I keep forgetting to post recent stuff that I found useful or that others might find useful too; one such item is a blog I recently came across called UsabilityPost.
Dmitry’s blog is about design, but more specifically what’s good and bad about site implementation, sort of like HCI for websites. I like his posts because he’s good at identifying weaknesses and potential areas of improvements in designs – it’s well worth having a look at his blog as he has some interesting ideas and views that I feel a lot of people could learn from – myself included.
Also, he recently had the opportunity to review Feedback Army – a site that I’d not heard of until now. As you’ll see in his review, Feedback Army allows you to pitch your own questions to users of the site and get honest, unbiased answers back. As Dmitry points out, the response quality can vary; some reports are short and to the point, others more descriptive.
The other drawback is your tender for feedback is not targetted, those people that take it on and perform a review of your site may not be “into” whatever your site is about and consequently may not give a relevant feedback, but nonetheless feedback is feedback and I think when I get some of my sites up I’ll probably give Feedback Army a try – if they could introduce a way of targetting who you aim your site at for review, like you can target Facebook ads, then Feedback Army would have something even more useful indeed.
Gathering opinion and feedback can be a powerful “beta” process, and if done right and early enough you can make some positive changes before you spend time, money and effort promoting your site.