Don't Get Grinfucked By Your Users

http://fullcontact.com/2012/02/04/dont-get-grinfucked-by-your-users/

by jeffepp • 14 years ago

70 30 14 years ago

fullcontact.com

jacalata2• 14 years ago

He could have learned this years ago if he'd looked at existing knowledge arond user testing. Who knew, users tend not to give direct negative feedback?

marcusf• 14 years ago

But then he couldn't talk about being a part of TechStars and using the phrase grinfucking.

lorangb3• 14 years ago

of course, that's trained human behavior. the post was a reminder to constantly elicit direct feedback from the end user and constantly collect data.

Xorlev• 14 years ago

I personally learned some of this in my UX course, but nothing substitutes for experience. As is, the article is seems to be extolling the virtues of keeping good feedback practices in mind (as well as highlighting a rather amusing term, "grinfucked").

It's good though that you can leave negative feedback on a rather open article. Keep up the Ivory Tower routine.

jacalata2• 14 years ago

If nothing substitutes for experience, why is it any use to write or share this article?

VMG• 14 years ago

random idea: tell the testers that they are testing a competitors product, so they don't have the feeling that their criticism is insulting to you

lorangb3• 14 years ago

that might work. i'll try that.

charliepark• 14 years ago

What I've found to be helpful is to set them up to be critical: "Yeah, so, this is an interface that my (cousin/roommate/________) designed, but I just don't think it's quite ... there. I haven't been able to articulate just what isn't right about it. I'd love to know your thoughts on it."

Set it up that way and they're primed to give critical feedback. If they can help you articulate what's problematic about the interface, they end up being the hero. You both win.

shaggyfrog• 14 years ago

Then they might go to extremes with criticisms they think you want to hear.

branola• 14 years ago

Grinfucked is an unnecessary and combative neologism. Users are not trying to deceive anyone except to avoid looking stupid when navigating the latest UI tricks that often only make sense to tech insiders. Also, this has been happening for decades.

wam2• 14 years ago

I agree, the original article seemed more aimed at people who would deliberately pretend they were on your side and then turn around and do the opposite. Applying this combative term to include people who are trying to be nice or succeed at using your app may lead to bad outcomes. I don't disagree with others who have suggested that it may be "more efficient" to get the most honest feedback possible, but all parties have to understand that going into it.

All of this reminds me a little of Crocker's Rules on SL4, where participants would explicitly invoke a special conversational mode to request brutal honesty. That's an important distinction: It's okay to ask for brutal honesty, but if you dish it out to someone without having been asked to, they may react more to the brutality than the honesty, which will probably make the rest of the exchange markedly less efficient.

tlogan• 14 years ago

When a user needs to pay or is paying for your product, in general, there is no grinfucking.

AznHisoka• 14 years ago

Yeah, and if it's a free product, you can usually tell who is your target user by the feedback he/she is giving. The hardcore users who would love to use it will be writing an essay filled with recommendations on how to improve it, while the people who won't use it as much will just tell you it looks great.

itmag2• 14 years ago

Is it common in the US to be dishonestly nice to other people? Eg being positive and friendly toward them while waiting to stab them in the back.

This theme is something I've picked up on earlier. Another example: some Americans mentioned the lack of smiles from waiters in Europe as problematic, thinking it was rude.

Personally, I prefer living in a culture where people are honest assholes and only smile at you if they actually like you.

gonehome• 14 years ago

I think it's common to be friendly or nice rather than being neutral especially regarding something you know someone has worked on. I don't think this means people are 'waiting to stab them in the back', but simply that the default state is to be friendlier.

As far as the service industry goes (which I think is different), if you're working as a waiter and you're unfriendly to the person, take forever, mess up the order, and ignore their requests (which was my friend's experience in France) then I think you're mostly not doing a good job and I think most people would think they were rude.

joelhaasnoot• 14 years ago

Having lived in the US and being Dutch, I know that it is partly a cultural thing. Dutch people are much more blatantly honest, while Americans definately love to sugar coat. How many ask "How are you doing?" but then proceed to ignore the answer?

That being said, we get a lot of feedback but I admit I as developer talk to too few customers to get a big picture. I'm sure I could get honest feedback from them however.

wam2• 14 years ago

It's cultural, yes, but this particular example isn't necessarily emblematic. In American english, "How are you?" isn't a literal question, it's a conventional greeting. The answer is expected to be "Not bad" or "Fine" or "Well" -- not because of a desire to sugarcoat everything, but simply because it functions linguistically as a start-of-conversation marker or just a standalone greeting. People are thrown off when someone responds immediately with an honest, in-depth answer about how their life is. It's like pinging a server and getting back a process list. Unfortunately it happens to be that our implementation of certain conversation protocols is slightly different in mutually confusing ways :) <-- sugarcoating

Most languages have their own version of adjacent question/answer pairs that don't really function as literal questions. Searching for "have you eaten yet?" will pull up lots of interesting examples.

lorangb3• 14 years ago

i think there's a cultural element to it. as a software developer, i've been in certain countries where people were mortified to provide feedback.

the one country where they'll always tell you what they think: South Africa. unbelievably straightforward.

maukdaddy2• 14 years ago

Yes, absolutely.

I just moved to Sweden and immediately noticed the lack of "dishonestly niceness" that I took for granted in the US. It's quite refreshing actually and communication is more efficient.

Edit: In a US workplace you can't tell someone directly "that's wrong" or "I don't like that". You have to politely get to the point in an indirect fashion so as not to offend. It's an especially acute problem when giving that kind of feedback to superiors or other people in power.

itmag2• 14 years ago

Off-topic: I'm in the south of Sweden. Hit me up if you wanna meet or something.

Aaronontheweb• 14 years ago

Honest question: how does this difference in behavior impact dating in Sweden vs. the US?

nknight• 14 years ago

> In a US workplace you can't tell someone directly "that's wrong" or "I don't like that".

I know this varies to some degree with region, but if you're working tech in Silicon Valley and not saying "that's wrong", you're just not doing your job.

noisebleed• 14 years ago

It's very common to be willfully (as opposed to reflexively, as you would with a friend) nice in the US, though it depends a lot on the context and region.

I grew up in the upper midwest, and the politeness there is almost pathological. It seems to be mostly conflict avoidance. In California, I've seen more people wanting to paint everything a peachier shade than reality might otherwise indicate, due to optimism. In NYC, friendliness without cause is commonly looked at with suspicion, and there's a tendency to treat it like the 'grinfucking' in Suster's original article.

So, you might get the best feedback in NY (assuming someone doesn't have reason to exploit you). In terms of quality of life, I think there's a lot to be said for the California approach, which is why I live here and (in my opinion) why the bay area has a better culture of innovation. For the purposes of this article, the Midwest 'just trying to be nice' mentality is pretty ubiquitous (though more glaringly obvious there), and well worth being aware of.

shinratdr• 14 years ago

Hacker News comment threads are notorious for this. A number of times I have been the brutally honest one when I shouldn't have to be. People are very unwilling to criticize the development efforts of others. That's OK to an extent, but it's frustratingly unhelpful when you are trying to solicit genuine feedback on something you plan to devote your life (or part of your life) to.

Sometimes the worst people to get feedback from on an app is other developers. They focus on the wrong things and overlook important stuff. They provide a type of useful feedback, but their suggestions and your instinct can easily run contrary to what a user expects and needs.

arnorhs• 14 years ago

That's a good point and I agree.

That was my experience as well at first, but then I realized that there is a certain pattern to the way americans communicate, and it goes something like this:

- First state the positive aspects that you like, or show appreciation for the effort - even though those things have already been said by other people in the thread. - Then count what you find negative but don't use words such as "sucks" and "not good" etc.. but use words such as "could be better" and "can be iterated on" or "needs improvement". - Then end the post by encouragement.

This technique has also helped me IRL as I started working with other americans in a startup in the bay area.

It takes some practice, imo, but it makes for some better communication with americans.

Good luck! ;)

LearnYouALisp• 14 years ago

Imagine the Roger Ebert of programming...

stretchwithme• 14 years ago

I've found that many people that tell you what you want to hear change their tune once their own money/work/happiness is involved.

Make compensation dependent on a products success and your employees will start speaking a bit more clearer.

Instead of relying on a review process to rate employees, a company might let people choose who they work with and on what projects.

If a significant portion of one's income can actually be influenced by an employee's choices, they will tend to act on what they know rather than tell you what you what to hear.

In other words, people should have a stake or actual stock in their projects, not stock in the whole company.

And if its actual stock that can be traded within the company, the stock price will tell you whether the project is going to succeed.

martinkallstrom• 14 years ago

Yeah yeah but how do you avoid getting grinfucked by yourself? That's what I want to know.

josscrowcroft• 14 years ago

+1 for alerting me to the term "grinfucking" with references. Excellent post!