Survey Design & Pitfalls
When should you not use a survey?
Surveys are the wrong tool when the topic is too complex, the audience too small, the subject too sensitive, or when there's no real plan to act on what comes back.
Skip the survey when you need to understand something complex, when the audience is too small to matter statistically, or when respondents genuinely don't know enough to answer well. Sensitive topics are another case - people tend to hold back honest answers when they know it's being recorded.
If you need to see actual behavior, a usability test or analytics data will tell you more than self-reported answers. If you're trying to find problems you don't already know about, an interview beats a survey because you can follow up. And don't run a survey if you have no intention of acting on what it tells you - a badly designed survey wastes everyone's time, gives you false confidence, and annoys the people you asked.
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