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Usability Methods in Interface Design: User Surveys
by: pidoco1 on
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 Time: 3:43 AM
With a user survey you try to find out how your software, application or web site is most likely to be used by your target audience or a special segment of users. The usability method of posting user surveys on your website is a powerful tool to find out what other analytics tools cannot deliver. When a quantitative analytics tool tells you everything about what people did on your website or interface, a user survey tells you the hidden secrets about user motivation, feelings and the why people using your website or interface.
You post all kinds of questions (by letter, email, online) to get an idea about stuff that you cannot trace or observe technically (e.g. ask about features that do not exist yet), but which you need to know for making your product even more customer centric.
What should I ask in a User Survey
With the internet it is easy to carry out user surveys with hundreds and thousands of users, presenting qualitative and/or quantitative data for decision making. But what should you ask your target audience? Well, what do you want to know? Depending on your goals, the questions will and can be quite different. But compared to many other usability methods, user surveys can give you answers about stuff that is hard to find out through tracking and observing user behavior (e.g. feature requests, expectations etc.).
Who should I ask in a User Survey
This is a tricky question. If you deal with future development of an existing site, it is obvious to ask your customer base. In all other cases, you are confronted with a sampling task. Getting the sample for a user survey right is a job for your statistician (if you have one) who knows his job, since the best survey questions mislead you when you ask the wrong people.
How should I post my Questions in a User Survey?
Considering the fact, that not only in a user survey the answer most often depends on how you pose your question (‘leading question, your honor’), you can again fall into many traps along the path. The question is also whether you want to get qualitative or quantitative results. With just a few users, you can post open questions, like: ‘What are you missing, when using our site?’, ‘Which feature do you love most and why?’ etc. Is it a quantitative user survey, you will trade inspiration from your users for statistically calculable results – the according question for the latter would rather be like: ‘Please rate this site in terms of performance on a scale between 1 and 7’.
My personal Conclusion about conducting User Surveys
User surveys are a complementary usability method to common analytics tools. You will find out more about the motivation and feelings of (potential) users and gather insights for creating great user experience. Unfortunately there is no ‘cook book’ on how to do it right and you simply need some experience. When it comes to quantitative analysis at least some statistical background (for sampling and analyzing the results afterwards) is helpful.
If you are more interested in methods and tools for the user centered design process, check out this wireframe software(https://pidoco.com/en), and for those interested in digging deep into user surveys, check out this book.
About the Author
Pidoco.com – Interface Design, Interface Design Software, Wireframe Software and GUI Prototyping Tool. A GUI Design Interface Software for clickable Wireframes! Wireframe creating and GUI prototyping tool. Fast wireframe creating and remote website usability testing lead to an improved conversion!
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