For those who have shown such tremendous interest in recent presentations I’ve delivered to CASRO Technology in New York, and the MRA National Conference in Boston (with Jeffrey Henning), let me first say thank you.

The core message of “Sexy Questions, Dangerous Results?” has been the importance of understanding when and how to leverage rich media survey technology (see previous posts on this site for other examples).

In recent presentations, I’ve shared some examples from our Eye Tracking survey, where survey participants were asked to complete the same question, in either a “1.0″ or “2.0″ format.  What is clear from both, is the importance of better understanding the role of Usability in designing the survey interface, and the new complexities of the survey toolbox.

To illustrate the point, I’ve shared 2 videos below (click on 2.o Survey … and 1.o Survey to see them play).

2.0 Survey In the first video (a “2.0″ or enhanced survey interface), our survey participant tries in vain to complete the task of a complex question, but keeps getting messaged “Please select 9 Answers”. What results is a series of errors, an almost random assignment of answers just to try to get out of the question, and needless to say … questionnable data.  This in turn raises additional issues around how to treat data from a multiple error survey (more on that in another post).

1.0 Survey In the second video (a “1.0″ or basic survey interface), our survey participant is faced with 3 unanswered questions.  The error messaging with this interface shows  a RED ARROW message saying “<—– Your Answer is Incomplete”, which in all 3 error messages, our participant assumed meant “you should now click on the closest answer to this message”. Another clear issue of not knowing how to respond to an error message, and picking up on a visual cue.

IMPLICATIONS:

The digital divide in our industry has created opportunities to engage and excite survey participants who we rely on to complete online surveys.  However, the Market Research toolbox is filled with some new power tools that not everyone is familiar with, and for which it is incumbent upon all of us to develop best practices and standards. Thoughts? Email bernie.malinoff@element-54DOTcom with any thoughts.