As a UX researcher, you spend time obsessing over how stakeholders’ products are experienced by customers. But have you considered the UX of your own research work? Your interactions with study participants become part of their overall customer experience, so it’s worth a hard look!

Here are six tips to ensure your survey or participant screener — likely the first external facing step of your study — is a smooth, satisfying, and well-branded experience.

1. Ask nicely!

A good survey screener experience begins with the invitation, whether it’s via email, from a QR code on a product or receipt, an intercept from a website popup, social media or otherwise. Remember, your target audience is under no obligation to respond — your task is to entice them to want to participate. So ask nicely. (“You’re invited to participate” feels better than “We need 5 minutes now!”) Tell them how much you value their time and input, and always offer an incentive commensurate with their effort.

2. Build trust through transparency

In an era of phishing, identity theft and social hacking, it’s important to clearly identify yourself (assuming it is not a blind study where we purposely do not disclose the sponsor's name) to make participants comfortable enough to share information. From the outset, let respondents know who you are and what to expect. Adopt the brand language, tone and style of the sponsoring organization to trigger recall and establish legitimacy. Use the organization’s brand assets, color palette, logo and so forth. If possible, the solicitation should come from an individual at the organization and include their email address. Clearly tell respondents at a high level what the survey is about, how the learnings will be applied, how long it will take, and why they were asked to participate.

3. Respect your participants’ time (and communicate that respect!)

Before the survey begins, let participants know how long it will take. As the survey is completed, use a progress bar, question countdown or other prompt that lets respondents know where they are within the survey and how much longer it should take them to complete.

Keep your surveys as brief and to the point as possible by asking only pertinent questions. Asking for “standard” demographic information up front might seem routine/expected, but unless it’s relevant to the topic at hand, save your participants’ time and energy for the more relevant questions. (And if you must collect some demographic info, save these quick, lower-effort questions for the finish line!)

Keep the overall survey screener length under 10 questions (max 15!) to reduce dropoff before completion.

4. Organize your questions logically

Like any conversation or interview, the questions in your survey/screener should be in a logical sequence. If you’re including “elimination questions” — questions that would screen someone out of the recruit altogether — consider their placement and where you will terminate them. There is a fine line between the two. For example, if you wanted to strictly limit your recruits to current university students only, you may want to ask a question confirming their current enrollment early in your survey/screener. Think of the respondent’s UX. You don't want them to go another 20 questions before getting a message that says, “thanks so much, but you don't qualify.” On the other hand, it's not in your best interest to make the "must have" recruiting criteria obvious. Another aspect to consider is whether you are also gathering directional or other input. Again, this is a balancing act.

I like to organize my primary questions into categories. For example, a project about car insurance might be broken into one category about your car, another about your insurance, and third about driving habits. Bucket similar questions together in ways that would make sense to the respondent.

5. Edit your questions with the user in mind

Your questions should be engaging and they should use simple and clear language. Remove any jargon or acronyms (unless they are clearly the shared language of your participants and organization — then geek on!). Identify and address any potential bias in the questions themselves, or in question wording or sequencing.

Consider the UX of your question types. While variety might keep the survey engaging or interesting, you want to make sure you’re not spending time (or confusing participants) explaining unfamiliar question types or rating scales they might find confusing or frustrating. And when using Likert scales, always use the same number of anchors in one study. Here is a great Likert scale tool for your reference!

6. Pilot your survey/screener on several different systems and devices

Your participants might access your web-based survey in many different ways. The device might be a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or phone … the operating system could be Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, or something else … and even within those systems and devices, users can choose many different web browsers. Be sure to test your survey on as many combinations as possible; the differences in user experience can be dramatic!

Remember, your goal is to make it as easy as possible for participants to clearly, confidently and completely respond to your survey — a satisfying user experience!

This week, the Fall ’21 Ask Like A Pro cohort are authoring their survey screeners and beginning their recruiting efforts.

It’s not too late to join us in this cohort

Our All-in seats are sold out for Fall ’21, but you can still join this cohort as an Observer, and have a fresh credential to show off before Thanksgiving! Click here to learn more about Ask Like A Pro.

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• Follow me on LinkedIn for more UXR tips and UX discussions.

• Read about Curiosity Tank workshops (there's still time to join as an Observer!)

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• Register for Michele's General Assembly classes (next class is on 12/4. Use discount code ronsen-2021 for 25% off!)

• Forward this email to someone who you think might enjoy it. Better yet, sign them up here. It will be the gift that keeps on giving.

• Ask us questions related to user research. Seriously, bad research keeps us up at night!

And that’s a wrap!

We try to alternate between a theme and UX/UXR jobs, events, classes, articles, and other happenings every few weeks. What do you think? We're constantly iterating and would still love to hear your input.

Stay curious,
- Michele and the Curiosity Tank team

PS: Looking for a refresher (or a skills update/upgrade) on a particular step in the research process? Choose your topic — from planning your study to presenting your findings, and everything in between — then boost your knowledge on your schedule with our On Demand workshops.