This year's HOW Interactive Design Conference was in two cities-- Washington, D.C. in September, and San Francisco in October. I presented a session on getting site feedback at both occasions. Below is a transcript of my presentation-- pretty close to what I in fact said, though I'm not saying there aren't a couple of edits occasionally to make me look excellent.
Thank you, very much. Excellent morning! I hope you all are well rested, caffeinated, and otherwise all set to put your minds to work today. There's going to be a great deal of excellent things coming your method. Really, I'm actually glad to be going initially so I can join you all in soaking it in!
Today, I want to share with you what I've learned about feedback-- specifically, the ways we think of and then gather feedback about our websites.
The best location to start, I believe, is by taking a look at some pictures. ... And they all breathed a sigh of relief! Seriously, however, we do require to ease our minds in to this sort of thing first thing in the morning. So, I've brought some images with me that I want to scan. If you can recognize these images as I reveal them, feel free to say so aloud for everybody to hear.
Here we go:.
What do these things share?
They are all types of feedback! The interesting thing about feedback is that its a signal that just makes good sense once you understand what it's responding to.
For example, the scantron, which all of us keep in mind from high school, is a matrix of responses to test concerns. The tally records your action to the concern, "who are you electing?" And the scale, it shows the response to your concern, "how much do I weigh today?".
What about this type of feedback?
This is a blood test analysis, similar, really, to one I got simply a couple of days after my last physical. It took me a couple of minutes of looking at mine to recognize that I had no concept what to make from it. The issue with this type of feedback is that it does not address the simple concern I picture anyone without medical training would have upon evaluating it: "Am I healthy or not?" I quickly went from being impressed with the service of having actually gotten this report by mail, to frustration with not having the ability to draw out any significance from it.
If I can't understand a report, what good is it?
Let me reveal you one more kind of feedback, one you might be more knowledgeable about.
This is a KPI report. In truth, a KPI report that a person of my firm's customers acquired a couple of years ago.
For those who do not know, KPI represents essential efficiency indications. This is how web feedback is generally recorded: a substantial matrix of responses but no questions to supply context. Outstanding as it may appear, if you're interested in making any sense of what's going on with your website, the KPI is most likely not going to be much help. This sort of report demonstrates that we have actually come down with a quite typical fallacy: that the volume of data confirms the measurement itself. Now, this specific KPI report goes on for 90 pages ...
... so there must be something fascinating and essential therein, right? Riiiight. Probably not. But even if there was, the majority of people will probably simply tune out a few pages in. The conclusion that "measurement is being done" is good enough for them.
Fortunately is that we can switch in some new words for KPI that are much more uncomplicated about what it does. How about: Keeping People Ignorant!
Now, repeat-after-me is an old standby for teachers to get sleepy students engaged, so let's all state that together:.
KPI reports are: KEEPING PEOPLE IGNORANT.
They do state that oral regurgitation is one of the very best methods of imprinting something on your brain. I've constantly felt that composing things down is even better, so I hope some of you did that too.
The failures of the keeping people ignorant report make a good example of broken feedback, which tends to have three core qualities. It's:.
contracted out.
irregular.
overly quantitative.
Outsourcing this sort of thing isn't objectively bad-- there are lots of good analytics consultants out there who deserve their charges-- however it's not usually in your benefits.
A report like the one we simply looked at is the item of metric regurgitation, not questioning. Think about it: They don't have the questions that you have. If they aren't asking the best concerns, they won't have the ability to supply the ideal responses. They can provide you 90 pages of data and want you best of luck.
If you're not gathering your own feedback, then you're probably paying somebody else to do it. And if you're paying somebody else to do it, it's most likely not getting done very typically. And if it's not getting done extremely frequently, it's most likely not getting done till you're desperate for answers. And here's the important things: Information gathered in crisis is ensured to be misinterpreted.
As we have actually currently seen, broken feedback likewise tends to be excessively quantitative. It's all answers, and no concerns.
How do we ever anticipate that to work?
That's an excellent question, isn't it?
Now that we know what type of feedback isn't working, what usefull websites I 'd like to make with the time we have left is go a bit more with establishing a baseline for great feedback-- that's the theoretical side of all of this-- and then build upon that foundation a repeatable approach for gathering feedback-- that's the HOW.
The Foundations of Useful Feedback.
Feedback that works also has three attributes. It's:.
done by you.
regularly.
qualitative.
In other words, it prefers meaning to numbers.
But what exactly do I suggest by that? How do we ensure that our feedback gathering prefers meaning? Well, for something, we make certain it responds to the specific concerns we ought to be inquiring about our websites. There are five concerns that anybody involved in web design, advancement or marketing must be asking all the time:.
Who is concerning my site?
Where are they originating from?
What content are they consuming?
How are they engaging with that material?
What can I do to improve their experience?
Outside of these concerns, I'm not exactly sure what else you would actually need to understand.
These five questions have something extremely important in common. Can you guess what?
The responses to these questions are not numbers! We use numbers to answer them. Numbers aren't always sufficient; they're a means to an end. Which suggests that we can conclude two amazing features of feedback ...
There are no individually meaningful metrics. It's not practically page views or downloads, and it's never ever, ever about hits. No one states hits any longer, right? It has to do with the connections in between metrics that provide answers to our 5 questions.
Anything can be a source of information.
Which brings us, naturally, to robotics and people.
As far as robots are concerned the ones I'm going to speak about work for Google-- of course they do!-- and among the things they do is enable a terrific feedback tool called Google Analytics.
If you were hoping for something more sci-fi, we can talk about robopocalypses and such at tonight's mixed drink hour, I guarantee.
After we take a look at what the analytics bots have to offer us, I want to introduce you to a couple of methods for collecting extremely beneficial feedback from living, breathing human beings.