarterly survey to the OpenSearch Dashboards interface as well. This will help us obtain feedback from Dashboards users, who are typically both producers and consumers.

In Q2 we want to gain a deeper understanding of ways to improve the OpenSearch user experience. We want to understand what blockers our users face when setting up OpenSearch for themselves or others. We also want to understand what blockers users encounter when dashboards are set up, shared, and consumed.

Check out OpenSearch.org or the OpenSearch forum this month and take part in the Q2 community survey! If you are interested in participating in a deep-dive study, you’ll have the opportunity at the end of the survey to provide information on how we can reach you. As always, we welcome all community members to attend our biweekly community meetings, where information on ongoing research studies is shared regularly.

We thank you for reading and for supporting OpenSearch!