What are Open-Ended Questions? With Examples
What type of data are you looking for while conducting User research?
Are you looking for data that can be simply presented in numeric form? or , Are you looking for some in depth, detailed and descriptive information?
Well, the way you ask the question determines the kind of answer you get in return. And Unless you can read the mind of others you cant get answers from them.
While closed ended questions can only give you limited response from people; open ended questions are broad and can bring in a lot of details.
Hence, if you are looking for high value responses and get more information from the person answering your questions then ask Open-ended questions. Open-ended questions are those which requires people to give more thought to the questions and are more than a simple one-word answer. And Closed-ended questions are those which can be answered by a simple “yes” or “no”.
And in this article we will explore
What are Open-Ended Questions?
5 Examples of Open-Ended Questions.
When to Ask Open-ended Questions?
How to Ask Open-Ended Questions?
Why ask Open-Ended Questions?
Open vs Closed Ended Questions.
What are Open Ended Questions?
In simple words, Open-ended questions are those cannot be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Unlike Closed-Ended Question the response to questions is not limited to a set of options; and instead require the respondent to elaborate on their perspective .
Open-ended questions motivates people to incorporate their own information,perspective and point of view and allows you to probe deep into the respondent’s answers while gaining valuable information about the subject at hand.
These questions are subjective which ask a lot of ‘Why’ ‘How’ ‘Where’ ‘When’ etc, that requires an explanation from respondents in their own words which ultimately help you see things from a customer’s perspective instead of stock answers.
Open-ended questions are often used in Qualitative Market Research which is an exploratory form of the research where the researcher gets to ask questions directly from the participants which helps them to probe on user behavior.
Infact Open-ended questions are often asked in Job interviews and during counseling sessions to understand the respondent’s state of mind. The responses are ultimately used to attain detailed and descriptive information on a topic.
5 Examples of Open Ended Questions.
Now that you have understood what are Open-ended question. Lets understand more with the help of some examples
1. How can we make this Product/Service better?
Remember when you last went out for vacation at you favorite hotel and while checking out, the restaurant manager gave you a page to rate their services and asked this question in the end.
This is one of the most common yet important question that is often asked by the users of a product/service. Crisp and to the point, the question leaves the door wide open for the respondents for multidimensional answers that you may not have even thought of.
There is always room for improvement, and by asking for improvements directly from those who have used your product/service would uncover lot of suggestions and improvements that will ultimately lead to a great User Experience.
2. What goals would you like to accomplish?
Want Customers Fall in Love with Your Business then ask them what are their goals that they want to accomplish while using your Product/service.
See unless a Product/service solves the user problem and helps them accomplish their goal they are unlikely to buy it. Why not hear about the Goals the user wants to accomplish directly from them, in context with the product/service.
3. Tell me about your experience.
A Successful business is based on the overall user experience that they provide to the customer when they use your product/service. Asking them about their experiences would give you the opportunity to learn about the good as well as bad aspects.
If customer had a good experience, you can directly use their verbatim in your marketing campaign. However, if they had bad experience then you can use that information to bring improvements.
4. What challenges or issues you face while using product/service?
Finding out the challenges, issues, problems that customers face while using your product/service will help you address them in further product development. Though the question might sounds simple to you however you’ll be surprised by the answers which would enlighten you with various aspects of your product.
It is also important to stay unbiased while hearing the response from respondents. What might be challenging for them might not be for you and vice versa. Hence, dont quantify the response.
5. Tell me something about yourself.
The world runs through networking and building good relationships. You can get your work done through it.
So, in order to get a quality and insightful interview, make sure that interviewee feel comfortable with you.
And it is not even hard.
When you are conducting Qualitative Research or infact even taking a job interview then always ask them ice-breakers questions like ‘Tell me something about yourself’.
When to ask Open Ended Questions
1. Qualitative Research
Qualitative research process relies on open ended questioning which requires the respondent to elaborate on their perspective and you get feedback in their own words.
Moreover, this also helps the researcher get emotional responses which is usable in understanding why people make the choices they do and what influences their behavior?
Infact it allows you to Explore problems customers encounter. Speaking to Respondents directly help to disclose their experiences, thoughts and feelings without constraint . Furthermore, it would help you to define user problem and make sense out of it.
2. Usability Testing
Usability testing helps the Design and Development Teams to identify problems in the early stages. Identification of Usability Problems in the early stages allows the Design Team to fix the problems at much cheaper cost and in less amount of time without effecting the Launch Schedule.
It has four different stages—screening, pre-test, test, and post-test. This gives the moderator plenty of opportunity to collect important data from participants which includes collection of lot of qualitative information on their background/previous experiences related to the product being tested.
3. In combination with Closed-ended questions
Closed-ended questions ends with conclusions, as it tries to quantify a problem and gives results in numeric form. Use closed- ended questions when you are for example validating or choosing a design based on user satisfaction scores and/or task performance.
And when you want to explore ideas, designs, or get in-depth insights and are not looking for a structured and statistical result.
However, combining the questions together in your research/survey will certainly bring lot of benefits and enrich you with User Feedback. For example, Starting with User Interview and finishing it with a Survey.
4. Job Interviews
Open ended questions are used for conducting job interviews. It includes lot of open ended questions which involves the candidate share their perspectives, experience and infact knowledge in the field they have applied for.
For example, An interview question could be ‘Tell us about yourself’ , ‘How was your past work experience’ , ‘What do you think about the latest technology that has been brought into the Industry’
As a requirement, Open ended questions demand the candidate demonstrate their ability to communicate effectively on lot of aspects which helps the Interview Panel decide on the capability of the Candidate for the Job Position.
How to Ask Open-Ended Questions?
OK! Its story time now.
Lets suppose you went for dinner at this Wonder-full but over priced restaurant on the weekend. Food and ambiance was good but the quantity of Food portion was too small, infact the service was very slow which made you have mixed feelings about spending exorbitant money for dinner .
By the end of the dinner, the restaurant manager comes to you for light chit chat and asks “Did you a have good experience with us?”
Well arent you obliged to answer it with only ‘yes’ or ‘no’. See, this is a closed-ended question since you can only answer “yes” or “no.” And while it’s apparent that the ambiance and food was good, however what about the less quantity of food portion and slow service that irked you. Maybe the manager is just being courteous here and dint really need your viewpoint.
On the other hand, what if the hotel manager asked,”How was your experience of dining with us today” .
Bingo! Weren’t you looking for the right opportunity to discuss your mixed feelings with the hotel manager about dinning in today.
In addition, it just opened up a conversation with both parties discussing how the Dine-in experience could become better. This infact, might make you feel light hearted after sharing the good and bad experience that you just had .
With this lets understand How to ask Open-Ended Questions
1. Stay Curious and ask
Curiosity is the urge to learn and acquire facts and knowledge. Staying curious widens your horizons and opens you up to different opinions, suggestions, possibilities topics.
Most of the breakthrough discoveries and inventions throughout history are the result of curiosity. The intrinsic impulse to explore possibilities and seek improvements is a basic human attribute.
Staying curious widens your horizons and widens your horizons and If you are genuinely curious about what the other person is thinking, open-ended questions will serve you well. Ask a lot of ‘What’ , ‘Why’ , ‘How’ .
Stay away from ‘Do/did’ ‘would’ ‘can’ ‘will’ , they are going to be closed-ended, as in
- Did you like the lunch?
- Would you buy that bag?
- Can we go for shopping?
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