Contract Magazine - June 2018 - 52

latest survey tools and took into consideration
how the survey experience may be driving
the outcomes, including the overall number
of completed responses?

Designing a Better Survey
by Evelyn M. Lee, AIA

Evelyn M. Lee, AIA,
writes a regular column
for Contract on business
practices in design and
professional development.
Based in San Francisco,
Lee is regional workplace
manager, west coast lead
at Newmark Knight Frank.
She holds graduate degrees
in architecture, public
administration, and business
administration. Currently
a member of the AIA national
board of directors, Lee
received an AIA Young
Architects Award in 2014.
Her website is evelynlee.com.
Visit contractdesign.com/
businesspractice to read all
of her columns for Contract.

While anyone can send out a survey, designing
one is truly a science. When getting my Master
of Public Administration, I took an entire semester
on research methodology, during which I learned
how to create statistical tools that systematically
describe information, apply empirical evidence
to the discovery of intuitive and experiential
knowledge, and inform decision making through
accurate generalization and hypothesis testing.
It was one of the most impactful classes of my
education, and I continue to reference the class
and apply these skills today.
In the same way that designers tend to notice
the details in our physical environment, the class
made me sensitive to the types of questions asked
in surveys and the outcomes they produce. Creating
a good survey for clients can be an incredibly
powerful tool that leads to better design outcomes.
Here are five things to consider the next time your
team uses a survey in their design process.
1. Determine Demographics
HR departments frequently urge us to remove
questions regarding the age of the individual
taking the survey. We often can bring the issue
back into play by asking people to respond to
different ranges, indicating the generation in which
they were born. While it is true that generational
bias can poison company culture, understanding
how different generations are responding to their
current environment and how to future proof
against it goes a long way to creating design
solutions that work best for everyone.
2. Pick the Right Tool
I am as big of a fan of freeware as the next person.
After all, why pay for something you do not have
to? In this case, the survey user experience is equally
as important as how you compose the questions.
Paying for options that allow you to use slider values,
max differentials, conjoint analysis, etc., can be
used to create interactive questions that provide
a greater amount of feedback in a shorter amount
of time. When was the last time you researched the

52

3. Minimize Open-Ended Questions
The most insightful surveys quantify qualitative
information. Open-ended questions, while fun
to read, are much harder to properly evaluate
and provide less definitive data. Researchers will
sometimes use open-ended questions to discover
which answers are the most common and use
them to help design questions that best reflect
the most popular responses. Finally, people
are less prone to answering open-ended questions,
either choosing to skip them completely or, in
the worst-case scenario, abandoning the survey
altogether if they are required.
4. Repeat Surveys
If you are not using the same survey on a
regular basis, then you are missing out on a huge
opportunity to benchmark your findings across
all your clients. To do this, you need to ensure
that your survey will pass approval through HR
and relative council. We have done a lot of work
to ensure that 90 percent of our survey remains
the same, allowing us to cater the remaining
10 percent to the specific organization. The process
has provided us invaluable criteria to measure
individual organizations against. Using the same
survey also allows us to look at changes within
an organization over time, whether it's 30, 60,
or 90 days post occupancy or a more annual basis.
5. Utilize Outcomes
Going the extra mile to analyze and meaningfully
present survey outcomes goes a long way to
supporting your client's decision-making process
and justifying your own design decisions. The
best survey tools give you a variety of different ways
to utilize the findings. Newer tools, like Survature,
assess survey behavior, to understand which
responses were chose first by respondents, which
were changes, and which were outright ignored.
We often export survey data into data visualization
software like Tableau or QlikView, which gives our
clients the ability to analyze the data in the way that
is most meaningful for them or better highlight
specific findings.
Surveys can be powerful tools with the potential
of creating data that clients will be compelled
to pay for. How are you leveraging surveys in your
firm and what opportunities are you possibly
missing out on? c

contractdesign.com

JUNE 2018

PHOTOGRAPHY: CARL BOWER

COLUMNIST
http://www.evelynlee.com http://www.contractdesign.com/businesspractice http://www.contractdesign.com/businesspractice http://www.contractdesign.com
Contract Magazine - June 2018

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