I found a link to MindCanvas today by browsing the site for this week’s Information Architecture Summit in Vegas. Their business is built around a meme called Game-like Elicitation Methods (or GEM) and their manifesto makes the following claim:
The overuse of Likert scales must stop. We understand that Likert scales have their uses, but every study to understand people does not need Likert scales. Likert scales are problematic in many ways – response biases, sheer rating boredom, statistical issues (ordinal or interval- depends on who you ask) are just some of them!
I like that sentiment quite a bit. A quick browse through their online demos reveal examples of implementations that are actually a lot of fun. I love their divide-the-dollar method and would love to use it; if only they were creating OSS solutions instead of a consultancy. They also list their influences:
- Zaltman, Gerald. How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Marke. [Amazon]
- Russell Bernard and his research methods in cognitive psychology
- James Suroweicki’s Wisdom of Crowds
- Malcolm Gladwell
- Tufte (of course)
- The games at Popcap
- Doug Engelbart’s ideas for Augmentation, not automation
- Ben Schneiderman‘s work with visualization
- Gmail (which I’ll report on at the end of the month)
- SurveyMonkey
It’s interesting how they’ve mixed a dot-com approach to usability studies.
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