Follow-up questions vs. questions added after a task

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On this page:

• What are follow-up questions?
• How follow-up questions differ from questions added after a task
• When should I use a follow-up question?
• When should I use questions from the sidebar?
• Common mistakes to avoid
• Follow-up question examples

What are follow-up questions? 

• Follow-up questions are additional questions added to a specific task that appear immediately after the participant completes it.
• They allow you to gather feedback while the participant’s experience is still fresh.
• Follow-up questions are commonly used with tasks such as navigation tasks to understand confidence, difficulty, and intent.

Follow-up questions are:

• Directly tied to a single task
• Focused on understanding the participant’s experience completing that task
• Shown in context, rather than as a separate step
   

How follow-up questions differ from questions added after a task

• Both follow-up questions and questions added after a task collect participant feedback; they serve different purposes.
• Questions added after a task are standalone questions that are not directly linked to a task. 
• Follow-up questions are embedded within the task flow, making them ideal for collecting feedback about that task.

Key differences

Why the difference matters for participants

• Understanding how participants experience individual tasks is critical. 
• Follow-up questions allow you to connect task behavior with participant feedback.

Using follow-up questions helps you:

• Understand why a task felt easy or difficult
• Identify confusion or friction immediately after it occurs
• Collect feedback that directly supports participant experience metrics

If you use a question from the sidebar instead of a follow-up, participants may:

• Struggle to remember details from the task
• Provide more general feedback
• Mix feedback from multiple tasks together
  
   

When should I use a follow-up question? 

• Use a follow-up question when you want feedback that is specific to a single task.
• If the question only makes sense in the context of one task, it should be added as a follow-up.
   

Follow-up questions work best when you want to: 

• Measure task difficulty or confidence
• Ask what participants expected to happen
• Understand why a task was confusing or unclear
• Capture immediate reactions to a navigation or interaction task
   

When should I use a question from the sidebar?

Use questions added after a task when the question applies to the overall experience, not a single task.

Questions added after a task are better for:

• Overall impressions of the product or experience
• Comparing multiple tasks
• Background or demographic questions
• End-of-test reflections
   

Common mistakes to avoid

When using follow-up questions, watch out for these common issues:

• Adding a follow-up question for feedback that isn’t task-specific
• This can interrupt the task flow without adding value.
• Using questions added after a task for task-level feedback
• This often leads to vague or less accurate responses.
• Adding too many follow-up questions to a single task
• This can increase participant fatigue.

Choosing the right question type helps maintain both the participant's experience and data quality.

Follow-up question examples

Example 1: Navigation task
Task: Find where you would update your billing information.
Follow-up question: How confident are you that this is the correct place?

Example 2: Difficulty assessment
Task: Find the return policy on the website.
Follow-up question: How easy or difficult was this task to complete?

Example 3: Expectation-based
Task: Locate the pricing information.
Follow-up question: Is this where you expected to find this information?

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