Best tool for discussing the survey results?
I decided to go with the forms feature of Google Spreadsheets for our Have Your Say in the Web Directions South 2008 Program survey. Only 24 hours in I’m largely happy with the choice, apart from
- I’d love to be able to limit which cells of the spreadsheet I share (so as to not have to share the email addresses of those who submit them)
- It’d be great to have a bit of branding on the form - even just our logo
- There are some incredibly bad interaction design choices in the whole application
- It never works properly at all in Safari for me, so I have to use it in clunky old slow old Firefox.
But apart from that, for something which is free, and took me 10 minutes to set up, it’s a very good option and I would recommend it.
It was especially great watching all the names appear on the “Discuss” tab of the survey results spreadsheet in the hour or so after I sent the email out and blogged about it. It made me feel quite chuffed to think that I had helped you in some way to while away the long afternoon hours by looking at my spreadsheet. But yes, take heed other conference organisers who swing by for a bit of a look see: I am watching you while you are watching me :)
One thing I’m not going to be able to work with is the online chat facility though. As mentioned, on April 11 we’re going to be discussing the results with anyone who’d like to join in, but I’m afraid the “Chat about this spreadsheet” feature just isn’t ready for this kind of prime time.
I don’t think it would be that big a deal to have the discussion in another window than where the spreadsheet is, especially if in doing so
- We could have a transcript
- “It just worked”
But: what to use? Campfire with Guest Access turned on is the first thing that comes to my mind. I’m just wondering if anyone out there has any experience with using Campfire in this way, or indeed, has any other suggestions?
Andrew Bonventre
March 28th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Hi Maxine,
Glad that you’re using the tool and sorry you seemed to be having problems in Safari.
What kind of “Incredibly bad interaction design choices in the whole application” are you referring to? I’d like to make the app much better and that obviously is helped a lot by user’s feedback.
Thanks in advance. Looking forward to your input.
maxine
March 30th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Andrew - thanks for watching - do you have a more formalised channel for submitting reports like this? Please let me know if you do, but in the meantime, the things I had trouble with were (in no particular order, and some of these are probably feature requests rather than UX whinges):
1. When I’m editing the form, I’d love to be able to have separate paragraphs and other simple styles, just to make it that bit easier for people to understand the question and extra info.
2. There’s something wrong with having the preferences there in the same place as you send out the invites to people out fill out the form. I had to experiment a few times with the different preferences settings - how do I confirm these changes have been made? Each time I did it I actually put in an email address above and sent an invitation as I felt this was the only way my changes would be saved.
3. If I used the option of sending out the form itself in an email, this didn’t work at all for people using Safari, but I’m guessing you know that already.
4. in the resulting spreadsheet I feel confused about the difference between Sharing and Publishing. What’s the difference between Publishing and Sharing with everyone? And why can’t I share only certain cells?
5. There’s redrawing problems with the 2 fields on the Discuss tab - in particular the field where I type my message would often disappear.
6. OK, I understand not being able to save a transcript of the chat as a limitation, but when does it actually disappear? When I close the window? When I move between the discuss, share and publish tabs?
Apologies if these seem a bit random. There were other comments, but ‘m trying to recall them from early last week. I would have documented at the time had I known my comments would be valued. But anyways, hope this helps!
Reputation HQ | Web Directions March 31st, 2008 at 12:09 am
[...] aside, I was interested (scared even!) to see Google (presumably) eating their own dogfood here and keeping track of my off the cuff comments about my experiences with using the forms feature of Google [...]