Following the botched release of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, Microsoft promised that it would pay more attention to user feedback going forward. Last month, the company added new impact and severity indicators for new Feedback Hub items, hoping to better surface critical bugs like the deleted files issue that initially shipped with the October 2018 Update.
Improving the Feedback Hub is one thing, but the Redmond giant is apparently looking to gather more quality feedback from Windows Insiders via Skype interviews. If you’re currently testing the latest 19H1 builds, you may see a new type of Feedback notifications including a link to a new Microsoft User Research website.
Also, after i type the URL, i get a message that the session is already over. I mean, it happened twice already, i connect withing 3 minutes after getting the notification and it’s done. How can that be ? Am i missing something there ? pic.twitter.com/SYoCCkA5rS
— Florian B (@flobo09) November 27, 2018
According to Twitter user Florian B, who received the Feedback notifications but hasn’t been able to participate to the Skype interviews, the whole experience is quite confusing as it’s not clear for Insiders to know how to join the call queue. As of this writing, the website indicates two upcoming sessions about the new Windows Light Theme, the first one being this morning at 10AM PST. However, we don’t know yet if Microsoft is only sending these Feedback Hub notifications to Insiders who tested the new Light Theme (Florian B told us that he only tested the Light Theme for less than a minute.)
According to the Microsoft User Research, the one to one Skype interviews with an engineering team at Microsoft should last 5-10 minutes. “You may be asked about your experiences with existing products or for your reaction to new designs,” the company said. At the end of the calls, Insiders may be asked to join a the engineering team’s customer research panel to share even more feedback.
To our knowledge, the Windows Insider team has yet to communicate about these new Skype interviews with Insiders, but this sounds like a interesting way to collect more insightful feedback. Of course, it will all depends on how Microsoft selects the Insiders who will be invited to these one-to-one conversations. We’ll let you know if we learn more about these new Skype interviews, but in the meantime please let us know if you saw these Feedback Hub notifications this week, or if you’ve been able to participate to these interviews.
