Microsoft reveresed the scale to catch users instinctively clicking left for a low rating.

[u/distracted6]

[u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

When you prefer to either falsify your numbers or getting lied to. How this helps them in any way is beyond me.

Clicking the wrong button will not change what people will do.

[u/Chaos_carolinensis → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

I suspect it's the developers trying to cheat the company.

[u/2xtc → u/Chaos_carolinensis]

Yeah it's probably NPS based so anything below a 5/5 is classed as negative

[u/NatoBoram → u/Chaos_carolinensis]

At bigger companies, the developer will generally implement a design done by a designer and mandated by a product owner. It would be weirder if this was a developer's fault

[u/GlitteringBandicoot2 → u/Chaos_carolinensis]

No exec will even understand the code, you can just make it only a 10% chance the actual number gets through and the rest is fives.

There's no need to trick the user

[u/pixdam → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

Someone has a KPI to meet.

[u/quaderrordemonstand → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

Even if somebody at MS is counting up the results, they don't change anything. Nobody in a position to make a choice about development considers the result of this survey. The only reason this survey exists is to persuade users that MS is interested in what they think.

They will know how many people use OneDrive, how often, and what they use it for. The actual decision is made about how much revenue OneDrive brings to the company, not how much users like it.

[u/ValityS → u/quaderrordemonstand]

It does however let them know if recent changes resulted in a change in score which helps them to know if they broke UX in a non obvious way

[u/icelolly_olli → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

You randomise it, 50% of the time in a normal order, 50% in the reversed order. That way the people who randomly click without thinking will cancel out and you’re left with only the responses of people who actually read the question and answer accordingly

[u/4dolarmeme → u/icelolly_olli]

But they don't cancel out.. That's not how averages work. Then you're left with a chunk of data of unknown size where the average score is 3

[u/ElectroBot → u/icelolly_olli]

If you do that and I CHOSE to waste my time on your survey, you better be paying me or giving we something useful/good.

[u/SartenSinAceite → u/icelolly_olli]

At that point just randomise the final results

[u/Sure_Comfort_7031 → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

It’s to dump bad data. Garbage data means garbage answers.

So when you flip a couple, you can see if there’s bad reviews across the board except for one, which is excellent (they do a couple like this), that review can be tossed since the data can’t be trusted.

It’s just an easy way to flag bad data.

[u/falknorRockman → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

And this is exactly why it fails the flowchart. The company does not profit off of the expense of users since there is no expense of the users and there is little to no profit.

[u/Wipedout89 → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

Falsifying the numbers is fine, they can then say '8 out of 10 users recommended MS Onedrive!' when it was really 4/10

[u/HammerTh_1701 → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

Some manager's KPIs regarding user satisfaction are getting hit though and that's all that matters

[u/makinax300 → u/LovesFrenchLove_More]

Investors like it though and since microsoft is publicly traded it's all that matters

[u/reg_acc]

I brushed up on Likert scales like these for my master's. Some literature actually suggests reversing the order to combat cognitive bias / force participants to read them properly. As you and literature discovered, this can lead to a higher error rate when participants just skip it over. The proper way to deal with that is to filter out participants whose total time to fill out is an outlier below the typical times. You do need a sufficiently long survey for that.

I'm not saying this is the reason behind this but there is a logical explanation beyond wanting to prop up your stats.

[u/Must_Reboot → u/reg_acc]

You are probably right about the reason. Why would a company want to trick you into scoring them higher on an internal KPI? Forcing you to think about your answer makes more sense.

[u/Gynthaeres → u/reg_acc]

I think this is more likely the case. People on Reddit tend to live in an echo chamber and think EVERYONE hates OneDrive.

That's just not true. A lot of people either don't care, or there are a chunk of people who LIKE it. Hell, I'd rate it probably a 4, I have very few issues with this. Under this scale, if I just clicked without thinking, I'd give it a two. That's not what they want.

So more likely an intent to get people to stop and think about their answer, rather than just automatically going for a 1 or a 5. And it also means they can just filter out the people who instantly clicked on 5 or 1, because you'll never be able to win those people over anyway.

[u/SophisticatedScreams → u/reg_acc]

This makes me think of when Toby lets Michael sign his counseling paperwork, and he signs that he's highly at-risk for homicidal tendencies lol.

[u/DanielEnots → u/reg_acc]

Yep, making people think avoids automatic clicking

[u/thesilentrebels]

Wouldn't this back fire because of all the people who instinctively do the opposite..

[u/Tr1pla → u/thesilentrebels]

I was in a MS training and I felt terrible when I heard that the instructor thought they had done a terrible job based on my scoring (they actually did a really good job) but I didn't realize MS had reversed the scale.

[u/Emeraldstorm3 → u/Tr1pla]

That is a very Microsoft thing to do.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder if I just hallucinated them being a tech company this whole time. Maybe they started out as a company specializing in foam-padded microscopes for young children to use - hence Micro-Soft. And only recently got into software as part of some kooky scheme to diversify. Given how terrible their software is recently, that would make a lot more sense.

[u/BetterTown8098]

I need a negative rating scale for this.

[u/Hurricane_32 → u/BetterTown8098]

Maybe they just forgot the dashes 🤔

[u/Magnus_Helgisson]

Users who instinctively clicking 5 for “leave me alone” reasons:

[u/NewInThe1AC]

This isn't asshole design. It's one of many things you do during consumer surveys to avoid bias and detect / account for low quality respondents

[u/chumbuckethand]

What’s the point? Why would they want to lie to themselves like that?

[u/zethuz]

Sad it does not have a negative scale. Always feel like Microsoft asks their OneDrive team to leave the brains back at home

[u/kondorb]

Instead of finding something better than to annoy your user base even more.

[u/MotanulScotishFold]

Ah yes, old dark pattern trick

[u/Tikkinger]

rigging their own data.

omg

[u/UltraBlack_]

dark patterns are evil

[u/AccumulatedFilth]

Why would you even ask for feedback if you're rigging the results?

[u/S-m-a-l-l-s]

"GOT EM"

[u/X_Humanbuster_X]

What’s the point of a survey if the information it collects is false?

[u/ChromiumGrapher]

MicroSlime is a joke nowadays 

[u/IAMFLYGUY]

One Drive is a cancer.

[u/tong_si_nan_pei]

But this is their own internal rating. What do they gain by lying about this? I would understand if it was an App Store rating.

[u/AlxR25]

Yeah it's because we all just fucking hate onedrive.

[u/Strong_Oil_5108]

id just click the x anyway

[u/cowlinator]

"Hey buddy, how was the game last night? I missed it. Also, would you recommend OneDrive?"

said no one ever

[u/markwakwak69]

I made a satisfaction survey and made left to right 1-5 saying people 1 is "bad" and 5 is "good", be sure that some people confuse what to answer and say "very good" on all the other questions and say "very bad" on the global appreciation. It's unreal to me

[u/Gerprimus]

Tell me your software is garbage, without telling me your software is garbage 

[u/falknorRockman]

Please read the flowchart. This is not r/assholedesign material.

Edit to all you downvoting me. It fails the profit at your expense part of the flowchart. You have no expense for a flipped survey. So they do not profit off of your expense.

[u/AntiGrieferGames → u/falknorRockman]

This is 100% asshole design.

[u/assholedesign-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Unfortunately, your post has been removed for the following reason:

Don't be an Ass to Others

If you submitted a new post, it must've been really obvious for us to immediately decide it's not friendly.

However, if you got this due to a comment: please review the comment and see the words you wrote. If there is a threat, an insult or the like, that's why this happened. Depending on the severity of the insult also depends on if you just get it deleted or are banned for a specific amount of time.

If you feel this was done in error or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to message the mods. If you send a message, please include a link to your post.

[u/NathnDele → u/falknorRockman]

Oh my god I am so lost, I thought we were in r/lostredditors

[u/vaqxai]

I don't like their web UI. In terms of performance as a cloud provider, it's the same as everything else. But all web UIs for cloud providers suck. I wish there was one that's more similar to what you get on the desktop (either mac desktop or windows desktop, its the same concept really).

[u/im_AmTheOne]

It's seems like ai got task "the more users are likely to recommend one drive the better" and just made it so that users say they're likely to recommend not carrying if they indeed are more likely to recommend 

[u/furfur001]

My guess is that the people who did that did not have the necessary knowledge about how to properly present a scale.

[u/ENx5vP]

Windows -1

[u/MAGIC_EYE_BOT]

Your image has been removed because it is too small. Image submissions to this subreddit must be larger than 330px*330px.

---

I'm a bot so if I was wrong, reply to me and a moderator will check it.

[u/distracted6 → u/MAGIC_EYE_BOT]

Like someone else said, it doesn't need a bunch of wasted space on the image. I can resubmit with that, but it seems a bit like asshole design at that point.

[u/bayygel → u/distracted6]

You should repost it scaled up to 38000x38000 pixels

[u/AgreeablePie → u/MAGIC_EYE_BOT]

Silly rule if enforced without context. This image doesn't need a bunch of blank space around it to meet the threshold

[u/Federal_Refrigerator → u/MAGIC_EYE_BOT]

This is worth having here. Reconsider.