Client: Facebook

Writer: Nick Merola

Illustrator: Sarah Lawrence

“What we did not do was ask people How satisfied are you with the Facebook app? That may sound like an elegant survey solution, but in practice, it’s often a dead-end, both in terms of generating insights and quantitatively describing the user experience. I like to call this approach the “satisfaction trap.”

Say you’re running a brunch spot and you’ve made a change to the waffle batter. You want to know whether your customers are enjoying the change. Asking them How much do you like Chez X? might yield some useful information, but the waffles would have to be unbelievably good or bad — and ordered by everyone — to overshadow the rest of the brunch experience. From a statistical perspective, you’d have to question a really large number of diners to accurately measure such a small change.”

—by Nick Merola

Check it out here.