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How Google takes feedback
- pveugen 14y agoIndeed very cool. Usabilla offers a same form of feedback: http://usabilla.com/products#usabilla_live http://usabilla.com/products#usabilla_live (see also button on the right side of the page). How it works: 1. You create a widget and add two lines of code to your site. 2. Visitors click the feedback button and can select highlight any part of the page to comment on. 3. Usabilla creates a screenshot (server-side) and shows feedback in a simple dashboard. Disclaimer: I'm founder of Usabilla.
- jonnymkramer 14y agoI find it annoying how you have to restart the tool for each individual element. Especially as you have to go through the How Does It Work screen every time. I think skipping the How Does It Work screen on subsequent pieces of feedback would be better.
- richardkeller 14y agoHow do you guys take a screenshot server-side for sites that require a login? Or does this only work for publicly accessible pages?
- pveugen 14y agoCapturing sites that require a login works the same as other pages. We use the HTML output to capture a server-side screenshot.
- SunboX 14y agoYou could do this client side with https://github.com/niklasvh/html2canvas https://github.com/niklasvh/html2canvas
- antimora 14y agobut what if client had a crappy old browser but you rendered with modern browser, which will be rendered differently. Wouldn't be better if feedback contained computed HTML doms and you could render yourself with a given client?
- pveugen 14y agoThe really crappy old browsers won't see the feedback button. We do store and show HTML doms, which helps to debug if necessary, but most of our users collect feedback on such a large scale that it would be too time consuming to offer a manual solution like this.
- premist 14y agoOpen source solution : http://experiments.hertzen.com/jsfeedback/ http://experiments.hertzen.com/jsfeedback/ It uses html2canvas to generate site screenshot on client side.
- joshka 14y agoDoesn't seem to work for google reader or google code. :(
- ditzy 14y agoThis feedback webapp had been available to Google+ users since Google+ initially launched as invite only to the public. It used to be at the bottom right of the page.
- jcollins1991 14y agoWas it for all pages or just G+ pages? The only time I saw it before was after a Youtube UI update (long before G+), and I was sad I couldn't use it elsewhere on their site... Definitely glad that it's been rolled out to more parts of their site now.
- mikecane 14y agoWhat good is Feedback when Google is determined to take away features from something like Google Books? You can complain all you want but they won't revert. Just making it easier to complain does nothing to fix anything.
- aristus 14y agoBy curiosity, what features? I have "Google Play Books" but haven't used it much.
- mikecane 14y agoGoogle Play Books is not books.google.com, which has all the public domain books they got from public libraries. The specific functionality they took away is devastating to regular users like me. When searching, results would show if a book was already in your library. You could also add it to a shelf from the search result itself. Now the search results lack that info and you must click on each result to see if it's one you already saw. This is sheer hell for discovering books that weren't there between searches. [edit for URL fix]
- j_baker 14y agoFeedback != Complaining The difference is subtle, but important. Feedback: "I would use your product more if it did x." Complaining: "Your product sucks because it doesn't do x." In short: you're absolutely correct. Making it easier to complain doesn't help. Making it easier to give feedback does help.
- ams6110 14y agoIt's a neat bit of coding, but is it really easier than just snapping a screenshot and attaching it to an email? I know what I think.....
- zaphar 14y agoyes, yes it is.
- jonknee 14y agoAn astoundingly high percentage of people would be unable to snap a screenshot and attach it. Let alone highlight the issue and black out anything sensitive. Doing it within the app also gives you a lot more detail (who the user is, where they were accessing, what browser they were using, their OS, any client side exceptions, their exact actions, etc etc) without needing to rely on the user to provide it.
- adgar 14y agoAre you kidding me? It's SO much easier and captures far more useful debugging data. How many typical computer users do you know who can submit as detailed of a bug report without Google Feedback vs. with it? Hint: if you think a "typical computer user" knows how to take a screenshot without looking it up, you're ridiculously out-of-touch.
- lmirosevic 14y agoIt might be easier for you, and for lots of other HN readers too, but what about all the other people in the world? People who when they hear the word "code" think vertically scrolling green letters on the screen.
- robrenaud 14y agoYou missed the "edit screenshot in photo editor to highlight and black out info" part. Having used this internally, I can say yes, this tool flows very well. I don't know if we do this, but you could imagine clustering feedback by the highlight pattern to automatically gauge the frequency of similiar complaints.
- zhuzhuor 14y agodoes Google have customer service?
- MaysonL 14y agoIf you're a big adveriser, yes. Otherwise, well maybe if you generate a lot of unpleasant buzz...
- jonknee 14y agoHere's a discussion about how the screenshot functionality works (which is the part that I think everyone here is impressed with). http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4912092/using-html5-canvas-javascript-to-take-screenshots http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4912092/using-html5-canva... tl;dr JavaScript can read the DOM and render a fairly accurate representation of that using canvas
- SunboX 14y agoEvery one who is interested in that should take a look at the great html2canvas library: https://github.com/niklasvh/html2canvas https://github.com/niklasvh/html2canvas
- harshadura 14y agoThis year I have done my Google summer of code project for OpenMRS.org implementing their Feedback Mechanism using this Open source solution of html2canvas. you can have a look at more about the project from here. [0] https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/projects/Submit+a+Feedback+-+Quick+Guide https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/projects/Submit+a+Feedback+... And I have done lot research about how Google Feedback mechanism happens and I have documented them in here [1] https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/projects/Resources+-+Better+Error+Submission+Process+for+FDBK+Module https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/projects/Resources+-+Better... -Harsha
- theone 14y agoyou can get idea about how its done from, http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/streaming/screenshare/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/streaming/screenshare...
- naww 14y agoStill no way to contact human for a problem. No feedback or any kind of acknowledgement about anything. And my only problem with Google only appears when I'm not logged in. The irony.
- dawernik 14y agoI wish Google would share the process post submission and how they analyze and respond to feedback. I find a process like this to capture feedback over <or disproportionately> solving the easy part of a feedback loop. I have to imagine that Google has a pretty automated process to understand the feedback - i'd rather see that. That's the problem I've always had with applications with millions of users.
- huge_asshole 14y agoEvery piece of feedback is analyzed (if it passes a spam test) by a team dedicated to that product's feedback
- dawernik 14y agoBy hand? Seems a bit un google doesn't it. Everyone looks at it. That doesn't solve any problem.
- joestringer 14y agoThe first step to making software do what humans do, is to analyse what humans do.
- mh- 14y agoa huge_asshole with 4 posts says it's so, who are we to question it?