How to screw up a survey + why the Customer Satisfaction question sucks
BAD SURVEYS DON'T SMELL
Many options exist for gathering user insights but, typically, ‘let’s do a survey’ is the path of least resistance.
Surveys are the default of user research: easy and fast to do, and cost effective. Also: easy to screw up, resulting in meaningless or even misleading data that’s then used as the basis of design, UX and other decision making.
This article, from the author of Just Enough Research, points out some of the bigger issues that plague most surveys. Find out how not to do it:
How to run surveys better
THE PRACTICAL ARTICLE: HOW TO ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
So how to get surveys right? They’re not going away anytime soon, so here’s a step-by-step guide to designing survey questions that will give you useful data.
Now, ignore the data
RESEARCH IS ESSENTIAL, BUT NOT CRUCIAL
We’ve featured the above articles as the web is obsessed by surveys, and there’s so many bad ones. So let’s say you’ve absorbed their lessons and have just done a great survey, got great results. What next?
This engaging article lifts the lid on the limitations of taking the results at face value, explaining, perhaps counter-intuitively, why you should not always simply design what your users ask for.
