May 06, 2008

Getting Satisfaction

When I originally checked out Get Satisfaction, I was immediately impressed. However, it wasn't until I needed to get in and use it for myself that I really began to appreciate the depth of thought apparent in the interface.

It’s not forum software. It’s better. It’s designed from the ground up to be more inviting and less technical than what we traditionally associate with the word “forum”. If you take a quick spin through the site, it’s easy to see, but it wasn’t until after I started using it myself and had a brief chat with Lane Becker, one of several people behind the interface, that I began to realize just how impressive their vision is.

Figure 1 The primary page doesn’t simply provide a link to “make a new post” or something equivalently dry. Instead, it immediately engages visitors with normal language about the primary contexts that a customer or potential customer would use to talk to a business or its representatives.

The site itself is designed to be provide “people-powered customer service”, and it shines through in the attention to detail seen throughout the interface. You can think of it as forums designed to help people more effectively communicate with businesses. More importantly, it also serves as a place where people can help each other regardless of whether or not they’re official representatives of a given company. While some companies may not be ready for this kind of approach, with an option of this caliber, it can only be a matter of time before they come around.

Getting Started

While the site itself is a treasure-trove of interface design gems, I wanted to focus specifically on the task of starting a new discussion. When you arrive at a company’s main page, one of the first things you see is a simple text field inviting you to ask a question, share an idea, report a problem, or start a discussion. (Figure 1) While each of the contexts are similar from a technical standpoint, the distinction between them helps provide valuable context for the ensuing discussion.

Figure 2 Throughout the interface, a simple banner identifies the company, but more importantly, it sets some context and lets you know that people from the company are actually listening and participating.

After getting started by asking a question, the first thing you see at the top of the page is the name of the company with a statement about the level of involvement from that company. (Figure 2) If the company doesn’t have any official representatives, it lets you know that “No one from this company has sponsored, endorsed, or joined the conversation yet.” It’s important that Get Satisfaction doesn’t require a company to sponsor or approve the conversation. This is a powerful default because it enables customers to start conversations and potentially help each other even if no official representatives show up.

We want it to be perceived that if you’re using Get Satisfaction that you’re saying you want to be an open and honest company that wants to engage customers.

On the other hand, if the company is actively involved in the conversation, it creates a completely different sense of involvement. Or, as Lane said, “We want it to be perceived that if you’re using Get Satisfaction that you’re saying you want to be an open and honest company that wants to engage customers.” So, the simple statement in the interface that employees are “listening and participating” reinforces the implicit pact between business and consumer. It may seem simple at first, but it’s actually an incredibly relevant piece of information that provides context by letting you know whether you’re shouting into the canyons or speaking directly to people who can and will help you. It’s subtle, but it definitely feels better to know that the company, or at least someone who works for the company, is interested in what you have to say.

Starting a Conversation

Now that you’ve navigated to the right place and understand the level of involvement from the company, you’re ready to start a conversation, and this is where the interface becomes downright fun. While each of the contexts for starting a discussion are essentially the same from a technical standpoint, the interface actually uses a significant amount of real estate to provide context and clarification. (Figure 3)

Figure 3 Instead of simply using radio buttons to help identify the type of message, the types are used to help set context and change the resulting information accordingly despite the fact that the fields are the same regardless of which type is chosen.

In addition to making the context of the discussion so visually important, the field labels change based on the type of conversation that you’re starting. So, for a question, the label is “What’s your question?” whereas the label for an idea is “Tell us about this idea.” (Figure 4) Again, it’s a very subtle but important detail. In most interfaces, these options would be a drop down or radio button at best, but here they’re used as important tools for framing the conversation.

Figure 4 The form fields haven’t changed, but the descriptions and guidance have changed subtly based on the context of an ‘Idea’ instead of a ‘Question’.

Getting Emotional

The one feature that really caught my attention was the ability to tag conversations and comments with emotions, internally referred to as the “Satisfactometer”. (Figure 5) Online, it’s incredibly difficult to convey sarcasm, happiness, or frustration purely through text and words. Within the context of customer service, these emotions are a key part of the experience for both the company and the customer, and the team here clearly recognizes that.

Figure 5 The idea of tagging something surely isn’t a new one, but enabling people to tag something with feelings and emotions is a really interesting and, well, exciting touch. Figure 6 When you select a face, an additional field is exposed offering you the ability to clarify your feelings with words.

It would be one thing if you could simply choose from the array of facial illustrations, but that’s just the beginning. Of course, 4 facial expressions is nowhere near enough to truly convey a detailed emotion or feeling, so again, they’ve come through with the option of getting a little more explicit with your emotions. After choosing one of the facial expressions, you can add a simple text description providing a more robust explanation of your feelings. (Figure 6)

So, this is getting a bit touchy-feely, but let’s give this an objective look from a usability perspective. Is it intuitive and learnable? Yes. Is it efficient? Yes, although, it does require you to use the mouse, so it’s not perfectly efficient. Is it easy to remember how to use it? Yes. Does it handle errors well? Yes, but really, it almost eliminates the possibility of errors, so that’s a huge plus. What about satisfaction? (No pun intended.) Is it pleasant to use the design? In my opinion, I think it’s exponentially more enjoyable than selecting an emotion from a drop down or a series of radio buttons.

Figure 7 Specifying your feelings doesn’t end with the process of posting. Each discussion keeps track of the general feelings and displays a pleasantly simple bar chart to summarize the “room’s mood”.

So, we’re able to share our emotions, but what happens afterwards? Unsurprisingly, they’ve thought of that too. Whenever you view a conversation of any type, one of the elements in the sidebar is a simple bar chart to help communicate the general feeling of the room. (Figure 7). What makes it interesting is the decision about how to represent it. By using a bar chart with only four categories and not displaying a summary of the associated tags, you’re losing a significant amount of the granularity. However, when you really think about it, the four primary categories are enough to provide a simple and quick overview of the conversation.

Ultimately, it’s not a defining feature, but it’s a great way to help make online interactions more human. Instead of everything being about form fields, numbers, and text, it’s a simple and user-friendly way to make the experience a little more natural. I definitely think that’s worth talking about.

Quality Control

Lastly, after you’ve gone through the form, there’s a status meter to help you gauge the quality of your discussion. (Figure 8) While it would be easy to trivialize, or think that it might discourage people, according to Lane, it actually leads to “more perfectly formed topics because people have this huge incentive to do things right.” So, by providing a quality meter, you can actually provide people with the context and motivation necessary to invest more time in the discussion.

The quality control piece leads to more perfectly formed topics because people have this huge incentive to do things right.

What’s more interesting is that the quality meter was an idea from the developers, and they came up with it shortly before launching. So, while they would ultimately need to collaborate with the designer, the inspiration for great interfaces can come from anywhere. One of the encouraging parts of talking to Lane was that they felt that a huge part of why the interface is so successful is that it was truly designed by everybody. Instead of simply having one interface designer that drove the interface, the team worked in a much more collaborative and iterative way that lead to higher quality and more innovative solutions.

Figure 8 While these dynamic bars are common for helping you understand the quality of a password, the idea of using them to help people gauge the quality of the post is fantastic. Naturally, it also provides suggestions for improving that quality.

Summary

Without a doubt, making interfaces more human, inviting, and friendly is a worthwhile goal. I feel like it’s the obvious progression out of simple forms and basic data entry. It takes an incredible amount of insight and experience to recognize the right opportunities and solutions for making an interface more human, but the team behind Get Satisfaction has helped show just how possible and rewarding it can be.

I hope to put together more of these posts going forward and bring the site back to focusing on examples of great interface design. In doing so, two of my goals with each post are to talk to someone involved in the design and also to recognize the people behind the curtain. As I mentioned earlier, at Get Satisfaction, the whole team truly contributes and collaborates on ideas, so there’s quite a few people to mention.

The core product team…

• Lane Becker, President
• Leslie Chicoine, Designer
• Ted Grubb, Front-end Developer & Designer
• Scott Fleckenstein, Rails Developer
• Cameron Walters, Rails Developer

…and, everyone else that contributed…

• Thor Muller, CEO
• Amy Muller, CCO (Chief Community Officer)
• Eric Suesz, Community Manager