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Feedback Army Review and Giveaway
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- Matthew Kammerer
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- April 16th, 2009
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FeedbackArmy.com is described as simple, cheap usability testing for your website. We heard about Feedback Army through Usability Post and wanted to give it a try ourselves! In addition to a review we also have a few packages from FeedbackArmy for our readers!
What is Feedback Army?
Feedback Army is a quick and simple way for people to get feedback on aspects of their website. Feedback Army allows you to enter your website address and then a few questions to ask the folks reviewing your website. They recommend 3-6 questions and offer you some sample questions that are commonly asked. Feedback Army quotes the book Don’t Make Me Think in their tips on how to better question site users.
Affordable
Feedback army is quite affordable. The packages are priced by the amount of reviewers you would like to answer your questions. Packages range from $10 for 10 reviews to $40 for 50 reviews. Payment is made simple through PayPal.
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
The review is powered by Amazon’s mturk. Andrew, David, and I were first exposed to mturk during the Web Jam Session in Atlanta.
MTurk is defined as:
The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is one of the suite of Amazon Web Services, a crowdsourcing marketplace that enables computer programs to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do. Requesters, the human beings that write these programs, are able to pose tasks known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), such as choosing the best among several photographs of a storefront, writing product descriptions, or identifying performers on music CDs.
Results
The results are presented clearly through Feedback Army. One interesting feature is that anyone can view your results if they were to enter your URL. Check out our full results.
Questions I Asked & The Feedback We Received
Here are the six questions we asked our feedback army. To streamline our results I have listed the question we asked and listed the best two answers we received. I will then follow up with a response to these results. Remember, you can view our full results on FeedBacky Army.
1. What does this site do?
Answer 1: This is a site that writes about User Experience and offers free Website Usability Reviews that would benefit all web designers and developers. They also allow members to review the pros and cons of websites that are submitted to them.
Answer 2: This site introduces UX Booth which is a group that writes about User Experience, and offers free Website Usability Reviews for the benefit of all designers and developers.
My response: Each of the ten reviewers stated what the website’s purpose is. Some folks copied the lead line we showcase on the homepage and others elaborated in their own words.
2. What aspect of the site confused you?
Answer 1: The ad block on the right hand side wasn’t obviously an ad block until I read the last tile (“advertise here”). I thought these may have been services offered by uxbooth.
Answer 2: I was confused as soon as I opened the site, since it took me a few moments to find that message that actually tells what is this site about, this site seems to be focused for the people who already know what to do here, it’s not that friendly for a newcomer.
My response: The responses on this question were interesting. The most common response was that it was not clear what our site was. Other responses varied but overall no large problems were noticed from this question.
3. What would improve this site?
Answer 1: I think the Resources are a great feature and don’t have enough prominence on the front page, it may be worth making this stuff more available. They’re sort of stuck way down the page, and many folks won’t see them there.
Answer 2: A small forum community for all the website designers sharing some ideas on how to improve their website with some help from the UX Booth members.
My response: There were some folks that said the site was ‘crystal clear’ and others offered various suggestions to improve. I think this is where the audience plays a role. People who visit UX Booth are going to be familiar with custom WordPress run blogs and can easily adapt.
4. Can you find recommended UX reading on the site?
Answer 1: Yes I found it at the bottom of the page under the heading -Usability resources , Recent UX resources picked by staff and readers. I suppose this is what you meant by recommended UX reading on the site.
Answer 2: Can’t find recommended reading. I see star ratings, but assume this is rated by readers of UX? Sorry, had trouble with this.
My response: The response for this question was interesting! Some found it, some did not. These specific questions are what Feedback Army really can help with!
5. How do you get a usability review for your site?
Answer 1: You simply need to put your site name and description on the site. And this site will provide you a usability review of your site.
Answer 2: You will need to submit your site on one of four specific dates to be considered for a free review. On February 4th, May 6th, August 5th, and November 4th.
My response: So most people understood where to submit their site. One user was confused about how to do this. Nine out of ten did explain exactly how to submit your site though.
6. Where are you from?
Answers: Australia (1), India (4), Mexico (1), United States (4).
My response: Ok, this did not directly relate to usability. I wanted to get an idea of the users who were checking out the booth. I would guess that based on what time you submit your review different countries will be active on Mturk.
What I Liked
There are a few things I really liked about Feedback Army:
- It was quick: Results came in within minutes of submitting UX Booth. In only a few hours I had all 10 responses I paid for!
- Specific questions were answered well: The best answers were as a result of very specific questions asked. If you are to use this service I would recommend asking the users to do specific tasks not general questions.
- A global response: When I first started looking into this service I was worried all my feedback would come from non-English speaking countries trying to make a buck by working at mturk. I was pleased to be proven wrong. The results to number six alone prove this.
- Comment: Simply comment on this post with one topic you’d like for us to write about.
- Tweet: Tweet about this post however you like with the tag #UXBGiveaway so that we can track them! An example could be: “Enter to win a free FeedbackArmy review from @UXBooth http://bit.ly/1OcbXd #UXBGiveaway“. Feel free to get creative.
- Stumble: Browse our previous blog posts. Pick out your favorite and write a review for it on Stumble. Be sure to link us to the review in your comment!
I would highly recommend using Feedback Army as a quick, simple, and cost effective way of testing specific features on your web projects.
Contest
UX Booth, along with Feedback Army, is excited to present you with our first ever contest! We have three sets of 10 reviews available for our readers. There are three ways to enter:
Readers are welcome to enter in as many ways as they would like. Complete all three for a triple chance at winning!
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Feedback Army is a cool tool and it’s creator is definitely a talented innovator. However, I would not associate this tool with Usability testing. True usability testing focuses on observing what people actually do, not what they say they do. Aside from that, it’s cool to see options for acquiring some qualitative product insights using a cheap and affordable remote tool.
@Taylor Regan: Great point. Thanks for your feedback :).
I would love to see a post that envolves usability and the clients. I mean, some tips and hints for companies and freelancers stabilish a dialogue about usability with our clients.
Congratulations for the iniciative!
I wouldn’t consider that a usability review, I could have gotten the same responses by asking them to a few not-tech-savvy friends or family members.
I’m definitely going to use Feedback Army – that seems a very nifty tool for helping to hone some changes or interface items.
I’ll be using it for sure – and it’d be even better if I won the free pass!
I’ve really enjoyed the site, and would love to see a post about usability with online shopping carts and large lists of items.
Hi I want those reviews, allready knew the site, very good indeed.
tahnks
nico!
topic: usability in Os`s , and usability in GNU proyects . I mean usability outside the web
I would love to see a comparison of some of the feedback/proof reeview sites out (getsignhoof, proofhq etc.). I would also love to see an article looking at the process of getting feedback at all stages (maybe this is a series) of development from the earliest artifact/wireframes to final product.
I would also like to see an article about feedback and UI design for the handicapped user. Despite the fact I work primarily with university disability offices and they have a large portion of users with disabilities, you would be amazed how often this is an afterthought.
Hi everyone, first thanks for the review. One thing I’d like to point out–the most important thing to do when writing a question is to ask something open ended. An open ended question is one that needs more than a yes or no for an answer. Who, what, where, when, why, and how usually start such a question. When you do this the reviewers will answer your question with more detail.
I would like other articles just like this one, about how to get feedback from various sources, paid or not, and what kind of question to ask.
I would love to see a post about more ways to get to what clients think they know they want.
I would love for UX Booth to do an article looking into these new usability services, and examine if they’re beginning to take work away from usability professionals.
Thanks for pointing out the site!
I can’t spend money on getting a review yet, but I’m sure I’ll be using something like this once I start running a full-fledged website (and start earning!)
It’ll be nice to see more such reviews and maybe a few links to other resources which focus on different areas of Usability and Improving UX :)
@Ian I don’t think services like Feedback Army take work away from usability professionals at all. Feedback Army merely makes it easy to have access to a pool of people to look at and provide feedback on your site. I think this is useful for any web professional’s toolbox. One of my favorite testimonials comes from a professional who told me his client ignored his recommendations for six months. They immediately agreed to the changes when he showed them feedback from Feedback Army.
Seems a pretty good service, might check it out for our next project. thanks for the review.
Looks like a good service, esp considering the diversity of the participants (hope this trend keeps up as I’m mostly interested in english speaking folks). Will definitely try it. Thanks for the review and the audience screening :).
I will use this service *as well as* more detailed usability testing.
In a proper usability test I capture the words, tone of voice, facial expression of the subjects, all in synch with their on-screen actions. The reason for doing all this is to gain insight into *why* the subjects are doing or not doing things.
My suggestion for an article is PERSONAS in design.
I was inspired by this article and took a look at several crowd source usability testing sites. I posted my analysis here: http://limina-ao.com/blog/2009/07/01/crowdsourcing-usability-or-not/
@Jon Fukuda: Thanks for sharing! I will share that post with our readers. :)