Research Tools
By now you should know that you need to be talking to users. If you don’t, then I need to start over. Once you’ve talked to your users, what do you do with that information? How do you store it and make it actionable?
If you google research tools, you’re going to get 69 million results. There are tons of good tools at your disposal. I’m going to talk about one that I use on every project. Google Forms.
For collecting data and storing it, Google Forms is hard to beat. It’s free, or cheap. You can send them anywhere by just about any method. This is important as I’ve found that most users will fill out questionnaires that land in their inbox faster than if they are asked to come fill out a survey using XYZ tool.
Google forms are also easy to setup and customize, and they get better all the time. It’s easy to create sophisticated forms that have branching logic and all the latest widgets. So, like a customizable tool, they are great at solving data gathering requirements.
From a data management perspective, they perform well here too. Once you get the form submissions, you have a record of what was said in an easy to review spreadsheet. And as your dataset grows, you can use Google Insights to chart your data and query what you have. But that’s for another time.
Did I mention that they are free? This is important for one last reason. There is no reason not to start using them right now. If you hate them, no problem. Just stop using them. You can go with any of the hundreds of other data tools. But, with Google Forms being free, you can experiment a great deal before you decide that you need to spend money, cause… they are free.
I have found that the best surveys are the short ones. So I try to keep all of my surveys and feedback forms to 5 questions. And if I’m doing well, I’ll do 4 questions that are multiple choice of some type and one question that collects “feedback”. Here’s why.
Assuming of course you are talking to your potential users, gathering feedback is about data. In my experience, personal testimonial has to be offset by the collection of data. And you can use these tools to collect and review that data. Scales are fantastic for that. If you have an advisory panel of 15 users, you can send a feedback survey to them and ask them lots of “on a scale of 1 to 5” questions that give you insight into what users are feeling. Then you give them that one feedback field where they can write all that they want.
When it comes time to make decisions, you can do so with data, not just with what you think you understood others are saying. It will take some practice to get the right information, but keep at it and you’ll be surprised how useful this method will be.
Over time, as you collect feedback, you will build up a dataset that helps you understand what you are doing and why you have come to the decisions that you have landed on. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you are talking to other people and you have the data to back up your claims, it can be a game changer for you and your idea.
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This is the from the archive of an ongoing series called Making Things That Matter. Each week I will send you an email with another step in the process of building products and launching ideas. Signup here to join the conversation.
