Surveys

[lindsayboylan]

What

A survey is a tool to gather data quickly, typically quantitative data such as preferences, attitudes, or characteristics on a specific topic. While you can collect qualitative data from surveys, at scale this becomes difficult to analyze.

Why

• Surveys are used when we want to collect specific quantitative information, such as "how well does this meet your current need."
• They are useful in gathering feedback from a large set of users.
• Surveys provide stakeholders with confidence (aka numbers)

When

• We have specific questions with specific quantitative answers ("how important is this feature to you?")
• We require precision that comes from a large set of data (user responses)
• Intercepting users during a task (such as interacting with a new feature)
• Quantifying results from a qualitative study (such as interviews, field studies, etc)
• Evaluating Usability
  • System Usability Scale
• Continuous Feedback Surveys
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)
  • Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
  • Customer Effort Score (CES)
• Discovery Surveys
  • Who your users are
  • What your users want
  • What they purchase
  • What they think if your brand/product

How

General research study steps

1. Planning - identify goals and write questions
2. Identify participants
3. Create survey
   • We use Google Forms or Typeform
     • Typically, Typeform is used for end-user surveys as it is more aesthetically pleasing.
4. Circulate survey & set end time
5. Analyze & decide next steps

Pro Tips

• Questions asking users to rank or rate are easy to analyze. Open questions asking "why" are more difficult and often allow users to speculate on behavior, which is unreliable.
• Use balanced scales

Helpful reads

• Better User Research Through Surveys, UX Mastery