I have been using GetSatisfaction for a while now… love the service, if you haven’t signed up I strongly advise you join up and get in on the conversation. That being said, there are some elements of their UI that are confusing and I recently contributed to a suggestion to improve something that I personally had a hard time finding/using. The staff were quick to respond and even asked me for feedback on a change to address my point. I was very impressed.

One thing I still find confusing while using the site is the use of the 10 point Net Promoter Score (NPS) system.

Wikipedia: The Net Promoter score is a management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. It serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research.

Now this gauge is fairly commonly used to by companies to determine how happy/loyal their customers are (How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?), but taking a step back and looking at it from a intuitive UI experience it is confusing both for the person voting as well as the person analyzing the data. Excluding the numbers 0, 5 and 10 … the interpretation for all the rest of the numbers are completely up in the air. I can’t actually think of 10 values for things for a poll like this, so I surely don’t know how I could distinguish voting for an item.

Breaking it Down

So to prove a point, lets break it down:

• 0 = Not a chance I would recommend this to anyone, I hate it
• 1 = I wouldn’t recommend this product at all. It is garbage. i would only use it if I HAD TO due to price or lack of competition.
• 2 = This product performs bare bone functions and is an unenjoyable experience
• 3 = This product is tough to use and unituitive but does perform.
• 4 = This product works ok, although if there are other products/services that perform this function at this price point, I would recommend taking a look at them.
• 5 = I am completely indifferent to this product/service
• 6 = This product is satisfactory, it does what it says but could definately be improved.
• 7 = This product is good, couple things I would change, but overall does what is says.
• 8 = This product is really good, worth the money
• 9 = This product is great, I would advise everyone getting it.
• 10 = I love this product, I tell everyone about it, I am getting it for people for gifts.

Now as you can see I defined each of the 10 points for what they might mean to me… if you read through that, you can see it is quite an effort to evaluate and choose. Bundle that with the fact that I am sure each indivdual would define those 10 things slightly differently makes it not only a burden to the user to answer, but from a reporting standpoint sort of worthless (if each number really means everything).

Intuitive Questioning

So lets address the problem and come up with a solution. A company wants to find out what a user thinks of their product. We want this to take, at most, 3 seconds for a user to read, evaluate and answer. Ok first things first, get rid of the numbers and use descriptive words:

• No
• Probably Not
• Indifferent
• Probably Would
• Yes

That covers it. Now I understand from a reporting standpoint you might want to find out a little more info… why don’t they like the product? what can we do to improve it? Thats fine, but lets not burden the user with those questions right off the bat especially since the combination of asking them about price, features, support, reputation would even turn those 10 choices to 30 or 40. So ask the original question with your 5 options and then have a tailored secondary question with multiple checkboxes for answers that are relative to their answer. “Yes”, no real need to ask those people anything… they love your product. For the people that probably would, ask the user “what they liked about the product”, these are your strong points… people that like product are already going to be focused on these, don’t ask them what they DIDN’T like, no real need to make them think about that. Indifferent, ask those people what you need to improve to get them to like the product. Probably Not and No, ask those users to tell you what they didn’t like about the product as they will be focused on the negative.

This allows you to get the most valuable information from the users that are thinking about your product/service in that frame of mind that they are in, without burdening every user with 30 or 40 questions. The goal is to make your users WANT to answer the question and not feel like they are being put through a huge process. Your average user can answer the question and check off a couple of options in 3 or 4 seconds.

So now your users are happy to give you feedback as well as your staff get valuable/useful information that is precise. This is really just an example of realizing bad UI and redefining, “what do I expect the user to do” and “how can I get them to do it without having to think”.

For more information about this topic, I highly suggest you check out Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think.”Usability design is one of the most important–yet often least attractive–tasks for a Web developer. In Don’t Make Me Think, author Steve Krug lightens up the subject with good humor and excellent, to-the-point examples.”