SurveyGizmo is a web-based software company giving researchers, and small and enterprise companies powerful tools to create online surveys, questionnaires and forms.  They offer a free 14-day trial, as well as monthly and yearly payment plans for an extensive suite of features, as well as non-profit and educational discounts.

Now let’s get down to the business of putting these two great tools together.

SurveyGizmo First

If you are starting with a SurveyGizmo survey first and a WebSort card sorting study following, you can pass information from SurveyGizmo into WebSort for easy cross-referencing of the results.  All you need to do is add a little something to the normal WebSort URL, which looks like this:

http://websort.net/s/XXXXXX/

where the Xs are the special identifier for your study (available in your Study Manager).  Instead, you will use /sg/ (for SurveyGizmo) instead of the /s/ to tell WebSort to expect data specifically from SurveyGizmo.  This means your URL will look like this:

http://websort.net/sg/XXXXXX/

Now all you have to do is plug this URL into your SurveyGizmo survey using their Hidden Value actions.  There are lots of options with SurveyGizmo, so they’ve put together a great tutorial and overview you can start here.  But the short answer for this particular task can be found here under the section entitled ‘To get to the URL redirect action.’

Basically, just add an action, choose ‘URL Redirect’ under the Logic column and enter the URL we put together above.  Then under the ‘Fields to Pass’ pick the one you want to use as your participant ID first and then the one you want to use as your tag.  WebSort will then be able to pick up those values and slot them into the correct place for your participant, skipping the WebSort login window completely and giving a more seamless experience.  And your final URL (when coming from SurveyGizmo) will look something like this:

Just a quick post to let you know that we are celebrating World IA Day 2013 with a special offer of 50% off of any WebSort purchase.  Check out all of the details here.

Happy Sorting!

Well, at WebSort, we’re working hard to make that kind of cross-application cooperation a reality.  Starting with our flexible variables that can be used to pass information out of the study, we are now working to integrate with specific applications to give you the chance and the choice to tap into all sorts of awesome powers while going about your quiet UX Hero work.

As promised, we’re starting by announcing our cooperation with SurveyMonkey, one of the most popular online survey tools on the web.  Like WebSort, they offer a free option in additional to their paid plans and support multiple languages in their interface.

SurveyMonkey First

Let’s start with having your SurveyMonkey survey first, with a WebSort card sorting study following. To pass information from SurveyMonkey into WebSort, we’ve set up a special URL.  Normally the URL for your WebSort study would look like this:

http://websort.net/s/XXXXXX/

where the Xs are the special identifier for your study (available in your Study Manager).  Instead, you will be able to use /sm/ (for SurveyMonkey) instead of the /s/ to tell WebSort to switch over to special processing rules.  SurveyMonkey can pass through a custom variable in the URL automatically, one that starts with a ‘?c=’.  (You can read more about it and how to set it up on SurveyMonkey’s website here.)   So the URL that your participants will be sent to at the end of your SurveyMonkey survey will look like this:

http://websort.net/sm/XXXXXX/?c=00001

The information after the ?c= will be used at the WebSort participant ID, bypassing the participant login and showing up as their identifier in the Results list.

Now let’s say you want to add a custom tag to this, to show in the WebSort system the participants that came via SurveyMonkey and those that were test participants or came from other sources.  No problem!  Simply add a tag in the normal fashion to the end of the URL (but before the ?c=) to insert the tag that you would like all of your SurveyMonkey respondents to have when going to the WebSort study.  Your final URL would look like this:

http://websort.net/sm/XXXXXX/t/TAGHERE?c=00001

WebSort First

Now let’s go over how to set things up the other way around.  If you want to have your WebSort study first and pass out the participant ID, you’ll just need to insert our handy-dandy participant ID variable into the URL.  So your SurveyMonkey link (typed into the ‘Send them to an external page’ option in the Settings tab of the Study Manager) will look like this:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XXXXXXX?c=[PARTICIPANT]

where the Xs are, of course, your actual SurveyMonkey survey ID.  You can find the corresponding SurveyMonkey help article here.

If you want to get really fancy, SurveyMonkey has an advanced feature on their Platinum Plan that allows for even more custom variables.  So if you would like to pass WebSort tags out and into one of their custom variables, all you need to do is use our special [TAG] variable put into the SurveyMonkey URL format.   Details on their formatting requirements (dependent on how you set up your variables) can be found in their help article here and will end up looking something like this:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XXXXXXX?Info=[TAG]

There you have it!  Even if you only use the IDs from one to the other, it gives you the opportunity to cross-compare the sets of data easily, allowing you to glean all sorts of new information from your data sets.  Keep your eyes on this blog for other great collaborative efforts between WebSort and other online apps.  And let us know if you have any requests for new partnerships – after all, this is for you!

Dear thinkers, designers and people who care,

We salute you. World Usability Day is a celebration of usable and useful products and services everywhere and of the people delivering them. The UX revolution is here. The world is waking up to the power of the people. The User Experience industry is growing year-after-year as more and more people realize that the only way to really please the people is to put those people first.

It’s the UX change agents (whom we affectionately call UX punks) like you who are leading the charge, making things easier to use and simpler to understand. Thank you. Thank you for everything you are doing. You rock. I’d really like to shake your hand and congratulate you, but as yet there is no decent way to do that over the internet, so for now, please, take a bow. You’ve earned it.

To show you just how much we appreciate you, and to celebrate World Usability Day, we’ve put together a special Triple Treat to help you lead the UX charge in 2013.

Here’s your Triple Treat teaser:

• You’ll get tools worth almost US$1,200 for a fraction of the cost.
• The credits you purchase will never expire.
• Think three with triple strength – at a quarter of the price!

I’ve kept your needs as top priority for several months while I plotted what I could do for you today. I wanted to create an offer that made good sense on three levels:

Growth: There are positive forecasts for UX in the New Year. You’ll be busy!
Value: Bank $avings now on the things you’ll need in 2013.
Learning: Build your skills and experience with our growing set of features and resources.

Take an in-depth look at the Triple Treat and see exactly what you’re getting.

Please don’t be left wondering. If you are:

• Starting a new project or new role
• Looking to add new tools or skills to your portfolio
• Wanting to understand more about the way users think
• Needing evidence to convince stakeholders or decision makers

then the UX Punk Triple Treat is for you. But please note – we’ve never done a deal this good before. We may never do it again. It’s for a very limited time, and it won’t be repeated for an entire year (if ever) – or your money back.

Spread the UX Punk love and let your friends and colleagues know about this deal. But there is an extra special reward for the first 50 Triple Treat buyers, so maybe get yours first, then let them know.

Grab it, share it, then go and celebrate UX and our wonderful world. That’s what I’ll be doing!

 Hello there!

Matt Magain’s cartoon for today got me thinking about ‘managing expectations’. User experience insights have changed our view of how ‘to manage’. To be genuinely, authentically empathetic we need to explore and respect our users needs, desires and motivations.

But with a young family and the holidays coming up, I can tell you there’s going to be plenty of ‘managing expectations’ in my household! And truth be told, clarifying expectations on a daily basis (both at home and professionally) make my experience and the experience of those I interact with a lot more user-friendly.

Handy tips to remember:

• People can only remember 3-4 things at a time.
• If something’s clickable, make sure it looks clickable.
• The sooner you get user feedback, the better!

Have I got a deal for you!

WUD is just around the corner, and there’s been some curiosity about whether or not we’ll have a special deal as part of our celebration.

Answer: YES, WE WILL!

It is a surprise, but I can tell you this: it will be called the Triple Treat, it’ll save you a bundle of money, and it will fill your UX toolbag for a great 2013.

So keep an eye out for our fourth and final WUD email, and don’t delay if you want to grab this deal. It’s limited. It will close without notice. And we won’t be offering this deal again for at least another year (and maybe never again) or your money back.

Please look out for your UX friends too and tell them what’s coming. Stay tuned!

I like asking UXers how they entered the field. Many of you came from such interesting roles before UX claimed your soul. Some of you were shoulder tapped and discovered a wonderful world that fit like a glove.

What strikes me is that you all share an empathy and desire to make things better – to deliver experiences that people value. And the field of usability offers so much potential for personal growth and carving out the perfect place for your passion. If you’re looking to advance your career in 2013, I’ve included three resources for you at the end of this post. Let me know what you think!

Know-how gets results

Recently we got asked a question about finding good resources for learning new skills and really becoming an expert in the field. There’re so many wonderful channels to learn from: blogs, magazines, books, podcasts, webinars, conferences, professional associations. I’ve linked to a few of my personal favorites.

But I’d like to think there’s also a place for tools! No amount of learning would help a tradesman with an empty toolbox. I recommend combining tools with learning as one way to get some really good momentum. Card sorts for example are now almost ubiquitous in IA and UX projects. There’s good reason – they help create better outcomes. So if you’re thinking about setting some UX resolutions for the New Year, keep tools in mind!

Don’t get left behind

And don’t forget WUD on November 8th. If nothing’s happening near you, why not throw out an invitation to another UXer or company you maybe don’t know so well, or make up your own ‘event’ and make a night of it. Who knows? It might be the start of something good!

See you soon.

Sarah
UX Punk

Jim Ross in UXmatters on Career Advice for User Researchers
Jessica Greco blogs on how research is the key to your career
Recruiting UX Ain’t Easy – a recruiter’s perspective

Check out UXPA’s WUD schedule for an event near you. It’s a great opportunity to get together with your fellow UXers and toast all that’s great about usability.

Here at UX Punk HQ, we’re counting down the days with a series of four emails for you illustrated by Aussie-based UX designer Matt Magain. Matt’s drawn on the real-life experience of professionals like you (!) to create some insightful cartoons about the life of an intrepid UX designer.

UX is growing quickly

Some great news recently about the explosion of interest in UX.

• More than 874,900 people say they work in UX.
• There’s been 9000+ UX-related positions advertised on LinkedIn (and that’s a US-centric number).
• There are more than 30,000 UX designers in China – and it’s growing!
• The biggest UX conference in China is about 30% bigger than the largest European UX conference.

The world is adjusting to new challenges and complexities. More than ever before, there are opportunities for UX to drive changes and point the way forward. Your optimism for 2013 has been contagious as we see you weaving your creativity and mad skills to deliver up the good work that makes a difference to peoples’ lives. Your time is coming.

Steppin’ it up

Producing great, socially responsible work doesn’t come easily. It can be accompanied by stress and frustration, late nights, and complex collaboration to find those precious nuggets, vital pivots and eureka breakthroughs.

To help you shoulder the responsbility of being a UX trailblazer, we’ve been adding new features to our apps. Alongside our continuous support for the best two value-for-money UX testing tools on the market today, we’ll be announcing details soon about our recent integration and support for @surveymonkey referrals to and from a WebSort card sorting study.

So enjoy the build-up to World Usability Day and remember to look out for a special UX Punk announcement closer to the day.

See you soon!

Sarah

Here at UX Punk, usability is all about who we are as well.  It has always been our credo to promote usability and to make the jobs of usability professionals easier, and that involves more than just making a couple of online tools, as great as they may be.  It’s also about working with you to constantly improve our offerings.  It’s about continuously learning about how the usability field is developing and what techniques are really proving useful to the cause.  And it’s about maintaining our enthusiasm and support for usability innovation and education.

Conveying this love and drive for usability in the detached world of cyberspace, though, presented a challenge.  It’s one thing for the customers and colleagues we work with regularly to know what we stand for.  But what about everybody else?

So we put together a new website.  Several new websites, actually.  A whole new look.  Of course we wanted it to say what we did and why we did it, but we wanted to do it in a way that helped show our personality and what we’re all about.  The sites are now live, and we’re really excited about them.  Modern punk and good business led us to a wearable new look that is as fun as it is usable.

To go along with the increased focus on our company name, we have also consolidated our Twitter accounts to create an easy-access one-stop place to communicate with us.  Check us out under @uxpunk and let us know what you think!

So when we evaluated our WebSort participant limits a couple of months back, we decided that we needed to allow options to go above and beyond the 100 participant limit normally enforced on a Single Study.  To be fair, we’ve always had those options for those who have asked.  Back in the day (think pre-2010) we had participant upgrades available at a fixed cost per 100 participants that you could add on to the cost of a study.  Later, that was adjusted to be one study credit = 100 participants, so that multiple study credits could be applied to one study in an account to increase the participant limits in increments of 100.  But all of these options were applied on the backend, so the transaction had to be conducted mostly through email – not very user-friendly.

After some great discussions internally and in connection with some fantastic WebSort users who conduct a lot of high-volume studies, we came up with a much better solution.  Live in the Study Manager as of July 2012, you can see a message under the name of the study that will allow you to upgrade your participant limits immediately by applying another study credit.

Not only can you now upgrade your study to your heart’s content (or your client’s heart’s content, as the case may be), you can also quickly and clearly see how many participants you are allowed for the study.  This way you can plan ahead and prevent any participants from getting bounced due to hitting the study limits.

But remember!  Despite our recent calculation upgrades, it is possible to overwhelm the online data displays with too much data, especially with open sorts.  If this is the case, you can still always get the files available in the Other Downloads section of the Results tab, even if you don’t load any participants by selecting them on the left.  Therefore, you will always be able to get the Items x Participants table, as well as a couple of other data outputs that you can possibly use in the analysis.  So yes, upgrade at will, but you have been warned!  :)

 Conference tickets are still available, and you can register for the full conference or just the workshops (half-day or full-day) online.  And since UX Punk is a sponsor, keep your eyes peeled from some UX Punk, WebSort and PlainFrame goodies in the conference bags!