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Consumer products have ruined the notion of feedback and surveys for me and I suspect others might be in the same boat. The amount of times things are asking f

Consumer products have ruined the notion of feedback and surveys for me and I suspect others might be in the same boat. The amount of times things are asking for feedback has increased by orders of magnitude in the last decade and yet things keep getting shittier and shittier. I have never ever got any perceptible improvement or even follow-up from leaving detailed feedback so I no longer bother - instead I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere. Yes, in enterprise situations you’d hope the feedback actually gets looked at by a competent person and doesn’t just go into a black hole, but as a user I have no way to tell, so either I just write off the issue or I will do the thing that will guarantee the issue is resolved which is to email their manager instead of gambling my time on whether the feedback system works or even gets looked at.

Aachen 5y ago
> I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere. How about you just don't respond instead of lying? That saves even more time! I understand why you pick 5 stars instead of giving bad ratings but why bother faking a response at all. What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  It sometimes takes more clicks to not respond or they will keep pestering you with email notifications assuming that you “forgot” the last one. I’m not saying I lie in the ratings on purpose, but I’m not going to do extra work to find the ignore option - I’ll use whatever option is more prominent. > What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session? Email-based systems will often send multiple follow-up ones and the only way to stop it is to essentially submit. If it’s a system I use often I’ll make an email rule to trash them (or passive-aggressively send them back to someone at their company) but if it’s an unexpected one I’ll just respond to prevent the next one. Some mobile apps make the dismiss option hard to find/reach (literally - it’s at the top corner of the screen on a big phone) while the 5-star option is more prominent. IRL I would also answer since declining is essentially implicitly admitting that something isn’t right and could get someone in trouble. Ideally there should be a “don’t ask me ever again” option to disable that behaviour somewhere but I have yet to see it since every company seems to have a “feedback monster” that they need to continuously feed with ratings, even if they are meaningless.
protomyth 5y ago
The amount of times things are asking for feedback has increased by orders of magnitude in the last decade and yet things keep getting shittier and shittier. Walmart added a "rate your experience" screen to their self checkouts, thus slowing down the self checkout lane and creating a worse experience by asking for feedback. I seriously want to meet the person who did it just to get some attempt at justification. I long for the days when Palm had a person counting clicks.
- ask_b123 5y ago
  What's this about Palm having a person count clicks? Palm Inc.?
  - protomyth 5y ago
    At Palm, the key user need was managing contacts across devices quickly and easily. In order to address this, Jeff Hawkins (the founder of Palm and Handspring with Donna Dubinsky) created a full time job description on the team: “Click Counter”. Her job was to go through each of the core use cases and count EVERY single click it took to achieve that goal. Then she made recommendations on where the friction was and what steps should be eliminated. By focusing on reducing the time it took to achieve every task, the experience became remarkably efficient for looking up a contact, adding a contact, syncing with your PC (1 button press!) etc. https://blog.prototypr.io/what-you-remove-is-more-important-than-what-you-put-in-eb5365aded90 https://blog.prototypr.io/what-you-remove-is-more-important-...

Aachen 5y ago

> I do whatever is easiest to make the thing get out of my way so I can get back to my actual work, so everyone gets 5 stars or whatever is the “good” answer because I don’t want to get some poor soul in trouble in case there’s a “if avg_feedback < 99: fire()” somewhere. How about you just don't respond instead of lying? That saves even more time! I understand why you pick 5 stars instead of giving bad ratings but why bother faking a response at all. What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session?

Nextgrid 5y ago
It sometimes takes more clicks to not respond or they will keep pestering you with email notifications assuming that you “forgot” the last one. I’m not saying I lie in the ratings on purpose, but I’m not going to do extra work to find the ignore option - I’ll use whatever option is more prominent. > What situation is it where you're forced to give a rating (is this irl or something) until you're allowed to leave the session? Email-based systems will often send multiple follow-up ones and the only way to stop it is to essentially submit. If it’s a system I use often I’ll make an email rule to trash them (or passive-aggressively send them back to someone at their company) but if it’s an unexpected one I’ll just respond to prevent the next one. Some mobile apps make the dismiss option hard to find/reach (literally - it’s at the top corner of the screen on a big phone) while the 5-star option is more prominent. IRL I would also answer since declining is essentially implicitly admitting that something isn’t right and could get someone in trouble. Ideally there should be a “don’t ask me ever again” option to disable that behaviour somewhere but I have yet to see it since every company seems to have a “feedback monster” that they need to continuously feed with ratings, even if they are meaningless.

protomyth 5y ago

The amount of times things are asking for feedback has increased by orders of magnitude in the last decade and yet things keep getting shittier and shittier. Walmart added a "rate your experience" screen to their self checkouts, thus slowing down the self checkout lane and creating a worse experience by asking for feedback. I seriously want to meet the person who did it just to get some attempt at justification. I long for the days when Palm had a person counting clicks.

ask_b123 5y ago
What's this about Palm having a person count clicks? Palm Inc.?
- protomyth 5y ago
  At Palm, the key user need was managing contacts across devices quickly and easily. In order to address this, Jeff Hawkins (the founder of Palm and Handspring with Donna Dubinsky) created a full time job description on the team: “Click Counter”. Her job was to go through each of the core use cases and count EVERY single click it took to achieve that goal. Then she made recommendations on where the friction was and what steps should be eliminated. By focusing on reducing the time it took to achieve every task, the experience became remarkably efficient for looking up a contact, adding a contact, syncing with your PC (1 button press!) etc. https://blog.prototypr.io/what-you-remove-is-more-important-than-what-you-put-in-eb5365aded90 https://blog.prototypr.io/what-you-remove-is-more-important-...