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Daniel Burka Talks About Interpreting User Feedback

deltatangobravo.com — Daniel Burka, Creative Director at Digg, presented at the Future of Web Apps conference a couple of months ago and this is what he had to say about interpreting user feedback. I great way of gaining insight on how Digg and Pownce listen to their users.

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  • padrebuf, on 12/05/2007, -7/+13sorry dude, you sound like kermit.
  • sockpuppets, on 12/05/2007, -6/+11Pownce has users?
  • Okari, on 12/05/2007, -7/+5Here's some feedback : Remove thumbnails. With the image update and now news having thumbnails, Digg has become way too cluttered. I find myself going to the actually news sites now just to avoid all the clutter.
    • sockpuppets, on 12/05/2007, -0/+10I like the excitement of clicking on a topic with lots of replies to see if my browser will crash. Then again it is only firefox on a 4GB 3.7ghz dual core 8800GTX 640MB computer, so it's not exactly up to Digg's apparent requirements.
      • kingkilr, on 12/06/2007, -2/+1Ok, the 8800GTX has 768MB, its the GTS with 640, get your facts strait.
        • sockpuppets, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3I stand corrected. Maybe that extra 128mb will help, I'll rush out and get it.
      • norbiu, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1My browser hasn't crashed since I got Firefox 3 beta.
    • mlostracco, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2While we're talking user feedback, I would like the image category to stop showing up now that I've turned it off. Because they're still all over the front page, making yesterday's upgrade even that much more disappointing.
    • mrASSMAN, on 12/06/2007, -1/+9Nah, I like the thumbnails. What they really need to work on though before anything else is the comments.. it needs a complete rehaul. Start from scratch. It is ridiculous how slow the script is.

      (begin burying due to not auto-hating every update)
  • sewalsh, on 12/06/2007, -7/+5So digg's main designer is still in denial that the current comment system isn't *****?
    • juanita12, on 12/06/2007, -0/+5They have metrics telling them that people are commenting more. That's all they need to know.

      Who cares that 35% of that increase is people bitching about how much they hate the comment system and the other 65% are people repeating what others said because it's impossible to actually read anything.

      But yea, you know, it's better. Just like splitting an article into 10 different pages is better because it temporarily generates more page views .
    • dburka, on 12/06/2007, -1/+10That's not what I was saying at all. I was saying that some things worked and some things didn't. If had relied solely on explicit feedback in the comments, we could have easily assumed the whole system was a massive failure. There are a lot of things that should and will be improved in the comments, but there were some positive improvements with the redesigned comments as well.
      • juanita12, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1Alright. It seemed like you might have been using some statistics that may or may not have been taken out of context to justify not listening to ANY feedback though. I know I'm not privy to your internal feedback, but there didn't seem to be much positive feedback.
    • motionblur, on 12/07/2007, -0/+1I had a chance to talk to Daniel last Spring and point blank asked him about Digg collects/reviewing user feedback. I don't think denial is his game - he seemed quite open to listening to user feedback but also understood the pitfalls of collecting user feedback as well.

      Generally speaking, people are naturally adverse to change. This must be weighed into consideration when listening to users. Granted, the comment system has a lot of shortcomings, but there are some positives to it. I'm sure Daniel/Digg will ditch/revisit the problems and build on the positives.

      Personally, I think any good designer understands that user feedback can only take you so far when putting a website together.
  • geuis2, on 12/06/2007, -1/+3The damn slideshare player he used for his presentation is horrible. The audio is skipping like crazy, it won't completely preload and insists on waiting to load the next section until the current section is done. And I can't just skip the sound ahead to the part I want. JUST PUT IT IN AN MP3!
  • lensman00, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2My Digg peeve for today is breaking news. I wanted to see what people were saying about the mall shooting in Omaha, but there was nothing on the front page for perhaps 1.5 hours, and early on a search turned up 20 different stories with no more than 2 comments each.

    It would be nice to be able to aggregate 'related' or 'duplicate' stories together, so we can comment as a group on a breaking situation even if the word on it is spread across a bunch of different news sites. That way Digg would feel more like a community and less like a URL race.
  • rmw132, on 12/06/2007, -4/+1Derka derka derka, muhammed jihad
  • tastethevenom, on 12/06/2007, -5/+1Interpreting user feedback? How about RESPONDING to user feedback? You guys are really terrible at that nowadays.
  • syntaxsmurf, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3Saw this slide in dburka blog sometime ago. Found it very use full. Great job Daniel! Thumbs up!
  • le0pard, on 12/06/2007, -2/+2I have filed 3 bugs on digg, which were fixed, but I didn't even get a personalized thank-you hand written from anyone on digg! :(
  • amadeusdemarzi, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1Wow, what a bunch of ***** in the thread.

    People need to chill the ***** out. Digg has an excellent user experience. It's not perfect and still has a ways to go, but most of you whiners should grow a pair of balls and start worrying about real issues, like what you are going to do with your mom's allowance money...
  • lolo2007, on 03/09/2008, -0/+0The damn slideshare player he used for his presentation is horrible. The audio is skipping like crazy, it won't completely preload and insists on waiting to load the next section until the current section is done. And I can't just skip the sound ahead to the part I want. JUST PUT IT IN AN MP3!
    http://download.paramegsoft.com/
    http://game.paramegsoft.com/
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