designing-surveys

refoundai/lenny-skills

Design effective surveys using frameworks from 9 product leaders—avoid NPS flaws, force prioritization, and measure what matters.

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What is designing-surveys?

Help users create rigorous customer surveys, NPS measurements, product-market fit surveys, and feedback mechanisms. This skill guides you through clarifying survey goals, selecting the right metrics (CSAT over NPS), designing clean single-variable questions, and targeting respondents at the optimal time in their customer journey.

Clarify survey goals and determine if you're measuring satisfaction, identifying problems, or prioritizing features
Choose between NPS, CSAT, PMF surveys, or custom approaches based on your research objective
Design clean questions that measure one thing precisely, avoiding double-barreled questions
Target the right respondents at the right time—ideally customers 3-6 months into product usage
Use MaxDiff (Most/Least) prioritization to identify value drivers instead of simple rating scales
Force respondents to prioritize with constraints rather than allowing unlimited selections

How to install designing-surveys

npx skills add https://github.com/refoundai/lenny-skills --skill designing-surveys

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How to use designing-surveys

1.Clarify the specific decision your survey will inform
2.Identify your target respondent group and their tenure with your product (aim for 3-6 months)
3.Choose your metric: CSAT (5-7 scale) instead of NPS, or MaxDiff for prioritization
4.Draft questions ensuring each one measures only one variable
5.Test mobile rendering to ensure all scale options are visible without scrolling
6.Force prioritization constraints (e.g., 'pick your top 3') rather than allowing unlimited selections
7.Deploy to your target segment at the optimal time in their journey

Use cases

Good for

Building a customer satisfaction survey to measure product-market fit with CSAT instead of NPS
Creating an onboarding survey to improve signup conversion by adding targeted 'good friction' questions
Designing a feature prioritization survey using MaxDiff to identify which capabilities matter most to customers
Collecting feedback from best customers who remember life before your product to get accurate problem identification
Setting up a quarterly feedback mechanism that targets users at the 3-6 month sweet spot of product familiarity

Who it's for

Product managers designing customer research programs
Founders gathering product-market fit validation
Customer success teams collecting feedback at scale
Growth teams optimizing onboarding flows
Anyone building data-driven product decisions

designing-surveys FAQ

Why is CSAT better than NPS?

NPS has known scientific flaws in survey design. CSAT with 5-7 item scales has better data properties, is more precise, and correlates more strongly to business outcomes according to survey science consensus.

When should I survey my customers?

Target customers 3-6 months after signup. They've had enough experience to provide meaningful feedback but still remember what life was like before your product, giving you accurate problem identification.

What's MaxDiff and when should I use it?

MaxDiff (Most/Least) surveys ask respondents to identify the most and least important items repeatedly. This forces relative prioritization and is superior to simple rating scales for identifying which features drive the most value.

Can I add survey questions to my signup flow?

Yes—adding targeted questions as 'good friction' during onboarding can actually improve conversion by 5% by reassuring users they're in the right place, rather than hurting it.

What's a double-barreled question and why avoid it?

A double-barreled question asks about multiple things at once (e.g., 'Is the build fast and reliable?'). If someone answers yes, you don't know which aspect they're responding to. Ask one specific variable per question.

Full instructions (SKILL.md)

Source of truth, from refoundai/lenny-skills.

name: designing-surveys description: Help users design effective surveys. Use when someone is creating customer surveys, NPS measurements, product-market fit surveys, or feedback collection mechanisms.

Designing Surveys

Help the user design effective surveys using frameworks from 9 product leaders who have built rigorous research and feedback systems.

How to Help

When the user asks for help with surveys:

Clarify the goal - Determine if they're measuring satisfaction, identifying problems, or prioritizing features
Choose the right metric - Help them select between NPS, CSAT, PMF survey, or custom approaches
Design clean questions - Ensure each question measures one thing precisely
Target the right respondents - Help them reach users with fresh, relevant experience

Core Principles

NPS is scientifically flawed

Judd Antin: "NPS is the best example of the marketing industry marketing itself. The consensus in the survey science community is that NPS makes all the mistakes. Customer satisfaction, a simple CSAT metric, is better. It has better data properties, it is more precise, it is more correlated to business outcomes." Use CSAT with 5-7 item scales instead.

Force prioritization with constraints

Nicole Forsgren: "Let them pick three, just three. Of those three, how often does this affect you? Is this hourly? Is this daily? Is this weekly?" Limit respondents to their top barriers to keep data clean, then measure frequency to weight impact.

Survey your best customers at the right time

Gia Laudi: "Very importantly, they signed up for your product recently enough that they remember what life was like before. Generally, we say that's in the three to six-month range." Target customers who have been using the product 3-6 months so their memory of the 'before' state is fresh.

Onboarding surveys improve conversion

Laura Schaffer: "We just asked for forgiveness and put these questions into the signup flow. An improved conversion by like 5%, just improved signups." Adding 'good friction' in the form of targeted questions can increase conversion by reassuring users they're in the right place.

Avoid double-barreled questions

Nicole Forsgren: "You're asking four different questions there. If someone answers yes, was it the build? Was it the test? Was it slow or was it flaky?" Ensure each survey question only asks about one specific variable.

Use MaxDiff for feature prioritization

Madhavan Ramanujam: "Identify the most important for you, and the least important. If you do this a few times, you will be able to prioritize the entire feature set in a relative fashion." MaxDiff (Most/Least) surveys are superior to simple ranking for identifying value drivers.

Questions to Help Users

"What specific decision will this survey inform?"
"Are you asking about one thing per question, or multiple things?"
"Who are your 'best' customers and when did they sign up?"
"Are all scale options visible on mobile without scrolling?"
"How will you force respondents to prioritize rather than rate everything high?"

Common Mistakes to Flag

Double-barreled questions - Asking about speed AND complexity in one question
Too many options - Allowing respondents to select unlimited items instead of forcing prioritization
Wrong timing - Surveying customers who are too new (no experience) or too old (forgot the 'before')
NPS worship - Relying on a metric with known scientific flaws over simpler, better alternatives
Hidden scale options - Mobile surveys where users can't see all options create response bias