Industrial Design student needs help with a short, anonymous survey!

nalf_

16 Oct 2019, 06:37

Hello Deskthority,

My name is Nathanial Fair, and I am an industrial design student at the University of Alberta in Canada. I got into keyboards this summer, and now I am doing a design project in the area of mechanical keyboards. To help my work, I have written up a quick survey that should only take around 2 minutes to complete. It is completely anonymous and intended for student use. For general interest I will post the results once data has been collected. I have also posted this to Geekhack, r/mk, and Keebtalk as to get an overview of the enthusiast community.

https://forms.gle/1potc6aFyRYWpHNR7

I am also looking for one or two people to interview over the phone. I am hoping to interview someone who owns a lot of boards and keysets to better understand the wants and needs of people at the high-investment end of the keyboard hobby. If you would like, I can keep you completely anonymous, and just as with my survey this is intended for student use. Please feel free to comment or pm me if you would be interested in being interviewed. :)

Thanks DT :)

mr_a500

16 Oct 2019, 13:52

For your question "What factor was the biggest driver to you getting your first mechanical keyboard?", you should have something like "It came with the computer". There was a time when nearly every computer came with a mechanical keyboard. I never even saw a non-mechanical keyboard until the 90's. (...except the Atari 400 and that awful Sinclair ZX81)

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fohat
Elder Messenger

16 Oct 2019, 14:08

Purpose of survey seems unclear.

Questions about "what characteristics do you want in your keyboard" or "what is important to you" or "how do you use the keyboard" seem to be missing.

And especially here on DT, "Do you prefer modern or vintage keyboards, and why?" might be informative.

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sharktastica

16 Oct 2019, 17:11

Done, but I agree with fohat's comment. Having those additional questions would likely improve your quality of answers, and there is a big distinction between modern and vintage enthusiasts that would serve as a major datapoint to factor in. For example and as a gross generalisation, modern keyboarders like compact form factors and expression through both 'wild' case and keycaps design, whereas vintage keyboarders like the superior quality and 'brickness' that stuff like Model Fs can provide, the sheer size of some of the early boards, and the quirks of early standardisation.

Also again for "What factor was the biggest driver to you getting your first mechanical keyboard?", I think an option for nostalgia factor/retro-tech collecting would be a popular option amongst the LGRs of the world! The biggest driver of me wanting to buy my Model F and four Model Ms was for my IBM collection, with the typing feeling and sound being secondary for me (despite being very much appreciated).

Otherwise, I hope my response helps and I would be really curious to see any results you could release!

nalf_

17 Oct 2019, 03:55

That is true. I am still new to the world of surveys and user research so your feedback is very valuable. I definitely missed having a question that addresses the distinction between vintage and modern enthusiasts and some of the answers given in the "Other" categories were indicative of that. This survey is meant mostly to see how people store keyboards and caps that they own but don't use regularly. I wanted to keep the survey short and avoid questions that I thought had already been asked but you are very right that asking them would improve the quality of answers. I will keep that in mind for next time, thanks!

kmnov2017

17 Oct 2019, 09:10

I'd be interested to see the results. You should have several responses in by now...

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sharktastica

17 Oct 2019, 15:09

nalf_ wrote:
17 Oct 2019, 03:55
That is true. I am still new to the world of surveys and user research so your feedback is very valuable. I definitely missed having a question that addresses the distinction between vintage and modern enthusiasts and some of the answers given in the "Other" categories were indicative of that. This survey is meant mostly to see how people store keyboards and caps that they own but don't use regularly. I wanted to keep the survey short and avoid questions that I thought had already been asked but you are very right that asking them would improve the quality of answers. I will keep that in mind for next time, thanks!
That's fair enough! Any survey that aims to retain the interest of its participants will suffer some compromises unless you're guaranteed that the participants are in fact enthusiasts. Should you want more detailed data, perhaps having the expanded questions in an optional-flagged section would be the way forward.

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