/rethink-surveys

name: rethink-surveys
description: Design, critique, or scaffold surveys grounded in Caroline Jarrett, Dillman, and Tourangeau methods. Use when designing a new survey, critiquing an existing one, scoring or clustering responses, or turning questions into an app. Triggers on "survey", "questionnaire", "user research", "customer discovery", "intent capture", "interview script", "lint my survey", "score responses", or "how to ask better questions". When the bundled MCP server is connected, prefer its deterministic tools (`critique_survey`, `get_template`, `design_survey_session`, `score_response`, `cluster_responses`) over manual reasoning. Captures real past behavior over hypotheticals, supports text/voice/AI-interviewer modalities, and includes templates for event organizers, startup founders, and gig-economy workers.

Rethink Surveys

A survey is a conversation with a busy person. Design it like one.

This skill packages a framework for designing, critiquing, and operationalizing surveys that capture real intent — not satisficed checkbox approval. Built from the experience of designing the Proxymate muShanghai survey (which surfaced bugs in ~6 hours of testing that a category-checkbox flow would have hidden for weeks).

Tool affordances (read first)

The bundled `rethink-survey-mcp-server` exposes the skill's deterministic operations as MCP tools, its canonical content as MCP resources, and three framing prompts as slash-prompts. **When available, prefer them over reasoning from memory.**

• **Use MCP tools** when the user wants a *specific deterministic result*: `critique_survey` for lint, `get_template` for a use-case starter, `design_survey_session` for the staged wizard, `score_response` for a single response, `cluster_responses` for a batch.
• **Reason from skill content** when the user wants to *understand*: debate a principle, discuss trade-offs, explain why hypotheticals fail, or do anything not exposed as a tool (e.g. `/turn-into-app` codegen).
• **Fetch resources for grounding** instead of paraphrasing: `rethink://principles`, `rethink://principles/{id}`, `rethink://structure/4-part`, `rethink://question-library/{part}`, `rethink://use-case/{event|founder|gig}`, `rethink://scoring/rubrics`, `rethink://modality/decision-tree`, `rethink://anti-patterns`.
• **Slash-prompts** the user may invoke: `/jarrett-review` (Caroline Jarrett-style review), `/design-coaching` (Socratic design questions), `/mom-test-check` (Rob Fitzpatrick founder-discovery lint).

If the MCP server isn't connected, all of the below still works from this skill's reference files. For details on tool inputs/outputs, fallback rules, and prompt framing, read `references/mcp-integration.md`.

Three operating modes (commands)

1. `/design-survey` — interactive design session: research goal → audience → hypotheses → questions → modality → output schema. Walks the user through 5–8 decisions, each with explicit trade-offs. Reuses templates where appropriate. 2. `/critique-survey` — paste-in review: identify leading questions, double-barreled items, satisficing bait, missing behavioral anchors, demographic-for-demographic noise. Returns a Jarrett-style critique with concrete rewrites. 3. `/turn-into-app` — implementation handoff: takes a finalized question set and produces app scaffold (TanStack Start / Next.js / pure HTML, plus Supabase or simple JSON storage). User picks the stack; this command emits the code.

If the user's intent is unclear, ask: *"Are you (a) starting fresh, (b) reviewing something you already wrote, or (c) ready to ship — meaning: turn an existing question set into an app?"*

The seven design principles (the spine)

Every survey-design decision routes back to one of these. Memorize.

1. **Ask about real past behavior, not hypotheticals.** "Last time X happened, what did you do?" beats "What would you do if X happened?" by an order of magnitude in signal quality. Hypotheticals invite imagined-self answers. 2. **Don't pre-signal the right answer.** "Most people find X useful — would you?" is broken. Replace with neutral framing. 3. **Start broad and open-ended before narrowing.** Open-ended question first → respondent's authentic frame; structured questions after → that frame doesn't get lost in a checkbox. 4. **Separate screening / diagnosis / segmentation.** Screening = "are you the right respondent?" Diagnosis = "what's actually happening?" Segmentation = "what cohort do you fit into?" Mixing them leads to confusing branching and worse data. 5. **No double-barreled questions.** "Was the food fast and cheap?" should be two questions. If you can't decompose without losing the meaning, reword. 6. **Behavioral anchors over Likert scales** when anchors exist. "I'd lose ~30 minutes" is universal; "Somewhat annoying" is whatever the respondent thinks today. 7. **Honest length claim on the landing page.** If you say 60 seconds, deliver 60 seconds. Lying about length is the single fastest way to nuke completion rate. Jarrett's rule: never lie about length.

For the *why* behind each principle (Tourangeau's 4-stage cognitive model, satisficing theory, etc.) read `references/design-principles.md`.

The 4-part hybrid structure

This is the structural skeleton every well-designed survey shares. Use it as a checklist:

| Part | Purpose | Example questions | Failure mode | |------|---------|-------------------|--------------| | **1. Discovery (open-ended)** | Capture authentic frame before constraining it | "What's the one thing you're worried about?" / "Last time X, what did you do?" | Skipping → checkbox-only data with zero novelty | | **2. Diagnostic (targeted, structured)** | Make responses analyzable across users | Severity 1–5 with anchors / Frequency / Workaround text | Skipping → can't cluster or rank | | **3. Intent & prioritization** | Surface willingness, urgency, willingness-to-pay | Top-3 priorities / WTP buckets / "When would help most?" | Skipping → no demand signal, can't