February 7, 2008

Your New Dashboard

“Why can’t I follow a company or product?”

That’s a question we’ve been asked by some people who use Get Satisfaction, and one that — until now — we had to answer with “coming soon.”

Soon is now.

We’ve updated every user’s dashboard so you can now follow the companies and products you’re interested in. In addition, you’ll be able to see the higher-level categories that your products and companies fit under — all the things that add up to what you’re into. For example, I’m into the “iPhone”, “art”, “DIY”, “design”, “food”, and a whole bunch of other things. And now my dashboard has some personality to it. It’s beginning to reflect who I am.

All of this leads us down the path toward greater personalization, discoverability, and sharing. I’ll soon be able to find the people who are also into the iPhone — and they’ll be able to answer the questions I have or give me advice about that awesome touch-screen wonder that occasionally does something curious and annoying.

Questions and answers are still a giant aspect of Get Satisfaction, but now it’s getting a lot more interesting. Without getting too high-minded about it, it’s a big, thematic shift we’re making that puts relationships at the center of Get Satisfaction. Or to put it another way: It’s not just about solving problems; it’s about making the connections that lead to solutions.

Go see how you’re connected on your new dashboard.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Satisfaction, appearances, community, design, development | Comments (0)
January 25, 2008

Widget Watch

Get Satisfaction widgets are blossoming.

Pownce rolled out a new integration of the Topic Search widget, and it’s a great example of a clean and simple (both very desirable qualities!) way to put Get Satisfaction on a Web site:

pownce_3.png

In case you don’t know, we offer two kinds of widgets.

The first is Topic Search. Like this Pownce example, your Web site visitors can search and preview all Get Satisfaction conversations about your company.

The second is Live Topic. With this widget, you can spotlight the most active conversations that relate to your company. If you want to see a good example of Live Topic integration, check out this one by Goplan:

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Want one? Get Satisfaction widgets are accessible from admin dashboards, and you can customize them and test them out before deploying. Easy.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in appearances, design, development | Comments (0)
January 17, 2008

This Old Blog

This blog — Demand Satisfaction! — is ready for an extreme makeover.

We’re going to rip out the musty old verbiage that’s been rotting under the weight of time’s obesity, scoop out the puns and cliches that have built up in the underbelly of the PHP, and hang a wall of solid earnestness with an embossed fleur de lys pattern imported from a specialty shop in Prague.

Then, we’re going to paint it pink. Or teal. We haven’t decided yet.

Along with this new look, we’ll be changing the content. We won’t be taking away anything you’ve seen already. Rather, we’ll be adding a wealth of new content that’s specifically focused on consumer advocacy.

Why? Because there’s always room for more consumer advocacy in this world. In fact — in case you haven’t noticed — the deck is still stacked surprisingly high on the side of the table where the corporate players pretend that they’re only able to answer Frequently Asked Questions. We’re going to keep working at balancing out that equation — to transform the nameless and faceless corporate voices into real people with an ear cocked toward your ideas and concerns. We’ve accomplished a lot since going live nearly four months ago, and we’re pumped up about the next year and beyond. We can’t promise that we’ll fix every problem you have, but we’ll give it a damn good shot.

One key thing we’ll be doing with this blog: hooking in and displaying Get Satisfaction questions, problems, and ideas that are directly related to the topics we’re covering on the blog. This marriage between the Get Satisfaction Web site and the Demand Satisfaction blog will allow us to spotlight the funny conversations, the telling examples of companies behaving badly, and the success stories of forward-thinking organizations that are rising to the challenge of providing excellent customer service.

Dishing out consumer-focused information is essential to our core mission, and we’re stoked about this blog renovation. As we develop the new look over the next few weeks, if there’s an issue you want to see us cover, a behemoth of a problem that needs exposing, or a wrong you want righted, send us your suggestions, tips, and big ideas to editor [at] getsatisfaction [dot] com. We’ll blog about it, and we’ll push it as high into the consciousness of the Internet world as possible, so you can get the answers you’re seeking.

And, of course, we expect you to demand satisfaction from us, while we work at bringing satisfaction to you.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Satisfaction, appearances, customer service, design, news | Comments (0)
December 10, 2007

Hey, look at that shiny new header

Since we first launched Satisfaction, we’ve consistently been told that one of the most annoying things about the design is how hard we make it to move between the different companies present on our site. Say you’re in Timbuk2’s Satisfaction area but decide you want to move over and ask a question about Facebook instead. That’s one of the central benefits of Satisfaction — all your company relationships in one place! — but up until today making that move required at least two clicks and often a search, too. Waaay too complicated.

So we’re happy to report that, as of this past weekend (thanks for working on a Saturday, Scott), this problem has been fixed. You can now search for, find, and navigate to any company or product in our system directly from the header. Check it out:

gsfnheader1

Not bad, eh? Now, I can hear some of you asking, “What about my recent list of companies? I loved that list!” Well, we did, too, so they’re still there. They show up as soon as you click into the search box itself:

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We’ve also changed up the section headers a bit, and added a handly little dropdown next to “You” that gives you quick access to all your personal info, including, conveniently, the companies you’re an employee of:

gsfnheader2

And, yes, as evidenced by that screenshot, we do have a joke area in Satisfaction about our CEO Thor. Feel free to ask him a question. Or report a problem. Or share an idea. He loves it, promise.

By Lane Becker | Posted in Satisfaction, design | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007

“The Challenge of Agile Development: Avoiding Half-Baked Design“ from the Web 2.0 Expo

However you want to frame it, agile development processes are changing the way we make websites. As a designer I’ve been really influenced by the developers on our team, and I learn a lot from them everyday. Today at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo I got to share some of that learning along with Alex Chaffee of Pivotal Labs. We stressed the idea that design is a group effort more than ever before, and that design is about finding the problem, not the solution.

You can also see the slides here at SlideShare. Let me know what you think! And here’s a hat tip to Leisa who seems to have started the washing machine metaphor.

-Leslie

By leslie | Posted in design, development | Comments (4)