No. 27

November 2, 2000

 

Technology:

Zoomerang

It gives me a real pleasure to introduce Zoomerang to you. I must say that it was "love at first sight" when I discovered it, by accident, a couple of weeks ago. It is not revolutionary, or even very innovative, but it is an extraordinary piece of software craftsmanship: elegant, easy to use, powerful, flexible, visually pleasing. It also happens to be very useful.

Zoomerang is an online survey creation tool, not unlike the Flashbase Forms (reviewed in the Spotlight a while ago), although more intuitive, flexible, and sporting a more attractive interface. I truly dislike software that thinks it knows better than the user who is using it. (A certain HUGE software company has a penchant for producing software like that, did you notice?) I enjoy using software, not fighting it. Recently I tested another survey tool and found myself frustrated by all the limitations placed by its designers: want to change the order of your questions or insert a new one? Can't do it. Want to have a mix of more than 2 types of questions? You must be kidding! Want to have more than 40 questions in your survey? That's a big No-No!

Naturally, I love the fact that Zoomerang puts me in control. I can have as many questions as I want. (OK, the free version allows 20 questions only, but this is to get people to subscribe to the full service.) I can have a multiple choice question followed by a yes/no question, followed by an open-ended question, followed by a rating scale matrix, followed by... You get the point. Of course, every testing expert would frown at this mishmash of a survey, but hey, why shouldn't I be able to create a stupid survey if I want to? Zoomerang does not intervene, but it does offer a number of pre-made survey templates for all kinds of uses, from customer satisfaction to course evaluation to opinion polls to interest inventories. These templates can easily be modified, or new surveys can be made entirely "from scratch".

Basic Zoomerang service is free. It is limited to 20 questions, stores the results for 30 days only, does not allow downloading of results. For $199/year one can switch to the Pro version, which places no limits on the number of questions or storage time, allows downloading of results into spreadsheets for further analysis, produces graphs, allows for branding (e.g. one's own logo), etc. I definitely do not recommend this tool in situations where privacy is a concern, or the data being gathered is proprietary or sensitive. However, given that it allows anonymous responses and does not require registration of respondents, it will be quite safe to use in most circumstances.

Zoomerang (click on thumbnail):
Creating a survey 
Published survey

For more information please visit the Zoomerang site or search the ACT database of Groupwork Tools.
 

Conference:

PDC 2000
  • "Designing Digital Environments -- -Bringing in More Voices"
  • 6th Biennial Participatory Design Conference
  • Held November 28-December 1, 2000 in New York, NY
  • Participatory Design (PD) is a set of diverse ways of thinking, planning, and acting through which people make their work, technologies, and social institutions more responsive to human needs. The Participatory Design conferences, held every two years since 1990, have brought together a multidisciplinary and international group of researchers, designers, practitioners, users, and managers. The disconnection of the design of technology from the context of its use is well documented, yet the gap between design and use seems to be getting wider. The theme of this conference grows out of the earlier papers, books and proceedings of the PDC conferences. It is aimed at extending beyond Information System design toward the participatory design of web-based, mobile and new media environments that are linked through digital technology.

She said, he said:

"WAP, the clever technology created to deliver Web content to tiny devices, is tanking even in mobile-crazy Europe. Blaming WAP, which is simply a protocol (and a seemingly fine one at that) is wrong-headed. WAP works. It's the phones that don't. The Europeans have it right. They're shunning the Web phone concept. We'd do well to follow their lead." -- Steve Fox


© 2000 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology