Week 7 - Questioning Feedback

Since developing the interactive prototype and getting the feedback, we have had our week 7 contact in which we discussed how to ask the right questions when getting feedback. Two important factors we looked at was considering which questions were the right questions and what is the proper way to ask them.

Asking the right questions
When it comes to asking the right questions, the thing that was really hit home was to make it measurable. What do I mean by that? I mean that you should ask questions that allow the responder to answer in a way that creates a measurable response. This allows for a quantitative summary rather than a subjective qualitative response. For e.g. 70% of students prefer option A over option B. That's not saying that getting qualitative feedback isn't helpful, because it is. It just helps to be able to say that a certain percentage of users preferred certain options over others. Once it's established which is better, it's then ideal to go back and see why that conclusion was met.

We went on to talk about different approaches to asking the questions, involving things like removing bias (or adjusting for it rather), and measuring the difference of opinions quantitatively. The example given is just presenting a simple scale from 1 to 5 and allowing the users to mark their opinions on this scale rather than just a boolean yes/no.

How to ask the questions
It's important when asking the questions to ensure that the responses are as accurate as possible. In order to achieve this we should make sure that we don't ask leading questions. This just makes sense but it's an easy thing to do if you are not being careful in question design. Additionally it's important to allow the user to make their own statement. If interviewing them it's always best not to interrupt when they are speaking or even when they're not as it might prompt them to further explain. This is a very important part of asking questions.

Attitude is also very important. It's crucial to avoid condescending or rough language which might put off the interviewee. Being polite but assertive is a good method to ensuring the optimal amount of cooperation from the user.