How to Run Surveys at Every Stage of the Design Cycle - NN/G

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November 24, 2023 2023-11-24
Surveys are a valuable and frequently utilized tool in the UXer’s toolkit. However, surveys are frequently used for the wrong reason: namely, because professionals incorrectly assume that are quick and easy. Where you are the design cycle should inform the types of surveys that you should run.
Below, we outline some common types of surveys that could be run at various stages of the design cycle, and some questions that it might be handy to ask.
Created by NN/G researchers, based on real survey writing experience, Writing Effective Survey Questions teaches tips and tricks that’ll upgrade your surveys.
As we know, user research can and should be conducted at various stages of the design cycle. That said, different research methods lend themselves more or less seamlessly to various stages. For example, as you can see in the below diagram, surveys as a research method are most commonly associated with the Listen phase of a project.
However, this categorization is not a strict delineation. With proper strategy and planning, surveys can be used at any phase of the design cycle.
During the Discover phase of a project, researchers should gather ample background information about the problem space to confirm they have correctly identified the problem to solve.
Conducting a discovery survey can uncover valuable insights about your current or potential users. It's like casting a wide net to catch useful information.
Surveys are typically categorized as a quantitative research method; however, discovery surveys are frequently run qualitatively. Qualitative surveys can uncover insights that can be further explored subsequent discovery user interviews.
Discovery Survey: Sample Questions
Interviews with key project stakeholders are critical in the Discover phase, to ensure a clear understanding of project goals. However, stakeholders, who tend to be busy senior staff members, may find it difficult to accommodate interviews in their schedule or impossible. In such situations, stakeholder surveys can be a viable asynchronous.
Stakeholder Survey: Sample Questions
Diary studies are a longitudinal research method in which a participant submits multiple logs (or diary entries) over a period, documenting discrete behaviors or interactions with a product or service.
Typically, survey questionnaires are used as a convenient tool for gathering these diary entries. For example, a user may be asked to complete the same survey every day at a specific time for 2 weeks.
Diary-Study Survey: Sample Questions:
The purpose of the Explore phase is to gain a deeper understanding of the problem space and to reach alignment on project scope and user needs. The research that we conduct during this phase is designed to paint a holistic picture of users and their current problems. Design reviews, competitor research, personas, journey maps, and prototyping are all common methods and activities used effectively during the Explore phase. Surveys can aid many of these efforts.
Competitor-customer surveys are similar to the discovery surveys you conducted in the Discover phase but are targeted at competitors’ customers rather than at your own. Competitor-customer surveys help you learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ products; that knowledge can inform your own future product-design decisions.
Competitor-Customer Survey: Sample Questions
The most robust and labor-intensive personas are statistical personas, in which initial qualitative research informs the creation of a survey. This survey is sent to a large sample of target users, and statistical analysis is used to generate persona segments.
Statistical-Persona Survey: Sample Questions
Once you have established some solid hypotheses in the Explore phase, you can verify them in the Test phase. During this phase, researchers conduct multiple, iterative rounds of qualitative usability testing to test prototypes and other designs, as well as diary studies to understand user interactions with a product or service over a prolonged period of time.
In a usability-testing session, surveys are administered post task (i.e., after each task) or post test (i.e., at the end of all the tasks involving the same product).
Survey questions given after each individual task are typically used to assess the relative ease of that specific task, or to gather additional feedback about it from users. The most commonly used example of a post-task survey is the Single Ease Question (SEQ), which typically asks users to rate the task on a 7-point scale from very difficult to very easy.
The most commonly used post-test questionnaire is the System Usability Scale (SUS). The SUS is a 10-question survey that has been used since the 1980s to assess the overall usability of a system. One benefit of the System Usability Scale (SUS) is that it has established reliable benchmarks for acceptable scores across industries and contexts due to its popularity and longevity.
During the Listen phase, user sentiment and experience with a product or service are routinely monitored to understand current problems and detect new problems early. Surveys are one of the most common research methods utilized during the Listen phase.
The net-promoter score (NPS) is a popular survey used to measure customer loyalty. In it, respondents are asked to rate their likelihood of recommending a product or service to someone else. These responses are then aggregated to produce a single score which ranges from -100% to 100%. While the NPS does not directly address or assess the usability of a system, it has been shown to correlate with usability decently well, and as such, it is utilized by some UX researchers. However, it should never be the only metric used to assess the usability of a system.
The customer-satisfaction score (CSAT) is a 1-question survey administered to determine customer satisfaction with a product or service. Typicall