How to write great user surveys - Part 9

This is part 9 of my series on writing a good user survey. If you're just joining us, you may want to start with part 1.

Step 8: Don't be too hard on yourself. This is a process.

Writing good survey questions is sometimes really hard. You're seeking the unbiased opinions of your users, but just by writing the questions you unintentionally insert your own biases and influences into your users' thoughts. And your own bias is inherently difficult to spot -- that's why there are entire sites dedicated to finding it. But fear not; knowing that you have hidden bias is half the battle. (Well... maybe only 20% of the battle. But still.)

Once you know to scrutinize your questions and define your terms and ask people for feedback, you're on the right path. If you know what traps to look for, all you've got left is an optimization problem: how much of your time is worth the benefit you receive from knowing your users' opinions? Some questions probably deserve a great deal of care if their results will affect hiring decisions or big purchases. If you're trying to decide whether a button should say "Click here" or "Submit," then not so much. ...Unless the button is submitting a user's payment. That deserves some study!

I hope this series has been helpful! If you have questions, comments, or criticism, I'd love to hear about it. Also, are there other UX or UI topics you'd like me to discuss? Leave a comment or send me an email. And thanks for reading!

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This is part 9 of my series on writing a good user survey.  If you want to start at the beginning, head back over to part 1.

Hire me, and then I'll write your next survey! I'm available for full-time or consulting work -- email me. 

How to write great user surveys - Part 8

This  is part 8 of my series on writing a good user survey. If you're just joining us, you may want to start with part 1.

Step 6: Make a catch-all question -- and tell people about it. 

It's very common that survey-takers have an agenda. After all, they're using their time to answer a bunch of questions, and many people won't do that unless they think they'll get something out of it. Sometimes they're doing it for a coupon or free item or a chance at winning something, but other times they're doing it because they have something they want you to hear. Or both.

That's great, of course. If your customer wants to tell you something and hasn't had another opportunity, we should all be thrilled that those people are willing to take a whole survey to get their message across. Unfortunately, sometimes those users with an agenda will commandeer any text-entry box available to tell you what they're thinking -- regardless of what the text-entry box is for. So why not help them out? Not only does it make their lives easier, but it increases the likelihood that they'll actually answer the questions that are being asked. So when you say "What changes would you like to see in our app?", your user can answer honestly instead of telling you about the time the app didn't work right and he missed a flight to Cleveland.

Accomplishing this is easy, of course: just tell them up front. Usually a simple message on page 1 is pretty effective:

At the end of this survey there is an optional area for any additional feedback you'd like to give.

If you already have too much text on page 1, you run the risk of users skipping over it. So if there's more than one sentence there already, just move the message back a little -- maybe to the same page as your first text-entry box. Then, at the end of your survey, include one last question: "Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?" Just be sure that you set the users' expectations appropriately regarding feedback from that box. (Depending on your survey tool, you may want to ask users to enter an email address if they want a response.)

Step 7: Ask for feedback on the survey itself.

This question is often overlooked in surveys, but it can be invaluable. Asking for survey feedback gives you one last chance to find out about all kinds of mistakes: if you accidentally made a user give you an incorrect answer (with a false-dichotomy polarizing question), if a question had confusing language, or if part of the survey wasn't formatted correctly on the user's screen. If your survey is perfect, then you'll see a bunch of empty text fields in your results. But if it's not perfect (which is extremely likely), this question can save you from making decisions based on bad data. You might learn that some of your data is invalid and the survey was a huge waste of resources, but at least it'll prevent you from doing even more damage based on something that's not true. Here's a good sample question for this:

Do you have any questions or comments about this survey? Did you have difficulty with any of the questions?

Of course, it's worth noting that this question isn't foolproof. Many users won't bother to explain a survey problem -- they don't really care and it's not worth their time. All you need is one, though -- enough to alert you to reevaluate your results.

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of this series -- part 9 -- where I'll talk a little more about the process behind creating a survey.

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This is part 8 of my series on writing a good user survey.  If you want to start at the beginning, head back over to part 1.

Hire me, and then I'll write your next survey! I'm available for full-time or consulting work -- email me. 

How to write great user surveys - Part 6

This  is part 6 of my series on writing a good user survey. If you're just joining us, you may want to start with part 1.

Polarizing Questions

It's worth noting here that there are some situations where you do only want one bit of information from your users: is your site/product/whatever acceptable or not? I suspect that this is often the motivation behind polarizing questions like my example above. The key to asking polarizing questions safely, though, is to divide the solution space into exactly two parts. This is usually easiest by asking very general questions with general answers or very specific questions with very specific answers. Here's a general example:

How does our site make you feel?

• :-)
• :-(

This question is about as general as it gets, but it can accurately condense a huge variety of complex feelings into two simple options -- good enough or not.  Ikea.com uses lots of smileys (and frowny faces) in its surveys. This can be very effective if used properly -- it's just important that you're careful not to read too much detail into what your user meant by selecting :-) .

Now here's a specific example:

Are you satisfied with how Gmail handles sending and receiving email?

• Yes
• No

When you ask specific questions, there's still going to be a little variability in the accuracy of the answers. For this example, some users expect wild innovation and are satisfied with nothing less. Those people may have a perfectly acceptable Gmail experience but still consider themselves dissatisfied. But the more specific you get in your questions, the more you can combat that effect. Consider this even more specific example:

When using Gmail, are you usually able to send and receive emails without problems, errors, or frustration?

• Yes
• No

Even users with the highest expectations for innovation and UX excitement would have trouble saying no to that question. (Assuming that they aren't having problems sending and receiving email, that is). By being more specific, you've restricted their feedback to only what you want to know: is it good enough or not.

Now let's look at some examples of polarizing questions that aren't specific enough:

• Are you satisfied with Gmail? (Gmail does lots of things -- is this question asking about all of them or just email?)
• Does Gmail meet your needs? (Needs for what? Integrating with Google Calendar? Accessing mail on your phone? Handling multiple accounts? Almost everybody will have a complex answer for this.)
• Do you like Gmail? (In an absolute sense? Relative to its competitors? Including all its features?)
• Are you able to accomplish your goals with Gmail? (What goals? Email only? The rich-text editor? Attaching files easily?)

If you find yourself asking a polarizing question, your first thought should be "Am I sure that this has to be polarizing?" If 25% of your users think your product is "meh" and you want them to select "good" or "bad," don't you want to hear from those meh users? That's useful information, and you're spending time and money to get their opinions.  Why would you throw that away by trying to get a polarized answer? Furthermore, making the “meh” users choose will introduce secret inaccuracies to your results: you’ll have no way of knowing how many respondents are actually giving you their true opinion. What if it’s 50%? What if it’s 80%? You won’t know.

Having no information on your users is bad, but having false information can be much, much worse. You should think very carefully before going this route.

Tomorrow in part 7 I'll cover one last way that poor answer options can give you bad data.

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This is part 6 of my series on writing a good user survey.  If you want to start at the beginning, head back over to part 1.

Hire me, and then I'll write your next survey! I'm available for full-time or consulting work -- email me. 

How to write great user surveys - Part 5

This  is part 5 of my series on writing a good user survey. If you're just joining us, you may want to start with part 1.

Step 5: Allow for the entire spectrum of possible answers.

One of the most common mistakes I see in surveys is that the test-maker didn't give the user enough options to express his opinion accurately. This happens constantly. Consider the following examples:

Did your experience with the site today make you more or less likely to recommend us to a friend?

• More
• Less

Hypothetical user Bob: "The site is great, but I practically never recommend sites to people."

or

Hypothetical user Jay: "I don't know; the site is fine. It doesn't really affect my odds of recommending. Whatever, man."

or

Hypothetical user Randall: "I recently had crappy customer service from you and I'm taking this survey with plans to express that in one of the questions. Your site is fine, but I'm not recommending you to anyone. You guys suck."

Now think about those users. They're probably in the middle of this survey. They've already invested some time in this, and they want to finish it so you can hear their opinions. They all think "I don't know what to put here... I wish there were more options." Let's look at how each user can affect your bottom line:

Bob: "The site is great, but I practically never recommend sites to people."
Bob isn't too bothered -- this question doesn't really apply to him. If he's smart and is thinking about how you'll perceive his answers, you may still get valid data out of him. He could think "Well, I don't recommend sites very much, but this site is pretty good. I'll tell them 'more'." He's not too risky, because he probably won't give you a wrong answer.

Jay: "I don't know; the site is fine. It doesn't really affect my odds of recommending."
Jay is ambivalent but dangerous -- whichever answer he picks will be actually wrong. And if that's the case for a substantial percentage of your users, just think what an expensive error that could be! If a bunch of those ambivalent users choose "less," that could translate to thousands of hours of work by your software engineers and designers -- all to fix a site that is already fine. That's not a cheap mistake!

Randall: "I recently had crappy customer service from you and..."
Randall isn't going to do you any favors either. He's already unhappy with you, and this survey is giving him an outlet to express that. He may or may not have an opinion about the quality of your site, but without a neutral option he's far likelier to give you negative feedback because of his state of mind. Like Jay, he can contribute to a very costly snipe hunt.

(Of course, if Randall thinks that taking a survey is the easiest way to express his dissatisfaction to you, you're already doing it wrong. He should be swimming in opportunities to tell you -- in your product itself (if possible), on the main page of the site, in your promotional emails, etc. But that's a subject for another article.)

It's worth noting here that there are some situations where you do only want one bit of information from your users. Check back tomorrow for part 6 where I'll talk about that special case, what's special about it, and how to do it right.

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This is part 5 of my series on writing a good user survey.  If you want to start at the beginning, head back over to part 1.

Hire me, and then I'll write your next survey! I'm available for full-time or consulting work -- email me. 

How to write great user surveys - Part 4

This  is part 4 of my series on writing a good user survey. If you're just joining us, you may want to start with part 1.

Conflicts of interest

Imagine the following question (which I just made up):

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Munchery provides a good value for the money I spend.

• Strongly agree
• Mostly agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Mostly disagree
• Strongly disagree

When that question is written, the writer thinks "Customers will tell me what they think of Munchery's value." When the customer reads that question, however, sometimes he thinks "Munchery's value is okay. But if I say that I disagree, maybe Munchery will lower its prices." Some customers will do this and some won't -- it depends on your customers and your product. But it will skew your results, and it might skew them in a way that costs you money you didn't need to spend.

Essentially, customers answering that question have a conflict of interest -- their incentives are not aligned with yours. But if you need that information anyway, you can usually still get it if you're sneaky -- you just have to hide your motives a little bit. In my made-up Munchery example, that question has some business mystery behind it. Maybe it's "should we lower or raise our prices?" or "do our customers consider us a luxury?" or "would we get more orders if we gave out more coupons?" There's almost certainly some business need as the motivation, and it's probably not "The CEO was just wondering how users perceive the service's value on a five-point scale."

So think about what you really want to find out. Is there a way you can get that information from the user without asking him to think about it? Like the hole-in-the-jeans example from part 3, there's probably another question you can ask which will allow you to measure results instead of asking for opinions. And the right answer might not always be a survey question. But whether it is or not, it's important to avoid these conflicts of interest if you care about getting the most accurate data.

Come back tomorrow for part 5, where I'll talk about why the answers you provide are just as important (and can be just as harmful) as the questions you ask.

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This is part 4 of my series on writing a good user survey.  If you want to start at the beginning, head back over to part 1.

Hire me, and then I'll write your next survey! I'm available for full-time or consulting work -- email me.