Scott,
On Mon, 2010-11-29 at 10:26 -0500, Scott McGrath wrote:
> Patrick,
>
> First full disclosure: The website survey is not Mary's wacky idea, it is mine.
>
Err, I did not refer to it as a "wacky idea," I offered what I thought
would be helpful criticism.
> Second, I am happy to report that 183 people have figured out how to
> respond productively to the survey (actually one of those reported
> being stymied by seeing the survey first--the same thing you observe,
> and someone reports coming to the site looking for a rich wife.
> Therefore only 181 were productive)
>
Good.
> On your valid issue of timing, I'd appreciate any suggestions by which
> we could do something different. Popping the survey as a stand-alone
> window, and having a "later" link seemed like the most practical
> solution available. Can you suggest a better mechanism? (we already
> plan to add a link to the homepage as well)
>
There are a couple of solutions I have seen, don't know if they work
"better" or not.
The first is the "Did this page answer your question?" sort of box that
appears at the bottom of pages you find as the result of searching.
Less specific than this survey and uses a local mechanism so those would
be downsides.
The second is a variant of the first and would simply put a link to the
survey (or have it pop-up) as a result of navigation to a page as the
result of a search request.
Retains the specifics of the current survey but requires triggering on
the basis of search results, which may also be a downside.
Not to mention that both of these approaches miss users who simply use
the website without using a search function.
> Truth be told, the survey came from your steady support for taking the
> users perspective into consideration. You, me, TAB, board etc all
> have an idea of what the "typical" user wants, but we all look through
> our personal lens. 80% of the respondents are not members, so the
> survey, while imperfect, seems to be giving us a useful understanding
> despite the obvious execution flaws - including the most significant -
> it's a a popup window often blocked by pop-up blockers.
>
I did not indicate that I thought the survey was a bad idea.
I merely suggested a couple of ways that the current questions might be
improved.
> Given the delivery imperfections which skews the respondent selection,
> do you think we should ignore this user input?
>
No, not at all.
But I do think you to *drop the defensive* stance every time I make a
suggestion.
Some of my suggestions, at least in my view, are pretty good. Some of my
suggestions should be piped to /dev/null. But, they are all well
intentioned, whether they fall into either of those categories or
somewhere in between.
If you read my initial post, it merely suggested some possible
improvements in wording. I fail to see what was so outrageous about it.
Hope your week improves from its current start!
Patrick
> Scott...
>
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 1:28 PM, Patrick Durusau