And if you’ve been reading up on some of the Dev Lab projects we’ve spotlighted so far, you can see that they’ve risen to the challenge.

Today we’re going to focus on a couple more exciting new question types developed by our staff.

Mobile Question Types

Remember Matt Null, whose geolocation survey questions we told you about earlier? He’s got another project he’s working on, too: Matt decided to take some of our most popular custom question types and optimize them for mobile devices.

Now, keep in mind that we offer Mobile Survey Themes that detect and display a mobile-optimized theme for mobile users…but sometimes you don’t need to go to that length. Sometimes it’s all about just replacing one or two of your custom question types with a new one that’s better-suited for mobile devices.

And that’s what Matt’s going after. So far, he’s created mobile-optimized versions of two survey question types – the slider question type and a toggle question – that are optimized to run more smoothly for mobile users.

And this is just the beginning. He’s planning a suite of mobile question types, so your mobile users can have access to all the question types that work really well on desktops, but not as smoothly on mobile devices.

Signature Box

Meanwhile, Seth McClaine has been hard at work on his own project: a signature box survey question.

Using Seth’s question type, you’ll be able to request signature confirmation from your survey respondents. It works using HTML5 to capture mouse movements, so anyone can use it. Users can also draw lines, shapes, etc, depending on what you require in your survey. All they need is a mouse (they can also use a pen tablet, or even a mobile device like a phone or an iPad).

We think the signature box will have a wide range of uses, particularly for things like job applications and legal forms (Seth originally got the idea when he was signing a lease on a house – why not put it online and save a stack of paper?). And given that it works so well with mobile devices, it will be an ideal solution for in-person surveys and market research using an iPad or other tablet. We’re looking forward to seeing what you all do with it!

Both of these new question types will be available in the near future – we’ll keep you posted!

Last week we told you about Matt’s Google Maps survey tools, which allow you to embed maps and geolocation-related survey questions and reporting into your surveys. Today, let’s talk about video.

Not one, but two of our developers are working on video-related survey tools during Dev Week 2011. Ranging from video embeds to webcam support, we’re about to have a ton that you can do with video and images.

Webcam Capture

Ryan Hadley, a SurveyGizmo SysAdmin, is working on a video capture survey question type. Using the webcam of your survey-taker’s computer, it allows you to capture still images of people responding to your survey.

The video capture tool works using Flash, since HTML5 does not yet have the ability to call and pull data from a remote webcam. It’s got a simple, easy-to-use interface that allows respondents to see the picture they’ve just taken before submitting it.

We see a lot of interesting (& fun!) uses for this tool – one obvious use is identity verification of the person taking the survey. For job application surveys or similar survey types, it will allow you to attach a face to a name. Or how about a customer service survey – “Show us the face you made after your support call!”

Youtube Video Surveys

Meanwhile, Anthony Hildoer, one of our Sr. PHP Developers, is working on a tool that lets you embed Youtube videos in your surveys.

Except it’s a little bit more than that.

In addition to simply embedding a video, Anthony has made this question type into an interactive experience. You can set start and end parameters, and get feedback on a video clip, in a few different forms:

• Click the spots on the video that stand out
• Add comments to different sections of the video
• Thumbs up/thumbs down responses at different times
• …and more.

Reporting actually winds up being the real challenge with this survey question type, because there’s a ton of data to combine and analyze. The reporting Anthony’s working on will allow users to analyze survey-taker’s feedback based on time, image, and more. If you add a video question to your survey, you’ll be able to tell which points in the video are the most well-received, which are dull, and even get feedback in your survey-takers’ own words regarding the points when they clicked.

Obviously, this question type will allow you to do a huge amount with video in your surveys, ranging from simply displaying a disclaimer video to requesting specific feedback on a video clip.

Awesome! So When Will They Be Released?

We’re looking forward to having these out in the near future. Stay tuned to the SurveyGizmo website and blog for more details.

Today we want to dig in a little more with one of our most popular new custom question types: the slider survey question.

What is a Slider Survey Question?

Slider survey question types are usually used for questions whose answers are on a scale (such as, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate SurveyGizmo’s Survey Tools?” or “How much do you agree with the following statement?”). They offer a different, more usable take on the traditional range question type (in fact, there’s one key difference between a slider question type and a range question type: the slider has an indicated starting point. Users can either choose to keep the initial starting point, or drag the slider to agree with their preferences).

By offering the ability to slide a bar on a visual line, researchers can improve the usability of their surveys, and also receive much more nuanced responses from survey takers.

What do you use them for?

You can use slider survey questions for any number of purposes. Here are a few example survey questions:

• How often do you bike to work?
• What percent of your income do you give to charity?
• How much do you agree with the following statement?
• Where do you fall on the U.S. political spectrum (left, right, in-between)?

As you can see, any time you’re looking to measure the degree of something, a slider may be the right question type for you.

How do I set them up?

If you already have access to the 5-Pack of Custom Survey Questions, you should find them in your account the next time you create a survey.

When setting up your slider questions, there are a number of different options – you can add different units, labels, and even tell the system where you want the slider to start.

What else can I do with sliders?

Our slider survey question type is extremely flexible, giving you the ability to customize it like crazy.

You can use CSS to change the graphics on the slider, doing things like:

• Changing the color of the slider
• Adding a gradient to the overall slider feel
• Changing the slider “handle” from a bar to an image

Need more customization? Our Professional Services team can help you get even more out of slider questions, providing customizations like:

• Vertical sliders
• Adding unique units to your sliders (instead of numeric values)
• Multiple sliders that sum up to 100 automatically (for percentage-based questions)

Let our Pro Services Team know what you’re looking for, and we can make it happen.

We’re excited to have added sliders to our feature list as a custom question type. We hope you get a lot of use out of them!

Don’t have the new question types yet? Check out the Summer 5-Pack Promo before July 5th for access to sliders, card sort, and 3 other new question types!

This week and next week we’ll be spotlighting a few of the projects our developers are working on. Today, let’s talk about Geolocation.

What Is Geolocation, Anyway?

Geolocation is the process of identifying the physical location of an object. It’s a pretty broad subject overall – in this case, though, we’re talking specifically about mapping, both in your survey questions and reporting. Want the ability to add maps to your surveys and reporting? It’s on its way.

Who’s Building It?

Matt Null, one of our senior developers (that’s him on the right), saw an opportunity to make our current geotagging survey options even more robust. It’s one of a couple of add-on projects he’s digging into during Developer’s Lab.

How Does It Work?

Matt is using the Google Maps API to build the new geolocation survey tools – it’s super-extensible, offers the ability to expand offerings do a wide variety of data mapping tasks, and users will be familiar with the interface from moment one.

Great, So What Could I Do With Geolocation in My Surveys?

We’ve already thought up a ton of ideas for how to use this technology in surveys. Here’s a few favorites:

• Drop a Pin. Respondents can drop pins to show you various locations on a map. From a reporting standpoint, you can view a map of all the pins dropped, and even use the location data plotted to calculate various info (distance between two points, location-based demographic data, and more).
• Select from Several Points of Interest. Thanks to an integration with the Google Places API, you can select from millions of local businesses across the world and use them in your maps. For instance, say that a national restaurant chain wants users to select which local restaurants they visit the most. Using the tool, the coffee shop would be able to take the respondent’s address and plot all nearby locations on the map. Respondents could then select the one they visit the most.
• Directions & Incentives. At the end of a survey, you can offer survey takers a coupon and directions to a nearby retail location based on where they live.

As you can see, there are a ton of possibilities for integrating location data into a survey. And from a reporting standpoint, there’s potential to do all sorts of things with the data – from data mapping to pinpoint targeting on a regional and local basis.

Don’t you already have Geotargeting Tools?

Yep, we do! Our Pro, Enterprise and Dedicated customers can already use our current Geotargeting functionality to filter results, set quotas, and serve up different survey content based on respondents’ location.

Matt’s new add-ons, however, focus more on interactive maps and ways to integrate them with your surveys and reporting. We think they’ll be a great complement to enhance our current Geotargeting features.

When Are You Releasing It?

While we don’t have a firm release date down for these geolocation tools yet, we expect that a lot of progress will be made over the next week of Developer’s Lab. We can’t wait to see what else Matt and the rest of the dev team come up with.

**If you’re interested in using geographic data with your surveys, check out our current SurveyGizmo Geotargeting features now!

So without any further ado, here are the most recent tips:

1. The Rating/Likert Scale Question Type allows respondent to rate a question on a scale from 1 to X  

2. By adding pages to a survey instead of having a one page survey you’ll be able to collect partial data every time someone submits a page 

3. The Continuous Sum Question Type allows users to compute a sum in real time based on the given answers

4. Deploy an advertising effectiveness survey and spend your 2011 budget wisely 

5. The Star Rankings Question Type allows respondents to rank items using stars 

If you can’t wait for the weekly update be sure to follow SurveyGizmo on twitter to get the new tip each day. You can find the compiled lists of the Survey Tip of the Day and additional online survey tips and suggestions here at the SurveyGizmo blog as well as links to helpful SurveyGizmo tutorials. If you have any survey tips you would like to share leave us a comment or send us an email, SurveyGizmo is all about feedback.

So without any further ado, here are the most recent tips: 

1. The Radio Button question type allows the respondent to select only one option   

2. Create a quick follow-up survey in advance to gather webinar (or any online event) feedback immediately upon event completion 

3. The Checkbox question type allows the respondent to select more than one option 

4. Plan ahead – developing a survey can be an involved process & several refinements may be needed 

5. The Dropdown Menu question type allows the respondent to select only one answer from a dropdown box 

If you can’t wait for the weekly update be sure to follow SurveyGizmo on twitter to get the new tip each day. You can find the compiled lists of the Survey Tip of the Day and additional online survey tips and suggestions here at the SurveyGizmo blog as well as links to helpful SurveyGizmo tutorials. If you have any survey tips you would like to share leave us a comment or send us an email, SurveyGizmo is all about feedback.

So without any further ado, here are the most recent tips:

1. When creating a checkbox or radio button question use Other|other|other to quickly create an Other with an open textbox option

2. When building a survey results visualization, choose the format that best illustrates your results

3. Set an Auto-Close Date for your survey to automatically close at a specific date & time – very handy for raffles

4. In addition to defining the objectives when creating your survey, consider how you will analyze the response data

5. Use a different color and/or font to make instructions distinct from questions, your survey will be easier to follow

If you can’t wait for the weekly update be sure to follow SurveyGizmo on twitter to get the new tip each day. You can find the compiled lists of the Survey Tip of the Day and additional online survey tips and suggestions here at the SurveyGizmo blog as well as links to helpful SurveyGizmo tutorials. If you have any survey tips you would like to share leave us a comment or send us an email, SurveyGizmo is all about feedback.

We will continue to work hard on improving the tool for you as well as the documentation for filling the needs of you, our customers. Thanks for using SurveyGizmo, and we welcome your feedback at any time (except when we are sleeping, it makes us grumpy)!

After many requests, we have now added one of the coolest CAPTCHA question types out there. A CAPTCHA is an image that is displayed that requires the participant to enter the letters they see in the image in order to continue to the next page of the survey.

We’re using a service called reCAPTCHA, and the best part about it is how it actually works. It not only works as a normal CAPTCHA (safeguarding against computer bots SPAMMING your survey), but it also gives back to the community.

You might ask, “How does something like a CAPTCHA question type give back to the community?” Well, the way it works is it gives the person filling out the CAPTCHA two words to type in.

One of the words has already been verified by the CAPTCHA and the CAPTCHA knows how to spell it correctly. Since it can verify the one word, if a bot were to try and type something in, it would know to kick that bot out.

The other word is from a page within a book that needs to be digitized, but a digital scanner is having a hard time understanding the handwriting and therefore can not turn it into a digital word. So the person filling out the CAPTCHA is actually helping create digitized versions of older books, so we can have them for many years to come. How cool is that?!?!

You can find out more about how the reCAPTCHA works here. If you have any questions about this question type, feel free to post it over on the forum!

The new Image Choice survey question type displays several images and allows your respondents to pick an image of their choice by clicking on it. Here’s what it looks like:

We can see some great uses for this, particularly for those of you who are testing logos and brand identity! And the good news is that it’s available for all accounts, even Free ones.

How to use add this question type to your survey:

All you need to do to use this question type is upload some images to your account (see our earlier post about uploading images into surveys) then go to your survey and click “add question.” The Image Choice option is located with other multiple choice question types (as shown in the image below).

Just click on “Image Choice” and you’ll see a scrolling box with thumbnails of all your images. Choose the ones that you’d like to use for this question and then click the “Add this question” button. There! You now have a working image chooser.

As with all our questions, there are advanced options (like triggering other questions, etc) that can be accessed from the advanced question editor. You can also re-style the question using a little CSS magic.

Want to see a real-life example? From now until Weds, June 13th Big Fish Games (http://www.bigfishgames.com) is running a poll using this new image type. The poll is to determine a background option for their massive online community. Here it is: http://s-xi3q2-9564.sgizmo.com