The Ultimate UX Survey Design Guide

How to design, iterate, and analyze impactful user surveys

I recently did a deep-dive to better understand and use surveys. Gathering meaningful data with a set list of questions requires some careful crafting.

I’ll walk you through a survey analysis that I used to validate qualitative findings. You will see my process, survey checklist, results, and ethics.

Reference: I used the survey for a project on the Calm mobile app to explain my survey design process. I hosted the survey on Google Forms and recruited participants with tailored posts on various Social Media and Slack channels.

All on a $0 budget :)

By the way, surveys are one of the most accessible quantitative methodologies. Check out Norman Nielson’s article on quantitative research for a breakdown of the most popular methods, includes information about purpose, cost, difficulty of collection and analysis, and whether its more attitudinal or behavioral.

Step 1: Determine Research Objectives

Surveys are often used as a quantitative research tool to validate qualitative findings. For example, you might start a discovery research project with in-depth user interviews and then dive deeper into user themes with a survey.

For this project, I conducted seven in-person interviews. I focused on these key topics: meditation, habit building, and meditation apps.

Pairing Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Key User Themes (Qualitative)

1. Meditation is a long-term relationship for most people with phases of consistency and inconsistency.
2. People who meditate have described it as “game-changing” and often recommend it to friends and families.
3. However, the struggle to build and maintain a meditation habit was a consistent pain point.

Research Objectives