11–19 of 19 posts
What do you mean by bad feedback? In most cases, "bad feedback" occurs when startups disagree with their users. "You'll see," they say. Well, you know how that story ends.
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I define useless feedback as people telling me that they want some obscure feature which I then implement and then, predictably, no one, not even the requester ever uses at all.
You shouldn't blindly implement features just because your users are telling you to do so. While it is important to listen and react to your user's concerns, it's also your responsibility to maintain the integrity/consistency of the application. Also, if you don't believe that the feature you're building is going to have any effect, then it's already heading towards failure because you're not going to be committed to…
Yes, this is what I'm asking. In direct marketing for example, there are ways that success can be scientifically measured. I am wondering if any of you have used more methodical approaches to improving applications -- or if it's just guess and find out if it worked 2 months from now.
The reason for this is that I just don't always trust users to think deeply enough of the problem for them to know what they want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You shouldn't blindly implement features just because your users are telling you to do so. While it is important to listen and react to your user's concerns, it's also your responsibility to maintain the integrity/consistency of the application. Also, if you don't believe that the feature you're building is going to have any effect, then it's already heading towards failure because you're not going to be committed to…
"engage the user and see if you can get the feature to a common ground" Yes, this is what I'm asking. In direct marketing for example, there are ways that success can be scientifically measured. I am wondering if any of you have used more methodical approaches to improving applications -- or if it's just guess and find out if it worked 2 months from now. The reason for this is that I just don't always trust users to…
But don't lead them or demo anything; just watch how they start, and what they react to/don't understand.
We had a similar experience recently -- http://blog.seeksift.com/2007/03/02/an-epiphany/ -- and it did wonders for our usability.
How could all your user feedback be wrong?
Buy lunch for 5 local users and brainstorm. Get your friends to try the app, have a dinner party and brainstorm. Go to survey monkey and add a short survey to your app.
You need to seek out feedback from a broad spectrum of your users and ask specific questions (hopefully based on the voluntary feedback that you've received to date).
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"engage the user and see if you can get the feature to a common ground" Yes, this is what I'm asking. In direct marketing for example, there are ways that success can be scientifically measured. I am wondering if any of you have used more methodical approaches to improving applications -- or if it's just guess and find out if it worked 2 months from now. The reason for this is that I just don't always trust users to…
A great thing to do is invite your target users to try the app/service in your presence. But don't lead them or demo anything; just watch how they start, and what they react to/don't understand. We had a similar experience recently -- http://blog.seeksift.com/2007/03/02/an-epiphany/ -- and it did wonders for our usability.
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No. I didn't say that they don't like it and there have been no noticeable bugs. It was very well received by all of those who I heard from. The problem is that the whole "release as early as possible and get user feedback quickly" strategy has not been effective for me at all. My question is how I can get better feedback from users, not how I can suck less.
Post your Beta to Ycombinator news. No shortage of strong opinions here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A great thing to do is invite your target users to try the app/service in your presence. But don't lead them or demo anything; just watch how they start, and what they react to/don't understand. We had a similar experience recently -- http://blog.seeksift.com/2007/03/02/an-epiphany/ -- and it did wonders for our usability.
Seeksift looks cool. I was a little frusterated though when I clicked on the blog and then couldn't find a way to click back to seeksift easily.
Thanks, too, for bringing up the point about the blog; there are probably ways of customizing the header to point to SeekSift.com but I got a little frustrated with Wordpress after I found out you can't change their favicon.