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Our users often get emotional and vent their frustration with bad UX in unproductive ways. But that does not mean the feedback is not helpful or constructive.

Our users often get emotional and vent their frustration with bad UX in unproductive ways. But that does not mean the feedback is not helpful or constructive. The users email did in fact contain several constructive complaints about the UX, including settings, user defined languages, styles, global overrides. They discussed difficulty in setting background color and highlight effects. They even provided a comparison to a different product (google search) to demonstrate alternative UX. I think angry user emails can be some of the most enlightening ones with regards to learning about the real UX

yakubin 4y ago
All I can take out from his complaints is that he doesn't understand settings. I don't know what he doesn't understand about them, what exactly is wrong with them. I'm not sure I would call that constructive. Constructive would be something like: "I wanted to do X, so I tried doing Y, I expected Z to happen, but instead got W".
- criley2 4y ago
  No offense but you need to level up your empathy/reading skills then. This is a canonical example of user feedback. Your user feedback isn't going to be coming from the lead developer on a major product or a Comp Sci PhD or a highly talented software designer that can effortlessly (and for free) breakdown problems and suggest efficient and powerful solutions in a long-form report. This right here is how users tell us our UX sucks. We either listen or we don't, but how we treat our users is very core to how well our products do.
  - yakubin 4y ago
    > No offense but you need to level up your empathy/reading skills then. Can you deduce what went wrong from what he wrote? > Your user feedback isn't going to be coming from the lead developer on a major product or a Comp Sci PhD or a highly talented software designer that can effortlessly (and for free) breakdown problems and suggest efficient and powerful solutions in a long-form report. He doesn't need to suggest solutions. He just needs to communicate what happened. There is nothing in this mail about what he tried doing with settings - where he clicked and what he expected to happen. > (and for free) Goes both ways in this case.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    This just seems like free/open source coding vs corporate products. Yes, if you are selling a product to customers, you have to be nice to them, even if they are rude.
- nkrisc 4y ago
  That’s still useful feedback. If he couldn’t understand the settings, how many more can’t but don’t say anything?
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  You've described an actionable bug report. People who fix bugs, or who work in tech support, understand what is needed in a defect report. Most ordinary users don't; they expect the responder to ask them for the specific information they need. Anyone whose done tech support over the phone knows this. Some bug-reporting forms nowadays require you to answer roughly those questions, which is a good thing. End-user feedback doesn't have to be an actionable bug report. If a user contacts you to say simply "I don't like it", that's legitimate feedback; something about your product is annoying enough to cause this user to reach out, rather than silently abandoning your product. The snarky "we will refund your purchase price" response isn't going to elicit information about what caused the annoyance, given that everyone knows the vast majority of users don't pay for Notepad++.

yakubin 4y ago

All I can take out from his complaints is that he doesn't understand settings. I don't know what he doesn't understand about them, what exactly is wrong with them. I'm not sure I would call that constructive. Constructive would be something like: "I wanted to do X, so I tried doing Y, I expected Z to happen, but instead got W".

criley2 4y ago
No offense but you need to level up your empathy/reading skills then. This is a canonical example of user feedback. Your user feedback isn't going to be coming from the lead developer on a major product or a Comp Sci PhD or a highly talented software designer that can effortlessly (and for free) breakdown problems and suggest efficient and powerful solutions in a long-form report. This right here is how users tell us our UX sucks. We either listen or we don't, but how we treat our users is very core to how well our products do.
- yakubin 4y ago
  > No offense but you need to level up your empathy/reading skills then. Can you deduce what went wrong from what he wrote? > Your user feedback isn't going to be coming from the lead developer on a major product or a Comp Sci PhD or a highly talented software designer that can effortlessly (and for free) breakdown problems and suggest efficient and powerful solutions in a long-form report. He doesn't need to suggest solutions. He just needs to communicate what happened. There is nothing in this mail about what he tried doing with settings - where he clicked and what he expected to happen. > (and for free) Goes both ways in this case.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  This just seems like free/open source coding vs corporate products. Yes, if you are selling a product to customers, you have to be nice to them, even if they are rude.
nkrisc 4y ago
That’s still useful feedback. If he couldn’t understand the settings, how many more can’t but don’t say anything?
denton-scratch 4y ago
You've described an actionable bug report. People who fix bugs, or who work in tech support, understand what is needed in a defect report. Most ordinary users don't; they expect the responder to ask them for the specific information they need. Anyone whose done tech support over the phone knows this. Some bug-reporting forms nowadays require you to answer roughly those questions, which is a good thing. End-user feedback doesn't have to be an actionable bug report. If a user contacts you to say simply "I don't like it", that's legitimate feedback; something about your product is annoying enough to cause this user to reach out, rather than silently abandoning your product. The snarky "we will refund your purchase price" response isn't going to elicit information about what caused the annoyance, given that everyone knows the vast majority of users don't pay for Notepad++.