The Guidebook platform enables event organizers to create their own unique surveys and embed them across several parts of their guide for tailored information gathering. From the product standpoint, surveys add essential value and extend a guide's life cycle.
The survey feature is the second most utilized feature on the Guidebook platform. As such, continual development and refinement is a priority. The Product team and I identified the problems affecting our users (event organizers and end-users) and we got to work solving them.
As the principle designer on this project my role was to design all the UIs and associated flows for the Guidebook app (iOS and Android) and the Builder, Guidebooks in house CMS. I worked closely with our Project Managers and Developers to solve these problems and ensure a great survey experience.
Problems to solve
- Surveys were frustrating for end users to complete, and unavailable offline.
- Event organizers could easily misuse the survey builder and generate confusing reports.
- Event organizers had few options to build the surveys they wanted.
The biggest hurdle preventing end users from filling out a survey was connectivity. The Guidebook app doesn't require an internet connection to function - this comes in handy inside a crowded conference venue. However, surveys were initially built as a web view. An internet connection was required to access, fill out, and then submit a survey.
Rebuilding surveys as a native component solved all of these connectively issues. It also opened the door for new functionality and gave me the opportunity to design the UI on both iOS and Android.
Native survey deliverables
- Surveys can now be cached, allowing end users to exit a survey and return right where they left off. In the past exiting a survey pre submittal would clear out your answers.
- Surveys can now access local storage allowing answers to be stored and later submitted when the device detects a stable internet connection. This is done as a background process without any user intervention.
- As a native component of the Guidebook app, surveys question can now be themed and are more responsive.
How a typical survey appears on an Android device.
Surveys are incredibly powerful in that they can be linked to almost any piece of content contained in a guide. But this level of flexibility comes with a downside.By linking a single survey to multiple places context becomes hard to define, resulting in a report that is difficult to understand.
The problem
How can we generate reports that are easy to grok without compromising the flexibility that makes a survey so useful?
The solution
I created a UI that centered around the concept of giving a survey a clear purpose. This purpose UI became a required part the survey creation flow and focused on two things:
- The UI communicates the many places a survey can be linked. By educating our users while using the interface they can quickly make an informed decision about the best place to link their survey.
- The UI establishes a relationship between what a survey is for and where it will be accessed within the guide. This relationship is carried through to the reports where it establishes crystal clear context.
By introducing guard rails that funnel survey creators into making deliberate, well considered choices, we maintained the flexibility that makes a survey so useful, while ensuring the generation of reports that are easy to understand.
Selecting a guides purpose also determines where it lives in your guide. The UI gives the user a description for each purpose and previews where the survey will be accessed from.
The original question editor was rigid and lacked flexibility. Event organizers couldn't re-use existing questions, would have to start over if they decided to change a questions format, and didn't have many options in the way of question types.I designed a new question editor that addressed and solved these issues. But I would like to focus on two of the new question types:
1. Branching path questions
Each selectable answer in branching path question can lead to a new question set. When set up correctly an event organizer can create a responsive and dynamic survey.
Users can configure each answer to render follow up questions, or do nothing - the default behavior for a survey question.
Showing branching path questions on Android.
2. Grid Questions
Grid questions enable event organizers to re-use the same set of answers for multiple questions.
When designing the UI I took the limited horizontal space inherit in smart phones into consideration and formatted the questions to work well within this constraint. The questions are formatted into a horizontal carousel that auto advances after each answer. However end users aren't siloed into answering in order. By swiping horizontally they advance through the questions and answer at whatever order they please.
Setting up a grid question works by filling in your question rows, and then your answer columns.
Showing a grid question in action. Notice how the user can freely swipe between answers.
The product and support teams have relayed positive remarks about the feature update. Event organizers have reached out and requested more features be added to surveys. In less than a year since launch there have been more than 50 thousand surveys submissions and 1837 survey data exports by our event organizers. I'm proud of the work I've done with my colleagues and excited by all the surveys being generated by event organizers.
