Mobile Survey Software

• Apple: since its release, the iPhone has set the bar for smartphone usability; its slightly thinner sibling, the iPod touch, is the definition of a sleek, modern Personal Digital Assistant (PDA); and the forthcoming iPad is one of the most anticipated products of all time. Simply put, Apple has a lot of swagger and momentum in the mobile space. But Apple runs a very closed environment that people either love or hate, and this creates opportunities for other more open platforms to shine. Also, while Apple has done very well in the consumer space, it has made fewer inroads into the enterprise, where RIM and Microsoft thrive.

• Research in Motion (RIM): the BlackBerry is one of the most impressive brands of our time. While RIM is often considered less marketing savvy than Apple, I would suggest that their marketing tactics have been every bit as effective as Apple's -- just different. Despite a barrage of criticism about the sexiness and usability of their products, RIM continues to grow and profit at an astounding rate. I personally questioned the usability of BlackBerry products compared to more elegant competitors like iPhone and Android, but I have come to appreciate them as solid, enterprise-worthy devices, and to see the company as a very savvy player in the mobile space. RIM has developed very deep roots with both wireless carriers and enterprise IT departments, as well as a powerful brand that is almost synonymous with thumb-typing on a mobile phone.

• Nokia: the Nokia/Symbian world is complicated. Having personally handled dozens of Nokia phones, I would summarize that their strength is in their diversity of offerings to multiple levels of the marketplace. This is also their weakness. With countless products, three current operating systems, and a solid-but-aging feel on much of their hardware, it is hard to believe that Nokia still outsells its nearest smartphone competitor at more than a 2-to-1 ratio. But while they are not as strong in North America, Nokia is a major player in Europe and downright dominant in many other regions of the world. It is hard to discount a company that produces over 1 million phones per day (yes, you read that correctly). With the incredible depth of carrier relationships and distribution channels which they have developed, Nokia's challenge now is to fill those channels with products that compete with their ever-growing range of competitors.

• Google: Google has garnered a lot of attention since announcing the open-source (and freely available) Android platform in 2007. By providing a smartphone operating system that is free and extensible, Android has garnered support from dozens of handset manufacturers including major players like Motorola and HTC. In contrast to Apple, Google's greatest strength (and weakness) is its openness. I am personally very impressed with most of the Android devices I have used, and as a consumer I have great optimism that Android will be a force to be reckoned with in mobile technology. But I also recognize that openness can lead to fragmentation, and I've heard a lot of grumbling from developers about the lack of standards on Android devices. As Microsoft learned when it allowed device manufacturers and wireless carriers to customize experiences based on its Windows Mobile platforms, I believe that the many emerging flavours of Android devices will make it difficult for developers to target. That said, I believe that Google's ability to integrate the mobile experience with all of their other web-based services will make it a formidable player in the mobile space, and I believe the fragmentation issue can be overcome as Google and other Android licensees learn to coexist.

• Windows Mobile: I recently spoke about the forthcoming Windows 7 Phone Series, so I won't repeat myself on the details. Suffice to say that I think Microsoft has re-entered the mobile race, and demonstrated that they are not planning to turn away from this increasingly important battlefield. Microsoft has learned a lot of lessons over more than a decade in mobile computing, and I believe their enterprise roots will serve them well as they re-assert themselves with a brand new mobile platform. What remains to be seen is whether Microsoft can garner enough consumer interest to unseat competitors in the mass market, or whether it will continue to play a more niche role as an enterprise solution.

• Mobile web browsers are improving in capability and usability, and are finally emerging as a lowest-common-denominator approach to mobile engagement. If you need to reach a lot of people in a relatively shallow way, e.g. to conduct a brief mobile survey about a product or experience, then a mobile browser may well be the way to go. Although mobile browsers are still fragmented, the emergence of mobile web technologies such as HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS and Adobe Flash are making it more viable to reach a wide mobile audience.

• Downloadable applications provide a richer user experience for applications such as diary studies and mobile panels, but they are typically harder to deploy to a broad range of users. Also dovetailing with Sean's recent post about quality over quantity, I would argue that in many cases a more select audience that is highly engaged is more valuable than a broad audience that is minimally engaged. It is these cases -- for example digital ethnography with alarms to trigger highly contextual questions at random times -- where mobile apps really shine.

Here are the last two tips for this series to help you build quick and clean survey questionnaires in mobile survey software.

Include few or no hard coded strings in scripting

In general, scripting should be as compact and clean as possible, and you should avoid putting literal strings in the script.  This is for two reasons:

Literal strings make it extremely cumbersome to run a multilingual survey questionnaires as translations need to be hard-coded as well. Note that scripting is never included in translation files, so any survey translations sent to translators from Entryware will not include these strings

Scripts need to be parsed on each client every time they are run. That means if you include an especially long string in your scripting, the mobile devices will need to parse over it character-by-character. With sufficient strings in scripting, this can result in a noticeable slowdown in performance.

It is often safer and more elegant to use dummy categorical type of questions for these literal strings and text piping to accommodate scripted strings.

Simplify conditions used in multiple questions by using flag variables

Sometimes you have a few “classes” of respondent which are asked very specific questions.  Rather than create multiple copies of projects or questions, common sense tells you to use scripting in the prequestion of relevant questions to skip past if the respondent doesn’t need to answer the question. This is exactly the correct way to program the survey, but there are shortcuts you can use to reduce large numbers of conditional statements in multiple questions by using flag variables to simplify conditions.

A flag variable, in its simplest form, is a variable you define to have one value until some condition is true, in which case you change the variable's value.  It is a variable you can use to control the flow of a function or statement, allowing you to check for certain conditions while your function progresses. The idea is to use the flag variable mainly as a memory of other conditions which the function checks earlier in its execution.

It is easy to see how the amount of scripted logic can snowball when you have multiple preconditions or you need to combine the original logic with additional constraints. By creating a temporary “flag” variable, small bits of logic can be stored and frequently reused.  The best place for this is in the postquestion of the last question that affects the logic. The scripting for each of the relevant questions is, obviously, much simpler.

Take care in using flag variables. They can quickly become overly complex if you create too many or don’t use clear names.  
 
 

In the world of mobile surveys there is a high demand for a rugged device that can withstand the many changing conditions and environments surveys are conducted in. Finding that perfect device at the right price point is no easy task. Add in the fact that it must have a full keyboard be lightweight and provide a touch screen narrows your choices down even more.

Well just so happened that a client was on the hunt for such a device. At first I was not very optimistic this devices existed, but after some Googling and talking with my colleagues I found just the device. The CTL 2GO Convertible Classmate PC!

It’s a touchscreen Netbook with Intel’s latest Atom processor and comes with two modes, tablet mode and traditional laptop mode. Built with carrying handle that is lightweight and a durable construction with a rugged outer case. Certified drop test of 50cm and a Water-resistant keyboard allowing for maximum protection. All of this for under $600 U.S. with a 6 cell battery and Windows XP.

If you are looking for a low cost tablet pc that can take a beating for your survey needs look no further!

Here are two more tips to help you build quick and clean survey questionnaires in mobile survey software.

Use sections to group related questions

Sections are most commonly used to start and end question groups where you want to use rostering or looping, randomization, or rotation (Enterprise-only).  Since sections are never displayed to the user, you can use them sparingly to help you organize groups of questions in your project. 

Avoid using “goto this” on prequestion

The command “goto this” is used to reference the current question.  Using “goto this” is easier and more reusable than referring to an explicit question name. It forces the current question to be reloaded.  This is useful when you are doing additional validation in postquestion scripting. 

You can also use this command in a prequestion script, BUT you must be extremely careful!  If you allow for a scenario where the prequestion goto this always fires, you will send Entryware Mobile into an infinite loop and lock up the device! 
 
More tips next time!

Creating a survey questionnaire in Entryware is easy.  However, it can be incredibly frustrating.  The difference is in how you design your survey questionnaire.  Here are two tips to help you build quick and clean survey questionnaires in mobile survey software.  This will give Entryware programmers a feel of how to use Entryware to quickly build clean survey questionnaires.


Use meaningful, unambiguous question and response names and aliases

If you are working off a prepared script (for example, a provided Word document), it only makes sense to use the same question names as the source document. This aids in communicating changes or problem areas in the survey (be it in the source document or the Entryware project). 

Avoid using especially long or unhelpful question and alias names. Q1, Q2, Q3 are short and to the point, but if you arbitrarily chose these names you will have trouble finding your gender question if you forgot it was called Q94. Likewise, overly wordy names are problematic because they take up a great deal of screen space in both the question list and the script editor.

if  ((Q51_Age.Person1 < 21 ) | ( Q51_Age.Person1 > 40 ) ) & ( Q50_Gender = Male ) )

message “The first person cannot be a male between the ages of 21 and 40”

endif

This example provides a blend of readability and conciseness. The scripting can be read and understood by any reader even if the reader didn’t write the script to begin with. It isn’t so wordy that it scrolls far off the screen.

Use project-level question properties when appropriate

There are many question properties that you want to set for the entire survey questionnaire (e.g. auto advance, minimum responses, turning on or off the tool bar). It is possible to select all of the questions in the survey questionnaire and set them using the Question Properties frame, however this becomes clumsy to set (and change) in very large surveys and opens the very real risk that questions added at the last minute will not have the properties the rest of the survey questionnaire does. 

Project level settings can be done in OnStart or on the prequestion of first the question. Always remember, project level settings override the question properties widow and question level settings script override project level settings.

More tips next time!

• Sliding scale questions
• Photo capture on Palm OS, Windows and Windows Mobile
• Encrypted and compressed data transfer
• SPSS v13+ export
• Improved user-selectable missing
• Ability to launch external Windows Mobile applications
• Improved CSS formatting on Entryware Mobile for Windows
• Improved string handling in scripting
• Additional African language support
• Support for Palm Pre devices
• 5-way navigation
• Improved searching capabilities in Data View Report
• Project automation to auto-start questionnaires
• Improved graphics quality including hi-res Windows Mobile screens
• Diary survey engine for Windows Mobile
• Printing capability for Bluetooth printers
• Ability to convert Multiple Response questions to a series of Single Response questions
• Various other small enhancements

• Palm OS / Garnet OS
• Windows Mobile
• webOS (Palm Pre)

• Windows 98/XP/Vista

1. Mobile devices are mobile - they move.  And because they move, the connection signal varies in strength, leading to lost or dropped connections, not to mention dead zones.    
   
2. Slow response time.  Wide area wireless connections suffer from high "latency" - the time it takes the device to send or receive data to the internet.  This does not include any delays in getting the data through the Internet, processed by the server and returned to the device.  It does not matter if the amount of data is 1 byte or 1MB; radio latency is the same regardless.  

1. Layout: applications can provide consistent look and feel across many devices.
    
2. Speed: Extremely responsive - no navigation delay.
    
3. Cost: Only uses internet connection when necessary.
    
4. Cost/Battery: Does not depend on having an internet connection to function.