

Three Clever Xobni Features (1/3): "Are you Happy?" - adamsmith
http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2008/01/three-clever-xobni-features-13-are-you.html

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whacked_new
Without any further information from that happiness survey, it looks like a
fairly unclever feature to me.

If I task-switched in after frustration from using another application I might
as well enter No. Or if I just had a great coffee maybe I'll enter Yes.

If it is really clever, please show some more stats. 90% said they were happy.
Was this correlated with time of day? Or a particular day? More interesting
would be something like, on average, how long did it take for users to respond
to the survey after it was activated. I venture to guess that this information
-- unless most users give detailed comments, as opposed to clicking Yes/No,
which most lazy users would do -- is hard to make useful unless you collect
further usage details which would put the app into the spyware category.

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paul
The question should probably say, "are you happy with Xobni?"

That said, the feedback from this kind of thing can be surprisingly useful.
You get a feel for the general mood of your users, and learn what the common
pain points are (unhappy people generally say why).

Looking clever and being clever aren't always the same...

~~~
vlad
Yeah, and it only takes one feedback from one user to make you realize there's
a real problem with something you've recently changed, which is actually what
you want--if you can fix something before most users see it, there was no
problem!

I will agree with the grandparent that the most obvious part of that feature
isn't particularly clever: having a feedback field is a good idea that has
been done before.

Also, the question may or may not be a bit vague. (I kind of like it because
it gives a pulse on their software, especially on an individual user who could
be sent an e-mail from a help desk technician when suddenly they choose no
after selecting yes for many months.)

Either way, asking users if they're happy is a good idea because they will
have statistics to prove it. For example, when I helped users with their
support questions, I automatically asked them to fill out a survey. The
question "would you recommend this to a friend" yielded a 9 out of 10
agreement rate (93% I think) over a period of a year. I am proud and have that
as the first thing on the front page on my web site.

I think web apps + good stats are the way to go, so I'm gearing for that
rather than desktop apps.

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marcus
Survey questions like this one are not effective, monitor the usage & behavior
of your users, which features are they using , which are they ignoring.

Compare the usage of users which are happy with your product (defined as
continue using your software for a long time) with users that dump your
product after a few hours of playing with it. What features are the happy
users using? What are the unhappy ones missing?

Data mine everything, knowing your users behavior is power.

Customize user experience based on those stats.

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Tichy
Wow, I think I want to try that. Not getting feedback from users is a major
frustrating point. I could imagine some would be prepared to at least press
the Yes or No button. And once they made that step mentally, perhaps they'll
even leave a comment.

