”Cheating” on the Molicel new battery poll...really?

[Mooch]

I must say that I am disappointed in the results. I also tried to look at the bigger picture. I voted for safety improvements to benefit all vapers.

We've learned to vape from a "performance" perspective with what is already available to use. However, we all use some type of lithium battery which have inherent safety risks. A nearly foolproof "safe" battery would benefit all of us. Can Molicel create that?

A lot is possible. But at what size, cost, and performance penalty? It’s a great goal, one that I want the most, but it will take some incremental steps to prep the market and mod manufacturers to the changes they would need to make to support such a cell (more like a pack).

Many things can be done with the cell itself but it might be LFP chemistry and might need to be in series for regulated mods since it runs at a lower voltage. It will be larger or lower capacity since LFP chemistry isn’t as energy dense as others. Supporting electronics are a great option but will take up room and add cost.

All this is why I wanted to see that option as one to challenge Moli’s engineers with. Let’s see if they can surprise us.

 

[Mooch]

How do you know which were duplicates though?

Groups of duplicate votes spaced together at regular intervals when looking at the time stamps of the dump of the vote data.

 

[Mooch]

My guess would be an agent acting for Molicel was responsible

For what reason though? They could just release a 26650 without pretending to be interested in what we wanted and then spiking the results of the poll. Actions like this are just too easy to spot.

 

[Mooch]

I'm highly skeptical of the validity of this poll (no disrespect intended Mooch) what with your average battery wrapper's track record. This is a public relations exercise after all so I wouldn't get too exited.

The results weren’t nearly as useful as I was hoping but Molicel didn’t ask for the poll. They asked what I thought they should concentrate on and I said it’s important to know what the community thought and I came up with the poll idea.

 

[Mooch]

Mooch,

Thank you so much for taking the time out to rationalise the results.



Welcome to the wonderful world of polls, focus groups and consultations. Unless there is sufficient control and scope, the danger is the question is already pre-loaded. In an ideal world I agree that should be the approach, but personal experience suggests otherwise.

It is a brave corporation that actually genuinely enquires as to what their customers want, as frequently that will conflict with other agendas. It is also potentially very costly to do properly, not just in implementation but from a PR/marketing perspective. What happens if your customers say your product is rubbish?

What you generally end up with is design by committee, the low hanging fruit is picked, and then pushed as new improved etc. Worst still, there is the consult/ignore paradigm, where the poll/focus group is used as a lever to push through something entirely different.

That is why most customer service surveys are flawed, unless as an organisation you are willing to ask difficult questions and then listen and act on the responses, all you will end up with is a grey soup of confirmation bias.

Saying that, I'm not having a go at Molicel, Mooch or anyone in particular, just sharing my experience of branding, polls, focus groups etc. from both side of the fence. That's why I love the Japanese approach when it comes to product development, the staff who know what goes on are actively encouraged to engage on the basis of understanding.

The poll was my idea as a response to Molicel asking me where I’d like to see them concentrate their efforts for the vaping community. I felt it was important to ask the community and not just give my thoughts.

Lesson learned.

 

[Strtsmthng]

Thanks once more Mooch for taking the time to do this, and a great opportunity to get feedback to Moli - or so I hope. In this context, the results - with the multiple entries and such - are a little disappointing.
Also when looking at the results first, I thought (even though I did not vote for it) that a branded 26650 might be an interesting niche for Moli, given as no other (reputable, at least to me) manufacturer offers a competitive 26650 at this time.

 

[Izan]

There were 1570 responses to the recent poll asking what you’d like Molicel to challenge their engineers to do for their new battery development.

Over 700 responses were obvious duplicates entered in by dozens of people. There was one group of about 420 “Create a good 26650 battery” responses!

I’m only talking about multiple votes for the same thing. It’s perfectly okay to go back and also vote for something different as not all of us have a single favorite choice from the list.

Really? This is how we thank the first big manufacturer who is interested in what we want to see in a battery?

I completely understand wanting your choice to be the top one in the poll. But I think the bigger picture is important too. Whether voting twice or 420 times for the same thing we want Molicel to spend their money on something that results in a battery the community wants and will buy. This will get Molicel to spend even more time and money on more batteries we want.

I went through all 1,570 responses manually and removed the obvious duplicates (yea, that was a fun evening /s) but I am sure that I missed some. Hopefully they are distributed across most of the choices pretty evenly.

The results
View attachment 777665

Votes for performance improvements beat out safety improvements by a large margin. I was also surprised that only about 800 vapers voted across ECR, ECR, FB, and IG. A huge thank you to those that did!

IMO,
If the corporation or entity hosting the poll is unable to filter and block multiple votes from the same machine/phone/tablet, IP or range of IPs, they should be ashamed of themselves.

In house means they are unqualified. If they hired someone to host, and they failed to vet the contractor, where else are they making bad decisions?
Confidence inspiring it is NOT.

Just my
I

 

[Letitia]

Personally I think a thread or two with a what do you think about this idea would have been of more use to them. If they want to engage with the community this would be more effective imo. A good start would be better wraps and insulator rings.

 

[United States]

Performance sells. 645hp cars to go the 70mph speed limit will always have a following.

Safety? Yawn....

If I had voted it would've been for boring ole safety if for no other reason maybe folks will one day stop asking "don't those things explode?"

 

[Foggy Road]

C'mon @Mooch, surprised? Seriously? Exactly how sheltered are you from this real world infested with absolutely normal human..... Ummmmmm..... Beings?

 

[keelalagirl55]

IMO,
If the corporation or entity hosting the poll is unable to filter and block multiple votes from the same machine/phone/tablet, IP or range of IPs, they should be ashamed of themselves.

In house means they are unqualified. If they hired someone to host, and they failed to vet the contractor, where else are they making bad decisions?
Confidence inspiring it is NOT.

Just my
I

Molicel didn't do this poll nor have it done. Mooch did it wanting to get the thoughts of the community. I may be mistaken, but I think he used a tool available through this forum to do the poll.

 

[Tim Wiseman]

The poll was my idea as a response to Molicel asking me where I’d like to see them concentrate their efforts for the vaping community. I felt it was important to ask the community and not just give my thoughts.

Lesson learned.

So do you honour the result of the poll or instead give them your thoughts because although personally i believe safety is the most important thing if the questions asked then you should go with the answer else don't ask the question?

 

[Mooch]

IMO,
If the corporation or entity hosting the poll is unable to filter and block multiple votes from the same machine/phone/tablet, IP or range of IPs, they should be ashamed of themselves.

In house means they are unqualified. If they hired someone to host, and they failed to vet the contractor, where else are they making bad decisions?
Confidence inspiring it is NOT.

Just my
I

Moli asked me for my thoughts regarding future cell development. I said let’s ask the community and I put up that Google poll. Google gives you the option to limit each person to one vote but you need to have a Google account to vote then. This was a restriction I did not want to have. Especially since many would not be able to decide on just one thing to vote for and would want to cast a second, but different, vote. I had no problem with that.

This could have worked out well. The only ones at fault here IMO are a few people in our community.

 

[Mooch]

C'mon @Mooch, surprised? Seriously? Exactly how sheltered are you from this real world infested with absolutely normal human..... Ummmmmm..... Beings?

There’s no reason our community can’t be responsible adults when it comes to something we can benefit from. Perhaps I am an optimist but I think it’s a worthy goal.

My thoughts to the contrary shouldn’t mean I give up trying. But, perhaps I won’t use an open poll like that again.

 

[Mooch]

So do you honour the result of the poll or instead give them your thoughts because although personally i believe safety is the most important thing if the questions asked then you should go with the answer else don't ask the question?

I do both. They get my thoughts and they get the results of the poll. Neither of those things invalidates the other.

My top priorities were certain safety concepts, without loss of performance, followed by performance improvements wherever possible. I see multiple lines of cell development though, safety oriented cell improvements and performance oriented cell improvements, as having it all in one cell isn’t possible yet. The community can choose the things that are most important to them until certain technologies are more mature (aqueous electrolytes, solid electrolytes, etc.) and safer batteries still possessing great performance are available.

 

[Mooch]

Molicel didn't do this poll nor have it done. Mooch did it wanting to get the thoughts of the community. I may be mistaken, but I think he used a tool available through this forum to do the poll.

It was my idea, using Google Forms.
Moli asked me for my thoughts and I said let’s ask the community too.

 

[tailland]

If I may:
I was displeased to have only 1 vote because I felt that

(A) there are way too many things that could be improved in batteries and
(B) exactly because such wide gammut of topics was touched by the answers, having only 1 vote would necessarily render this poll unrepresentative.

I would repeat the poll, but with this change:
Group the answers by topics, and require pollees to give a score of 1-10 (not important to very important) to EACH of the answers in the poll... the results would be a much more detailed source of information.

 

[Foggy Road]

There’s no reason our community can’t be responsible adults when it comes to something we can benefit from. Perhaps I am an optimist but I think it’s a worthy goal.

Even with proof in hand you can't admit to the scratch on your rose colored glasses. I'm sorry Mooch, I really don't mean to be offensive. I really don't care about external batteries. I know I looked at the poll, not sure if or what I voted for. But if the poll was borked... It's borked! Invalid! I would much rather have the decision come from you than a flawed poll of a community with too high a percentage of members whose desire is whatever the marketers tell them to desire.

That marketer asked your opinion because they value it. I'm sure they intend to market to more than just this tiny ECF community. The entire vaping world might benefit from it. Ya gotta give the answer that's right. Dontcha think?

 

[Mooch]

If I may:
I was displeased to have only 1 vote because I felt that

(A) there are way too many things that could be improved in batteries and
(B) exactly because such wide gammut of topics was touched by the answers, having only 1 vote would necessarily render this poll unrepresentative.

I would repeat the poll, but with this change:
Group the answers by topics, and require pollees to give a score of 1-10 (not important to very important) to EACH of the answers in the poll... the results would be a much more detailed source of information.

You had the option to go back and vote again though. It was one of the links displayed after you voted. If I do another poll it will be done quite differently.

 

[tailland]

I'm not sure I even submitted my initial vote, because I felt too discouraged by the setup :ß Sorry.

There are many websites for setting up polls, and many do not require any form of sign-up from the pollees.