These days, it seems as though every survey needs to be designed twice.

These days, it seems as though every survey needs to be designed twice. Once for regular desktop computers and then a second whereby we redesign the original survey to work better on a smaller mobile device like a tablet or phone.

We need to cut words out of questions and more words out of answers so that they will fit on one screen. We need to cut questions from grids and re-format grids because grids just don’t work at all on small screens. We need to shorten instructions, and reduce the complexity of fancy, pretty questions.

It is interesting to see, however, that in most cases, the formatting that needs to be done to turn a desktop question into a mobile question results in a much better question in the end. So how about we did this.

Stop designing questions for desktop devices. 

Pretend no one has and no one ever had a desktop computer. Hey, huge parts of the world and many kids today have never used one anyways.

Start designing questions ONLY for small screened devices.

Wouldn’t that be a great survey?