Surveys

A survey is a cheap, flexible user research tool for gathering information about participants' preferences, attitudes, characteristics, and opinions on a given topic. Surveys consist of a set of questions and can be inserted on a live website, within an email body, or after user interviews or usability testing.

The simplicity of running a survey is misleading and often leads to bad surveys and useless data that don't give insights into users' problems.

What makes a survey effective?

• Define the goal. It's important to decide what you want to know and why a survey is the best way to obtain that information.
• Logically structure questions. Group related questions and separate them from other groups to help users navigate the form.
• Write questions in plain language. If users don't understand a question, they're likely to skip it or give answers that don't reflect their experience truthfully.
• Include open-ended questions. Open-ended questions provide more insight into users' thoughts. Also include multiple-choice questions to simplify the form completion process. While asking a direct 'Why?' might yield limited responses, taking a more layered approach can provide richer information. Consider supplementing multiple-choice questions with open-ended ones such as 'Could you describe a situation where this feature was particularly helpful?'
• Be short. Long forms are tedious and likely to be abandoned before users even start.^[1]

Surveys help better understand users and minimize the risk of designing ineffective solutions. However, surveys are based on what users say and might not accurately reflect or explain user behavior. Thus, they should never be used to replace usability studies and interviews.