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.
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.