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Using Feedback

Read these lines in the book User Friendly recently about the value of feedback and how that keeps our world in order:

Feedback already defines the world we live in today. For example, we tend to assume that the internet’s great revolution was connecting people. That’s partly true. But consider the birth of buyer/seller feedback. eBay was an unknown startup until it rolled out a feature in which buyers and sellers could rate one another. Today, buyer/seller feedback is what has made us comfortable with the online economy—from buying products that we’ve never seen before on Amazon to staying in the homes of people we’ve never met, through Airbnb.

What is true of the online economy is likely true of our personal and professional lives too. Where feedback is regular and trust-worthy people tend to feel comfortable, understand where they stand with each other and what issues need addressing. When that loop breaks, it could lead to the dissolution of a marriage, estrangement from kids or the need to find a new job.

An interesting read overall but not quite I had expected - to better understand the basis of user-friendly being that each user is so different. When you try to please a constituency that diverse you should logically please no one. Yet user-friendly does work. To example, many of us iPhone users stay with that brand of phone only because we got used to it and don't want change and surprises. We are willing to pay a premium just for that. I know that is true for me because I am not any kind of serious Apple fan. 


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