Ken & Mike on the MATLAB Desktop

January 14th, 2008

It’s pretty clear that MATLAB users have some great ideas on how to make the product better. Browsing through this blog’s comments reveals some of those ideas. We love your suggestions as responses to blog entries, but if you think you’ve got a really great idea, I’d encourage you to submit it as an official feature request. We regularly review these requests, so this mechanism will give you a direct pipeline into the development process.

Here’s how to request an enhancement:

1. Go to the Support section of The MathWorks website.
2. If you haven’t previously logged in, login now, or create a new account.
3. Click View Service Requests in the My Account section.
   
4. Click Create New Request under My Support (on the right hand side of the screen).
   
5. In Step 1: select Technical Support which will then reveal more options, from which you should select Request Enhancement.
   
6. Fill out the form with your idea. Make sure to select New Feature in the What benefits do you expect from implementing this enhancement? section.
   

Feel free to to run your idea by me before officially requesting it if you’d like (you can email me here).

Let the ideas flow!

Leave us a comment here about your experience with feature requests.

By Ken Orr

Ken is a developer on the MATLAB Desktop team. He loves the art of graphic design as well as developing visually pleasing user interfaces - he's one of those 'crazy' Mac guys!

15:41 UTC | Posted in Command History, Command Window, Configuration Editor, Current Directory, Data Tools, Desktop, Editor, Find tools, Help Browser, MATLAB GUI, MATLAB Shortcuts, Preferences | Permalink |

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5 Responses to “Making a feature request”

1. turtie replied on January 14th, 2008 at 21:19 UTC :
   

   Sweet graphics Ken. Great way to spruce up your blog!

2. Ken replied on January 15th, 2008 at 08:29 UTC :
   

   Thanks Quan! I’m a visual kinda guy, so I try to provide what I’d need in an entry.

   -Ken

3. Ken replied on April 16th, 2008 at 06:59 UTC :
   

   I’ve added a link to the MATLAB feature request form on this blog’s sidebar (the blue box on the right side of this page) under Links.

   -Ken

4. Naor replied on May 5th, 2009 at 22:51 UTC :
   

   Ken,
   The feature request form is simply horrible! First, “Release” should be an optional field or have “All releases” or “Future Release”. As it is what release exactly should a user choose for an enhancement request?
   Next, the required field “Product” has a list of product names that depend on what release was chosen. For some choices of release the product list is short and includes only arcane products. For example, choosing R2009a+ (the compromise I selected for suggesting an enhancement for future versions) the Product list includes: “DO Qualification Kit”, “IEC Certification Kit”, “Polyspace Client for C/C++”, and “Polyspace Server for C/C++”, and that’s it! Which of these is a user supposed to choose if she wants to suggest an enhancement for the MATLAB Desktop?
   I almost gave up on submitting my request, which would have been terrible because I have such a nice enhancement idea ;)

5. Ken replied on May 5th, 2009 at 23:53 UTC :
   

   Hi Naor,

   Thanks for the feedback on your experience with the enhancement request form. If you’re willing, I’d like to connect you with one of the usability specialists for that web form. You can email me off list if your interested at ken.orr@mathworks.com

   -Ken

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These postings are the author's and don't necessarily represent the opinions of The MathWorks.