Today was user feedback day. What that means is that I personally attempted to contact everyone who had downloaded the software for the past two weeks to ask them for honest feedback about the product. This is the recommended way to make a product better according to most mainstream marketing books, successful entrepreneurs, and expensive advisors. Doing so should be only attempted for people with strong egos and are not at risk for severe life endangering depression. Basically asking for feedback on a new software product is a masochistic activity akin to walking around as a Caucasian reporter during a riot in Los Angeles.

So while I didn’t receive death threats I did manage to get plenty of disheartening feedback. The summary of the feedback is that our software should change the marketing literature to say that we are an uninstallable application that takes too long to start-up then causes systems to slow to a crawl while being unintuitive and arrogant and then can’t be completely uninstalled if it had been installed. My favorite comments of the day were as follows. The authors will forever remain anonymous:

“My impression is that the software is arrogant. It simply assumes that
it is the best of everything and gives no links back to a familiar
environment.”

“It was confusing to me, and I wasn't sure if learning how to use it was worth the time and effort.”

“Unfortunately, I didn't get very far and uninstalled the program. It was too confusing for me.“

“I am very open to new environments and am sure yours is good; I just didn't trust what was going on.”

“I believe there is a fair way to go with this product. I was disappointed that this was a thick client application and not a browser based tool. I do not feel it is intuitive.”

So after a long day taking a beating from the user community I went home to read my latest Annals of Improbable Research. A couple of articles referenced stood out to me. The first was:

Kiwi Women Complaining – “An Investigation Of The Effect Of Lifestyle, Sex Roles, And Demographics On the Complaining Behavior of New Zealand Women,” William Strahle, Michael Duffy and Ralph L. Day, Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behavior, vol. 2 1989.

I looked and the JCSDCB journal does have photos from their annual conferences in 2001 and 2003.

Since it is Easter I also was fascinated by a military paper entitled Jesus the Strategic Leader that included a full Pyramid Model of Jesus the Strategic Leader. Photo diagrams from Gregg F. Martin’s “Jesus The Strategic Leader” report from April 5, 2000.