Easy to collect, hard to trust

happy-or-not survey device, Toronto

happy-or-not survey device, Toronto (Detail)

I saw this device in a store in Toronto in the summer of 2017. This does make collecting customer information a simple and automated process.

I do like the at the scale has four choices, so the customer has to indicate if the experience was positive or negative. And the fact that the positive and negative responses are mirror images of one another is great. Simple and easy to understand. Green means good and red means bad.

But collection of survey data is about two different factors. Quality and quantity. This device can improve the quantity, but as it is unattended can it really improve the quality? The fact that the scale is balanced is great, but there is no check on the people actually completing the survey. (I wonder how many troublemakers just randomly press one of the buttons? I know as a child I would have done it.)

So, full marks for ease of use and having a balanced and easy to understand response scale, but I'll have to make a deduction for the quality of data collected.