Design: Survey Design

This is a sample chapter from Jennifer Romano Bergstrom and Andrew Schall’s new book, Eye Tracking in User Experience Design. 2014 Morgan Kaufmann.

Chapter 5: Forms and Surveys

By Caroline Jarrett and Jennifer Romano Bergstrom

Introduction

Most parts of a Web experience are optional. Forms usually are not.

You want to use a Web service? Register for it—using a form. You want to buy something on the Internet? Select it, then go through the checkout—using a form. Want to insure a car, book a flight, apply for a loan? You will find a form standing as a barrier between you and your goal. Read More

Census years are exciting times for the forms enthusiast. They’re quite rare—most countries run their census at 10-year intervals. And they affect the entire population. That’s the definition of a census—a count of an entire population.

Census forms also present lots of lovely forms challenges. A census might be the ultimately complex form: it’s got lots of stakeholders, it takes years to plan, it has to work for absolutely everyone, and it usually includes a lot of relatively invasive questions. The US 2000 Census form was one of the shorter ones, at only four printed pages.

Relax! You’re not in for a dissertation about the history, theory, realities, and everything else about a census. Instead, I’m going to concentrate on one rather small aspect of a census: the envelopes. Why? Because they’ll inspire some general questions that are worth thinking about when you’re designing any complex form. Read More

Recently, Janet Six devoted the October edition of her Ask UXmatters column to customer feedback surveys. That column has inspired me to have a go at one particular aspect of customer feedback in more detail: asking about user satisfaction. That and the excerpt from an email message, shown in Figure 1, which I received after an encounter with a customer support facility, complete with its odd repetition of the question. Read More