Feedback: just use it

There are various reasons why people ignore the submission of feedback. These may include privacy paranoia, distrust of Microsoft, laziness, lack of internet connection, or just plain spite. Whatever the reason, the process is vital for future OSs to grow and evolve user friendliness and enhanced compatibility. Yes, Vista is considered a flop to many (even though it isn’t, but that’s another story), but who’s going to change this if we’re ignoring the plea for assistance? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to attack a company for being ignorant in terms of compatibility and stability, yet users have no interest in reporting such flaws? It’s a simple procedure, yet users deactivate it as if it’s a portal into the middle ages of the black plague.

And it’s not just OSs that yearn for user assistance, but also popular consumer software such as Office. That little balloon pops up discreetly in the corner, awaiting the day someone clicks on it and spill their troubles via TCP/IP to their awaiting servers. But sadly, the day never comes, as the cross of discontent is pressed to make it go away. Or ignorance prevails, and it fades on its own accord. Do we want our software to be the same?

Customer feedback systems are also prominent within Alpha and Beta products. This software, amongst others, require as much user generated feedback as possible. Software is often judged on first appearance: “Oh, this crashes too much. I don’t like it because blah blah blah.” Did said user report this? Likely not, it’s often too much effort, and it’s never their ‘responsibility’. I ask, as a social experiment if anything, that you ask of users that complain about software flaws if they’ve bothered to report it. I’m assure the results would intrigue many.

On the flipside, it can be argued that many pieces of software don’t outline what exactly is being sent, or the process of sending information takes too much effort. This, whether we like it or not, is our responsibility. Yes, testers are hired to do the work of flaw finding, but they’re not going to find every issue on every hardware configuration with every software configuration; it’s just not feasible. If users don’t like the idea of spending time to report encountered issues, then really, what right do they have to complain? Sure, if feedback is ignored (provided there’s no reasoning attached) they’d have a reason to be disgruntled, otherwise it’s a case of you get what you give – particularly with free software.

Getting back to Windows, we can see that Microsoft is taking user feedback quite seriously. Users want to work efficiently while having a stable and compatible backend. And while it looks like they’re doing a great job so far, they can only benefit from more feedback. So next time Windows, or any other piece of software, kindly asks for some feedback, do the responsible thing – give ‘em all you’ve got!