{"id":47622,"date":"2020-04-23T23:42:42","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T03:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/?p=47622"},"modified":"2020-04-23T23:43:38","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T03:43:38","slug":"survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Design Disaster Avoidance, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sure, we just had a post on common design mistakes, but there are more than enough to justify one more post — or a dozen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But seriously. Design is such a critical piece of the survey development process, both from strategic and technical perspectives, that brushing up on best practices never hurts. To take your next project to the next level, add the mistakes below to the first five<\/a> and you’ll have a list of the top ten most common design mistakes.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mistake 6: It just looks bad.<\/b><\/h2>\n

From a visual perspective, the perfect survey is clear, polished, and on-brand. A hard-to-read survey is inaccessible and unlikely to collect meaningful results. An ugly survey is just bad news all around. The survey\u2019s appearance should be customized to match your company or project logo, and if you\u2019re sending an invitation, your invitation should match your survey. Backgrounds and borders, colors and fonts, transparency and brightness — you have plenty of options to tweak up your visuals, but that also means plenty of opportunities to muck it up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do this<\/i><\/strong>:<\/strong> Check in with your design and marketing teams for the latest version of your official style guide, then create a Visual Settings template that you can use over and over again. Share the preview or test surveys with your team for review and suggestions. Also, upload an Account Logo that\u2019s exactly the right size and resolution and use it consistently across your projects.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"survey<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mistake 7:<\/b> There are too many open-ended questions.<\/b><\/h2>\n

Open-ended Text Box questions offer participants the opportunity to share their own original thoughts without being constrained by a limited set of answers. Despite having plenty of control over the dimensions and character count of each Text Box, survey designers often forget to exercise control over the number of Text Boxes included in a single project. While valuable, open-ended responses take participants more time to enter than answers to any other question type, and this can lead to early onset survey fatigue.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do this<\/span><\/i>: Review open-ended questions to see if any of them can be answered with a different question type, knowing that you might also include an \u2018Other\u2019 field where it\u2019s impossible to guess all possible answers. Then, review the remaining Text Box questions to prioritize the most important. Be sure the language is clear and specific (\u201cPlease share any additional feedback regarding how we might improve our onboarding process.\u201d rather than \u201cAnything else?\u201d) so you can get the most useful data from each response, and consider where each Text Box should appear in the larger survey structure. In general, Text Box questions work best late in the survey, after participants have had the chance to express themselves in more structured answers. That way, you\u2019re not getting answers up front to a question you\u2019ll ask directly later on, and your participants will already have considered the topic through the guided questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"survey<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mistake 8: Participants are asked irrelevant questions.<\/b><\/h2>\n

To use a classic example from our internal training: If you tell me that you don\u2019t like ice cream at all, it doesn\u2019t make sense for me to ask you which flavor is your favorite. Even if you are kind enough to answer the irrelevant question, your answer will be equally irrelevant and not worth collecting. For some reason, people don\u2019t usually make this mistake in conversations, but they do it all the time in surveys. While a survey attempts to make a connection between the administrator and the participant, asking unanswerable questions widens the gap. For most of us, this experience is perceived as somewhere between annoying and disrespectful.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do this<\/span><\/i>: Use survey skip logic like Question Display Logic, Single-Question Branching, Multi-Question Branching, and IntelliMatrix to determine which participants are asked which questions. Set the right conditions so you\u2019re only collecting data from those who can legitimately provide meaningful answers.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"survey<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mistake 9: Participants are asked for answers the administrator knows.<\/b><\/h2>\n

Even worse than having someone ask you an irrelevant question is having someone ask you a question to which they already know the answer. In trainings, I often demonstrate this with the pretty straightforward example of \u201cHi Melissa! What\u2019s your name?\u201d You\u2019d never say this in conversation, so why do it in a survey? While irrelevant questions are annoying, asking for known questions always seems disrespectful. Imagine turning to someone you\u2019ve worked beside for years and asking, \u201cWait, who are you again?\u201d Nope. Don\u2019t do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do this<\/i><\/strong>:<\/strong> Use Pre-Population to pre-fill known answers. This shortens the survey experience for participants while also delivering useful data for your reports. For example, if you know you\u2019ll want to segment employee survey results by department, pre-fill each employee\u2019s department information and show, hide, or let them edit their answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"survey<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mistake 10: Question stems are double-barrelled or otherwise unclear.<\/b><\/h2>\n

Q: Was this post entertaining and useful? A: Yes\/No<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you answer Yes, I can hope that you mean the post was both entertaining and useful. Hope. If you say No, though, does that mean it was useful but not entertaining, entertaining but useful, or neither entertaining or useful? No idea. Here\u2019s another one:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q: Are there enough training opportunities provided by the company, not including those run by specific departments, that you are able to function more effectively in your primary role and\/or in additional secondary roles that you would not have to look anywhere else to not have to go without? A: What?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Somewhere between a double negative and a long and winding road, unclear questions are the worst. I think I\u2019m asking one thing, but if you\u2019re not on the exact same wavelength, it\u2019s impossible to tell if your answers match up with my intended question.Therefore, of course, the results are useless.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do this<\/i><\/strong>:<\/strong> Review your survey questions multiple times from that how-can-I-screw-this-up critical perspective, then ask your critical friends to do the same. Watch out for logical fallacies and double-dips like two part questions that can\u2019t be reasonably addressed by a single answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"survey<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From here, it’s up to you. Of course, we have plenty of resources, including survey design experts who can help walk you through your design decisions. All you have to do is ask the right questions. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sure, we just had a post on common design mistakes, but there are more than enough to justify one more post — or a dozen.\u00a0   But seriously. Design is such a critical piece of the survey development process, both from strategic and technical perspectives, that brushing up on best practices never hurts. To take your next project to the next level, add the mistakes below to the first five and you’ll have a list of the top ten most common design mistakes.   Mistake 6: It just looks bad. From a visual perspective, the perfect survey is clear, polished, and on-brand. A hard-to-read survey is inaccessible and unlikely to collect meaningful results. An ugly survey is just bad news all around. The survey\u2019s appearance should be customized to match your company or project logo, and if you\u2019re sending an invitation, your invitation should match your survey. Backgrounds and borders, colors and fonts, transparency and brightness — you have plenty of options to tweak up your visuals, but that also means plenty of opportunities to muck it up.\u00a0   Do this: Check in with your design and marketing teams for the latest version of your official style guide, then create a Visual Settings template that you can use over and over again. Share the preview or test surveys with your team for review and suggestions. Also, upload an Account Logo that\u2019s exactly the right size and resolution and use it consistently across your projects.\u00a0     Mistake 7: There are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,205],"tags":[82,442,443,112],"yoast_head":"\nDesign Disaster Avoidance, Part 2 - Sogolytics Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Wrapping up our top ten list of most common design mistakes, these problems and resolutions can help make the difference between results and wasted time.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Design Disaster Avoidance, Part 2 - Sogolytics Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wrapping up our top ten list of most common design mistakes, these problems and resolutions can help make the difference between results and wasted time.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sogolytics Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-04-24T03:42:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-04-24T03:43:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/chalk-man.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"487\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"714\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Melissa Krut\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/\",\"name\":\"Design Disaster Avoidance, Part 2 - Sogolytics Blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-04-24T03:42:42+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-04-24T03:43:38+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/eaf04ab90baaf0bb1e137e6c82f51d07\"},\"description\":\"Wrapping up our top ten list of most common design mistakes, these problems and resolutions can help make the difference between results and wasted time.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/survey-design-disaster-avoidance-part-2\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Design Disaster Avoidance, Part 2\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Sogolytics Blog\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/eaf04ab90baaf0bb1e137e6c82f51d07\",\"name\":\"Melissa Krut\",\"description\":\"Melissa seeks balance in all things: the rush of running and the quiet of yoga, what's gained in learning and what's given in teaching, and the pleasures of reading and writing. 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