What's a less binary alternative to sliders?

Question

I am working on a project that has a slider that allows a user to select their preference between two things (let's call them A and B).

It is perfectly possible for them to get both A and B but the slider helps us identify their preferences so we can tune their experience. Both A and B are desirable, so we cannot give them two sliders for A and B respectively.

However some test users are finding that it feels very absolute, that they can't have A and B.

What is an alternative to a traditional slider (see example below) that can help eliminate this feeling?

Answer 1

A checkbox.

A slider shouldn't be used for this since it's meant for gradation, like 1, 2, 3...10 or Dislike, Somewhat dislike, Neutral, Somewhat like it, Love it.

However, if you want a gradation of how much of A and how much of B the user wants, then you could use two sliders, one for A and one for B.

Keep in mind this answer is based on insufficient information, and I have no idea what you want to do. Quite honestly, I think it's better to ask, "What do you want?" and offer exactly that.

Answer 2

You could use a variant of the Likert Scale. People are familiar with this from filling in any number of surveys.

You could have any number of nodes here, including having an even number of them (which prevents people from sitting on the fence and just picking the middle). But it depends what you're actually going to do with this data. 5 points is generally useful enough for most situations.

Answer 3

You need a center option like this:

If the slider doesn't contain steps, be sure users feel comfortable setting a loose value between A and B and that it's still valuable information. But that aside, you always need a "way out" control or value. You can for example also provide a control that enables or disables this slider. It can be a button, switch, checkbox etc. as long as it has a clear label like "None apply" or "Both apply".