Redesigning an internal survey authoring tool

I redesigned Pilotly’s survey authoring tool from a configuration-heavy interface into a document-style editor, closing the gap between how researchers draft and how they program. Resulted in implementing +5 new requested features, 42% increase in user confidence, and 71.4% users rating a ⅗ or higher on performance.

fig. 01 — redesigned survey editor

Role

Sole Product Designer

Team

Joseph Audette, VP of Product and Engineering; James Norman, CEO & Co-founder; Najeeb Chowdhury, Director of Research Ops; 3-person engineering team

Timeline

December 2022 - present (ongoing migration)

Platform

Web-based survey authoring tool

Users

9-person research team building studies weekly, 6 person supporting research team, clients

Skills

User research, competitive analysis, UX design, system architecture, QA, phased launch

problem

Pilotly’s internal survey authoring tool was built around a configuration-heavy interface that didn’t reflect how researchers actually worked. Researchers drafted questionnaires with clients in Google Docs, then re-translated the document into the tool to program it, doubling their work and forcing them to context-switch between two completely different mental models.

solution

I redesigned the tool from the ground up into a document-style editor — think Notion for survey programming — and validated the direction with researchers across our four core user segments.

impact

new requested features

42% increase

in confidence from Q1 → Q2

71.4%

users rated a 3/5 or higher on performance

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