What is a design feedback survey?

A design feedback survey is a low-key design survey that asks respondents (which can be users or stakeholders) what they think of a design at the surface level. By ‘surface level’ we mean just by looking at it (or if you’re presenting a functional prototype, then by playing around with it a little bit).

It’s an open-ended design survey, which means that respondents can look at, interact with, and leave feedback on anything that they feel compelled to. This is what sets the survey apart from other types of design research such as prototype testing, where users are asked to complete and leave feedback on specific tasks.

Why are design feedback surveys used?

Whether you’re designing an app, a website, or a brand, it’s important to understand how it resonates with your audience, and the best way to do that is with a design feedback survey.

Since design feedback surveys are open-ended, they give respondents the opportunity to open up about anything that they feel should be mentioned — the negative things and the positive things — no filter. For this reason, design feedback surveys are able to catch insights that many other types of design research can’t.

Design research doesn’t need to be intensive or even pre-planned. In fact, design feedback surveying can be conducted almost spontaneously, rapidly providing new direction to product teams that feel like they’re being too introspective. You could carry out design feedback surveying today.

Who uses design feedback surveys?

Design feedback surveys are used by designers to acquire design feedback. However, design researchers or anybody else with at least a little bit of knowledge on design surveying and synthesizing open-ended feedback can also use them, relaying any resulting insights to the designers.

What types of data do design feedback surveys yield?

Our design feedback survey template includes one qualitative question, an open-ended question where respondents can go into as much detail as they want about what they like and/or dislike about the design.

The other questions are quantitative yes/no questions and rating scale questions about specific aspects of the design, revealing how effective those aspects appear to be. You can use these questions to track improvement over time.

What questions are in the design feedback survey template?

By default, our design feedback survey template asks respondents whether or not they think the design is visually appealing, and then what they liked and/or disliked about it.

Next, respondents are asked to rate the design’s aesthetic, navigation, and simplicity on a scale of 1 to 5.

After that, respondents are asked how likely they would be to recommend the app or website to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0 to 10. The resulting data, once synthesized, can even be used to predict how the design might impact the brand’s overall Net Promoter Score.

To wrap up, respondents are asked how trustworthy they believe the app or website to be on a scale ranging from “Extremely likely” to “Not at all likely”.

You can customize the template to include any additional questions you’d like to ask. For example, you might want to ask respondents about the copy, branding, or what they believe the app or website to be about. Design feedback surveys are great for finding out which aspects of a design are and aren’t working, so feel free to customize the template to zone in on whatever you feel you need to know more about. You can also customize the template to edit or remove the questions that are already there.

Feedback from design feedback surveys tend to reflect how respondents feel about the design at the surface level. To measure and observe how effectively users are able to actually complete specific tasks, you should use our prototype testing, instead.