Open-ended questions are a goldmine of rich, qualitative data. But how do you encourage respondents to provide more detailed and thoughtful answers? To help our customers with this common issue, we have enhanced the Open AskiaDesign Control (ADC) with a simple to use prompting/probing feature. The Askia Help Center (and GitHub) has been updated with the latest version of the ADC.
There are options to control the number of prompts and the timing between prompts, as well as controls to determine what triggers the prompt in the first place (e.g., the number of characters typed, special characters used, delays during typing, etc.). You can also choose whether to hide the next button until the probing is complete.
This new capability does not have to use AI – you can simply display a pre-written prompt such as “can you tell me more” and this alone should elicit more details from your respondents. But we believe that incorporating AI into this new functionality will create more relevant and smart probes and garner those deeper insights.
To demonstrate this, we have developed an AI-supported example survey that you are welcome to play with and download. You will see that as you type your answer to an open-ended question, the survey evaluates the text and generates a relevant follow-up prompt to encourage you to elaborate. So, if you say the service was ‘poor,’ the probe might be, “What do you mean by poor service?” to get more specific feedback.
Example
We have been perfecting the timing of these prompts, adding grammar correction, and ensuring the entire experience is smooth and natural for the respondent.
And one of the beauties of this AI functionality is that it will work in non-English languages, with the probes automatically returned in the same language that the respondent uses. Have a try!
The AI used in the example survey is below. It is a remarkably short prompt for the capability that is generated . . .
{
“model”: “openai/gpt-4-turbo”,
“messages”: [
{
“role”: “user”,
“content”: “Given this question ‘!!Q1.LongCaption!!’ and this response
‘??Q1??’ and using the language in the response, provide a short one
sentence to prompt for more detail. Do not provide reasoning or
explanation.”
}
]
}
This ‘smart probing’ is a hot topic in the industry, with many other companies offering features to achieve similar goals. One of the differences with our offer is that this new Open ADC is freely included in the Askia package. And like all our ADCs these are downloadable from Askia’s GitHub pages where you can customize the code for your own purposes.
If you do not have your own private AI provider, then we would be happy to talk to you about using one of the providers that Askia uses – all secure and locked down away from public access. There would be a small usage fee for this service.
The links
- Our example survey – have a play!
- KB article on the new Open ADC Prompting capabilities – this article has the example QEX file that can be downloaded (no API key included).
