The Problem

Let’s face it—surveys are generally boring. Often, they’re long and tedious. Too frequently, they’re perceived as irrelevant. Even when they’re brief and pertinent, they usually arrive uninvited – crowding inboxes and interrupting web activity with pop-ups like a nosey neighbor who materializes every time you have company.

To make matters worse, surveys often focus only on what an organization or individual wants to know – providing little, if any, opportunity for someone to genuinely share a good dollop of love, or a ranting complaint.

Part of the problem is the ubiquitous Likert response method. Designed to allow a survey participant to express an opinion, an attitude, a measure of the presence of something (e.g. pain) in a standardized, quantified format – it lends itself to collecting data quickly for ease of analysis. But, with all due respect to psychologist, Dr. Rensis Likert, the response format he introduced in the 1930s has been contributing to the monotony and tedium that have been boring survey respondents ever since.

What if surveys could be more engaging? What if they weren’t so boring? What if they allowed people to express what truly matters to them – to share their experience, not just their opinion? What if surveys could actually be… fun?

An Innovative Solution

Enter Morphii. A novel system for capturing, conveying, and measuring subjective human experiences – including emotions, moods, attitudes, and more. It’s a modern, visual, analogue scale. Technically speaking, it is similar to the sort of measurement technology underlying the Likert scale response format. But, Morphii is different in many ways, not the least of which is its capacity to engage.

After working with our customer service staff, how do you feel?

The assertion that Morphii is more engaging (as well as more efficient, which will be demonstrated separately), is both bold and bona fide. Plenty of data exists to support such a claim, and three examples demonstrating superior engagement will follow.

Proof of Engagement

A study performed by Morphii surveyed more than 1,000 people and asked them to use two different formats to indicate which emotions – and at what intensities – they perceived within facial-expression emojis from a variety of familiar platforms – including Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Samsung. Half of the sample saw one emoji at a time, and were asked to label the emoji with an emotion word like happy, sad, afraid, or disgusted. Then, they were asked to identify what intensity of said feeling, from very low to very high, they believed the emoji represented..

The other half of the sample saw the same emojis, but assigned the emotion type and intensity using Morphii technology. The morphii characters presented had been validated – indicating that their facial representation matched the emotion words used in the Likert condition for consistency.

Research participants in both conditions were free to respond to as many, or as few, emojis as they desired.  The 500+ research participants who used Morphii to reflect the type and intensity of emotion they recognized in emojis responded, on average, to 11% more emojis than the participants who used the word list and Likert scale.

After 5 trials, the respondents using Morphii were more likely to persist, as nearly 30% proceeded past that point, versus only 22.5% in the Likert condition. The same was true after 10 trials, with 18.5% persisting versus only 15.7% among the Likert responders.  Morphii maintained the lead after 20 trials, with nearly 12% persisting, versus 10% in the Likert condition.

Not only that, participants using Morphii were more likely than the Likert participants to subscribe for additional information or opportunities to participate in research – providing their email address.

Another study conducted by Morphii in collaboration with global marketing agency, Leo Burnett, included over 5,600 U.S. women as participants, ranging in age from 18 to 64. The intent of the study was to learn which emotional reactions were evoked by images pertaining to various household brands as presented on social media.

Subjects were asked to report their emotional experiences and the intensities of those emotions. Morphii reactions were compared against participant’s selections when using facial expression emojis and simple, descriptive emotion words to respond.

Participants were also asked to identify which of the three question/response methods made taking the survey most interesting. Of those who indicated a preference, Morphii was the clear winner, particularly among the youngest and most social-media savvy subjects. Morphii was also the overwhelming preference of subjects when asked which format was most helpful for conveying their feelings.

In partnership with MMR Research Associates, Morphii participated in a study of 33 retail and restaurant brands – receiving nearly 2,700 instances of brand-specific feedback from 1,000 participants. The engagement demonstrated a comparison between Morphii and other Likert-style rating methods – using linear regression to determine their capacity to understand the impact of experience on how often consumers choose a particular brand. Not only did Morphii’s patented technology outperform these other methods by 2 and 3 times, respectively; but unsolicited user feedback indicated that the survey experience was improved by incorporating Morphii.

Participants Remarked:

Conclusion

Surveys can be a real snore. Too often they’re a burden or even an annoyance to respondents. Competing for time, particularly in the age of alternative media, limits opportunities for learning. Now more than ever, survey methods must engage respondents and efficiently accomplish research goals.

Better experiences and better data go hand in hand. In a series of studies with varying populations and purposes, incorporating Morphii technology demonstrated higher engagement than traditional response formats, and even elicited positive user reactions.

Survey creators owe it to themselves, and to those from whom they want to learn, to engage participants with an improved experience. Utilizing Morphii’s innovative technology is a proven method to meet that end.