In art circles, there’s a common piece of advice that goes along the lines of:
When people say that they don’t like something about your work, you should treat that as valid information.
When people say why they don’t like it or what you could do to fix it, you should treat that with extreme skepticism.
This is also very, very true in UX design (and all similar fields such as print design, etc.).
Edit: This is why “I didn’t like X” or “X seems ugly” or “I have a hard time reading X” is extremely valuable feedback, and any designer is always happy to hear it. On the other hand, “X is designed wrong because [criticism of specific design decision]” is basically worthless feedback, and almost never helps in any way.
Edit 2: Note that the above is the opposite of what people’s intuitions tell them constitutes valuable feedback. Non-designers often think that “I didn’t like it” or “it’s ugly” is unhelpful, and they try to be more helpful by making specific criticisms (like “the text is justified; it shouldn’t be”). Coming from a layperson, this attempt to be helpful is actually the diametric opposite of an improvement, turning useful feedback into useless advice.
Edit 3: The most useful feedback is the one that tells me what is the specific problem you are experiencing. The subjective nature of the feedback is important!
It’s especially bad in video games. Any popular game will have many reviews with clueless game design advice, instead of immediate reactions. That’s one reason watching playtesters can be more useful than asking for feedback.
Indeed, user testing is far superior to asking for “feedback” (and this is also the reason why conducting user tests is a non-trivial skill set—the tests must be set up properly, and users must be prepared, prompted, and guided properly, so as to elicit reactions and not evaluations or suggestions etc.).
Of course, one does regularly receive user feedback outside of the context of formal user testing, and such feedback can be quite useful (especially if it’s spontaneous)—but not, unfortunately, if the “pure subjective reactions aren’t helpful; try to give suggestions” meme is in effect.
I haven’t actually put too much into this sub-question, curious about your thoughts: is it actually that important that users don’t attempt to give feedback, or merely that the feedback-receiver makes sure to translate in their head all instances of “this is bad because Y, you should do X because Z” into “I didn’t like this experience, something about it is off?”
The problem with such translation attempts is that information is lost.
The thing is that comments of the form “X is bad because Y” can be prompted by any number of things.
Some of those are some form of bad experience that user had with your product. (However, you don’t know what sort of bad experience; the given reasons why X is supposedly bad are, as noted in the OP, generally confabulated.)
But some of those possible triggers for “X is bad because Y” comments are not any specific bad experience the user had, but rather some belief the user picked up about X being bad, some guideline gleaned from some listicle somewhere, some vague association based on a passing fad, some outright misunderstanding, some attempt to give general advice, etc., etc.
So what I want to know is, in what way did the user attempt to interact with the product, and what difficulty, dissatisfaction, or other undesirable experience ensued? That is the critical data.
But if the answer turns out to be “none, really, I didn’t even try using your thing and have no desire to use it, I’m just saying that aspect X of your thing is bad”, then there’s not much reason to take that as a “user is dissatisfied” data point.
I wonder if the desire to justify is the result of social stigma surrounding being the wrong sort of person. If to be a full person is to have reasons for your actions, and to be nice to others, then it makes sense to me that the desire to give reasons for “mean” criticism is a result of wearing the correct model of personhood.
That, and the fact that when making decisions, it’s *really important* to have non-subjective reasons—or if you have subjective reasons, you still have objective reasons why they matter, like “if I don’t like someone on a personal level, I really shouldn’t spend the rest of my life with them” in dating.
So people are used to a mode of thought where a subjective opinion means “you’re not done explaining”/”you haven’t spent enough mental effort on the problem,” and they engage the—honestly, very productive, very healthy—same mechanisms they use when justifying a command decision. It just happens to be mis-applied in this case.
This is also very, very true in UX design (and all similar fields such as print design, etc.).
Edit: This is why “I didn’t like X” or “X seems ugly” or “I have a hard time reading X” is extremely valuable feedback, and any designer is always happy to hear it. On the other hand, “X is designed wrong because [criticism of specific design decision]” is basically worthless feedback, and almost never helps in any way.
Edit 2: Note that the above is the opposite of what people’s intuitions tell them constitutes valuable feedback. Non-designers often think that “I didn’t like it” or “it’s ugly” is unhelpful, and they try to be more helpful by making specific criticisms (like “the text is justified; it shouldn’t be”). Coming from a layperson, this attempt to be helpful is actually the diametric opposite of an improvement, turning useful feedback into useless advice.
Edit 3: The most useful feedback is the one that tells me what is the specific problem you are experiencing. The subjective nature of the feedback is important!
It’s especially bad in video games. Any popular game will have many reviews with clueless game design advice, instead of immediate reactions. That’s one reason watching playtesters can be more useful than asking for feedback.
Indeed, user testing is far superior to asking for “feedback” (and this is also the reason why conducting user tests is a non-trivial skill set—the tests must be set up properly, and users must be prepared, prompted, and guided properly, so as to elicit reactions and not evaluations or suggestions etc.).
Of course, one does regularly receive user feedback outside of the context of formal user testing, and such feedback can be quite useful (especially if it’s spontaneous)—but not, unfortunately, if the “pure subjective reactions aren’t helpful; try to give suggestions” meme is in effect.
I haven’t actually put too much into this sub-question, curious about your thoughts: is it actually that important that users don’t attempt to give feedback, or merely that the feedback-receiver makes sure to translate in their head all instances of “this is bad because Y, you should do X because Z” into “I didn’t like this experience, something about it is off?”
The problem with such translation attempts is that information is lost.
The thing is that comments of the form “X is bad because Y” can be prompted by any number of things.
Some of those are some form of bad experience that user had with your product. (However, you don’t know what sort of bad experience; the given reasons why X is supposedly bad are, as noted in the OP, generally confabulated.)
But some of those possible triggers for “X is bad because Y” comments are not any specific bad experience the user had, but rather some belief the user picked up about X being bad, some guideline gleaned from some listicle somewhere, some vague association based on a passing fad, some outright misunderstanding, some attempt to give general advice, etc., etc.
So what I want to know is, in what way did the user attempt to interact with the product, and what difficulty, dissatisfaction, or other undesirable experience ensued? That is the critical data.
But if the answer turns out to be “none, really, I didn’t even try using your thing and have no desire to use it, I’m just saying that aspect X of your thing is bad”, then there’s not much reason to take that as a “user is dissatisfied” data point.
Ah, makes sense.
I wonder if the desire to justify is the result of social stigma surrounding being the wrong sort of person. If to be a full person is to have reasons for your actions, and to be nice to others, then it makes sense to me that the desire to give reasons for “mean” criticism is a result of wearing the correct model of personhood.
That, and the fact that when making decisions, it’s *really important* to have non-subjective reasons—or if you have subjective reasons, you still have objective reasons why they matter, like “if I don’t like someone on a personal level, I really shouldn’t spend the rest of my life with them” in dating.
So people are used to a mode of thought where a subjective opinion means “you’re not done explaining”/”you haven’t spent enough mental effort on the problem,” and they engage the—honestly, very productive, very healthy—same mechanisms they use when justifying a command decision. It just happens to be mis-applied in this case.
That explanation adds something to my understanding of the post you linked to. Thanks.