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Show HN: Mobile feedback your users will love

70 points by willwhitney 13y ago

covgjai 13y ago
We used to have a similar feedback system and tried it with our in-house development & QA but it didn't work well. Giving feedback takes lot of writing and rewriting, with traditional writing, users can review and make corrections but with audio users will have to delete and start everything from scratch again. This is our personnel experience, you may be seeing better results as your target audience is different.
fatbat 13y ago
Interesting. I think this is a good idea seeing as how I kind of do this already except with voice transcribe on the keyboard. Unlike a text report though where users can edit or take a moment to collect their thoughts, I think voice feedback will create alot of recordings where people are unprepared and thus unable to structure deeper more meaningful feedback. That said, I am curious on how many users accidentally release their hold or submit multiple feedbacks as they add more info?
gfodor 13y ago
This seems really smart. It would be fun if the author could post some metrics here. I'd be really curious if you guys ran a split test of audio vs text feedback to see how the numbers change. It seems obvious this will lower the barrier for many people to leave feedback. If you have hard numbers on this that are convincing, they should definitely be front-and-center on your website. One potential concern is that spoken feedback on the whole will be less precise and clear than written feedback. In general though I've found feedback from users is generally pretty poor on the signal to noise ratio anyway, giving only broad strokes of where problems are, so this might not matter. As a fun bonus with audio feedback you can pick up their tone of voice to gauge just how pissed off and frustrated they really are!
- willwhitney 13y ago
  From our pseudo-scientific testing, we got ~5x voice feedback over email feedback. We're still early in the process, so we don't have any rock-solid numbers. One advantage we found from spoken feedback is that on mobile, people tend to be unwilling to type out a very detailed report, whereas that same level of detail is pretty fast to say. And yeah — you can definitely tell how happy (or unhappy) they are with the product :)
  - roadg33k 13y ago
    Interesting. Im curious, Are you also getting blank audio files?
    - willwhitney 13y ago
      We only upload files that are at least two seconds long to prevent exactly this problem.
- roadg33k 13y ago
  +1 for Split testing Audio vs Text. My personal opinion is that text feedback would better for a development team to understand and work on. If it is to be added to a popular app, you may notice a lot of noise and by noise, I don't mean audio noise :-)
  - willwhitney 13y ago
    We're also working on offering transcription, so the devs can pick whether they want audio or text.
    - bostonvaulter2 13y ago
      It would probably make sense to offer the transcription as a paid service but leave the audio-only as free. If my app was released I would definitely think about using this service! I really like the idea!
MasterScrat 13y ago
Are you sure users are comfortable actually speaking out loud? I feel there's some kind of "sound barrier": we're used to typing and swiping and rotating but we rarely get to talk without immediate feedback...
- derefr 13y ago
  I'm definitely not. Most places I'm using my mobile device, rather than a Real Computer, are because I'm in some public setting: on the street, in a restaurant, on a bus. Not good places to record a monologue.
  - skndr 13y ago
    At the same time, the thing in your hand is also a phone.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      These days, I would prefer to say that the thing in your hand has a phone app, and for many people that app gets very little use.
chadlpowell 13y ago
gathering reliable feedback in-app is a nagging problem. i'm excited to see audobox on iOS soon.
blake8086 13y ago
This is such a great idea. I love how much you've worked to ensure it takes the least number of taps possible to send feedback. One suggestion: show a meter or light or any kind of feedback that the user is being loud enough. I suspect your #1 problem with bad user-submitted feedback will be "couldn't really hear anything".
- gtank 13y ago
  Good suggestion- that may be worth adding. Anecdotally, though, we've been using this ourselves for a while without seeing that. People seem to get that they should speak clearly.
baddox 13y ago
I've been proven wrong before, but I'm very skeptical that something which requires the user to speak at the phone will convert well.
mattront 13y ago
We used to have a similar in-house developed audio feedback in one of our apps [1]. The engagement rate was low. We replaced it with the standard email feedback and we got an order of magnitude more feedback. Plus with email, you automatically get the ability to answer back and communicate with the customer. In my opinion users prefer UX concepts they are used to, even if they are less efficient. But it probably also depends on the app type and its audience. So best to test it for yourself and see what works. There was also a startup doing this [2]. Looks inactive since their iOS SDK is "coming soon" for already a year. [1] http://focusofmyday.com http://focusofmyday.com [2] http://saygent.com/ http://saygent.com/
- willwhitney 13y ago
  Great to know — thanks for the info. We got a sharp rise in feedback when we were using this in our app, but like you say, it's probably to some extent dependent on the particular app.

70 points by willwhitney 13y ago

We used to have a similar feedback system and tried it with our in-house development & QA but it didn't work well. Giving feedback takes lot of writing and rewriting, with traditional writing, users can review and make corrections but with audio users will have to delete and start everything from scratch again. This is our personnel experience, you may be seeing better results as your target audience is different.

fatbat 13y ago

Interesting. I think this is a good idea seeing as how I kind of do this already except with voice transcribe on the keyboard. Unlike a text report though where users can edit or take a moment to collect their thoughts, I think voice feedback will create alot of recordings where people are unprepared and thus unable to structure deeper more meaningful feedback. That said, I am curious on how many users accidentally release their hold or submit multiple feedbacks as they add more info?

gfodor 13y ago

This seems really smart. It would be fun if the author could post some metrics here. I'd be really curious if you guys ran a split test of audio vs text feedback to see how the numbers change. It seems obvious this will lower the barrier for many people to leave feedback. If you have hard numbers on this that are convincing, they should definitely be front-and-center on your website. One potential concern is that spoken feedback on the whole will be less precise and clear than written feedback. In general though I've found feedback from users is generally pretty poor on the signal to noise ratio anyway, giving only broad strokes of where problems are, so this might not matter. As a fun bonus with audio feedback you can pick up their tone of voice to gauge just how pissed off and frustrated they really are!

willwhitney 13y ago
From our pseudo-scientific testing, we got ~5x voice feedback over email feedback. We're still early in the process, so we don't have any rock-solid numbers. One advantage we found from spoken feedback is that on mobile, people tend to be unwilling to type out a very detailed report, whereas that same level of detail is pretty fast to say. And yeah — you can definitely tell how happy (or unhappy) they are with the product :)
- roadg33k 13y ago
  Interesting. Im curious, Are you also getting blank audio files?
  - willwhitney 13y ago
    We only upload files that are at least two seconds long to prevent exactly this problem.
roadg33k 13y ago
+1 for Split testing Audio vs Text. My personal opinion is that text feedback would better for a development team to understand and work on. If it is to be added to a popular app, you may notice a lot of noise and by noise, I don't mean audio noise :-)
- willwhitney 13y ago
  We're also working on offering transcription, so the devs can pick whether they want audio or text.
  - bostonvaulter2 13y ago
    It would probably make sense to offer the transcription as a paid service but leave the audio-only as free. If my app was released I would definitely think about using this service! I really like the idea!

MasterScrat 13y ago

Are you sure users are comfortable actually speaking out loud? I feel there's some kind of "sound barrier": we're used to typing and swiping and rotating but we rarely get to talk without immediate feedback...

derefr 13y ago
I'm definitely not. Most places I'm using my mobile device, rather than a Real Computer, are because I'm in some public setting: on the street, in a restaurant, on a bus. Not good places to record a monologue.
- skndr 13y ago
  At the same time, the thing in your hand is also a phone.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    These days, I would prefer to say that the thing in your hand has a phone app, and for many people that app gets very little use.

chadlpowell 13y ago

gathering reliable feedback in-app is a nagging problem. i'm excited to see audobox on iOS soon.

blake8086 13y ago

This is such a great idea. I love how much you've worked to ensure it takes the least number of taps possible to send feedback. One suggestion: show a meter or light or any kind of feedback that the user is being loud enough. I suspect your #1 problem with bad user-submitted feedback will be "couldn't really hear anything".

gtank 13y ago
Good suggestion- that may be worth adding. Anecdotally, though, we've been using this ourselves for a while without seeing that. People seem to get that they should speak clearly.

baddox 13y ago

I've been proven wrong before, but I'm very skeptical that something which requires the user to speak at the phone will convert well.

mattront 13y ago

We used to have a similar in-house developed audio feedback in one of our apps [1]. The engagement rate was low. We replaced it with the standard email feedback and we got an order of magnitude more feedback. Plus with email, you automatically get the ability to answer back and communicate with the customer. In my opinion users prefer UX concepts they are used to, even if they are less efficient. But it probably also depends on the app type and its audience. So best to test it for yourself and see what works. There was also a startup doing this [2]. Looks inactive since their iOS SDK is "coming soon" for already a year. [1] http://focusofmyday.com http://focusofmyday.com [2] http://saygent.com/ http://saygent.com/

willwhitney 13y ago
Great to know — thanks for the info. We got a sharp rise in feedback when we were using this in our app, but like you say, it's probably to some extent dependent on the particular app.