Best Buy Has Some Issues

From this story at The Consumerist. I’m sure it’s just a browser rendering issue that would have been solved with more testing, but right now, it’s just one of my all time favorite matrixes:

Well done, Best Buy!

SSI: Matrixes Make Us Cry, Too.

“We know respondents don’t like grids,” Jackie Lorch, SSI VP, Global Knowledge Management, points out. “They’ve been telling us that for years in focus groups and feedback, but we’ve always thought of grids as a necessary evil in questionnaire design. Now, we’re beginning to learn that not only are grids frustrating for respondents – they actually produce inferior data.”

THANK YOU.

Here’s a link to the full report.

L0t there to digest. What do you all think?

Harris Thinks Outside The Box

Not in a good way, though:

It’s always possible this was a Firefox-only problem, but I (a) doubt it and (b) don’t think that makes this OK either, actually.

It’s not eggregious, of course, just … off, and as such, distracting. Don’t distract your respondents; don’t make them take time out from thinking about their answers to think about why your boxes won’t fit on your page.

Wow. Just wow.

You’ll have to excuse the low quality of the image here; I snagged it off a WebEx meeting where the presenter flashed it by as part of a PowerPoint he was sharing. I don’t know the source, I don’t know the rationale, I just know it’s probably going to be the worst matrix you ever see:

Click to see it full size. You might want to print it out and tape it up to remind you to never do this, though I suspect you wouldn’t be reading this if you would.

Sweet Fancy Matrix

This one, from the nameless partner of a nameless partner of Greenfield the Matrix King, may just take the cake.

Maybe it’s just that it’s late at night and my glasses are dirty and my eyes are tired, but this is incredibly off-putting to me:

I especially enjoy the “100% Fruit Juice In Any Flavor” column, and the way each word is on its own row.

I’m going to try to persevere and get through this one, mainly because I think it’s sure to get worse as I go, but if it weren’t for you, my loyal readers, I swear I’d just to to bed.

In all seriousness, though: who decided that this was the way to determine what consumers truly think?

Greenfield Solves the Wrong Problem

So, I see Greenfield Online has gone and added a “security” question to their matrices to weed out people who pay no attention whatsoever. This, of course, is a predictable response to the somewhat misplaced industry obsession with the quality of online survey responses.

Oddly, though, they’ve gone and inserted this into a survey where I’m personally finding the questions — even in this matrix format — to be pretty interesting. For once, I’m not feeling like this is a tedious waste of my time:

Pssssst: It’s Still a Matrix

Even though I can make cool patterns with it, it’s still a matrix, and in the end, it’s still a bit boring.

I still think this is an innovative approach, and one with promise — but I think it would be much stronger with logos or product images in place of the text. Take advantage of the unique opportunities you get in web-based research.

Please Stop Doing This.

I really should have called this thing “matrixes are evil,” instead of “researchcrants.”

Oh well.

STOP IT WITH THIS:

If the question make me groan, screengrab it, and blog about it, you can guarantee it’s making some percentage of your respondents close the tab and get on with their lives.

You are the cancer that is killing market research Questions like these are directly responsible for the decreasing quality of market research.

Huh, I Wonder Why So Many People Dropped Off At Q30.

This actually isn’t particularly bad; they’re not asking me what type of personality the restaurant in question would have if it came to life, or anything typical like that, but it’s just really daunting to me, when already a bit tired from having told you, on about five screens per person, exactly what each member of my family ate for dinner last night.

I find I reach a point where I’m just ready to be done, and hitting me with a matrix when I’m already at that point often will result in me just leaving that question open in its tab for the rest of the day, and eventually just closing it, either accidentally or on purpose.

Tiring questions yield tired respondents.

An Answerable Matrix

I was feeling a little badly about how much I’ve been beating up on Greenfield. Knowing that looking at additional pieces of Greenfield research would just lead to more rage (I’ve got about 20 screengrabs sitting open in Photoshop still from just about an hour’s worth of Greenfield user torture the other day), I decided to dust off my NPD password.

It’s been a while since I took one of their surveys, so they asked me for some profile updates, and they managed to pretty quickly in the process ask me to fill out one of those grids that I hate so much, asking mushy questions about feelings and such.

Except, this time, I think it kind of works. They’re not asking me to imagine an orange juice brand coming to life; they’re asking me about me, and that’s something I think I can handle. Take a look: