

Ask YC: User feedback? - igexome

I'm wrapping up my last year of school and plan on applying for the summer YC program with two friends to work on a project we're experimenting with now. One of the key elements that I proposed was having an absolute seamless user feedback system.<p>I spent the past six months as an intern at a company that practiced a mix of scrum and XP methodologies and learned how important getting feedback is for the success and direction of a product, so I'm asking every bright person here for any examples or ideas in integrating in a feedback system for a web application. I like twitter.com's system [<a href="http://twitter.com/help" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/help</a>], but that is simply to request to get help. What about a way of allowing for user suggestions? My only concern is that it could easily be "overdone" and draw away from a clean and usable site.
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nostrademons
I liked Reddit's system. Click on a prominent "feedback" link (in the early
Reddit it was in the top left, and one of the most prominent actions on the
page), it takes you to a page with a textbox that e-mails the founders. I
submitted a couple bug reports to Reddit when it was a few months old and got
back fixes within the hour, which was one of the main reasons I decided to
stick around.

Also, don't underestimate the usefulness of forums. They become a pain to
manage when you get big, but they're absolutely invaluable at getting feedback
and building community when you're small. Forums let power-users help newbies
(pulling some of the support load off you), and they also give users a chance
to weigh in with "No, that's a _terrible_ idea" when another user proposes a
half-baked idea. When I was working on FictionAlley, there were many times
when a user came up with a suggestion, I was like "Yeah, I can implement
that", then other users chimed in with "Please don't; it'll ruin things for
the rest of us. Here's what you could try instead."

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vlad
Great post. I realized forums help build a community and augment help files
and help desks, but it escaped me that forums also help brainstorm ways
through bad ideas without offending the userbase.

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dfens
I think the Feedback button on Swivel.com is quite neat.

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igexome
Do you like the captcha as well? I just checked it out and I was able to find
it (as it is clearly labeled 'Feedback') and could enter whatever I want. But
say you wanted to say something in a search result or your menu pane was
missing something...would it all be routed through that one small link at the
top of the page? I guess I'm going for how can I integrate it to be part of
the user experience.

