How to make a Kano questionnaire

This very simple article will help you design your first Kano model survey. If you've got a free account on our platform, you can create and launch your survey as you go through the article!

What are you trying to find out?

Kano surveys tend to fall into two categories:

Testing out a new idea to see what customers think. Maybe you're launching a new product, or you have a bunch of ideas for new features that you want feedback on.
Validating existing features of your product (or a competitor!) to make sure they're working well, and to see which ones you should improve and which ones you could retire.

It's OK to mix up these two goals in the same survey. Ultimately you want to know which Kano category each feature is so you can figure out what to do:

Delighter: sprinkle a few of these in to create an exciting product
Performance: put enough effort into these to beat your competition
Must-have: don't launch without these
Indifferent: don't waste your time building these
Reverse: if you have these already, get rid of them

Think about your situation, and what you're trying to find out about your product, and which areas of the existing product or future ideas you want customer feedback on.

Set up the survey

Create your survey and give it a title to describe what kind of survey it is. This could just be "MyProductName survey", or "Feedback for new product launch", or something like that.

You should also write a description of the survey to provide context. The more context participants have, the better they'll be able to respond to the survey and the better the data you'll get.

Briefly explain what your product is, who it's for, why it's useful. And also explain why you're running the survey (eg. getting feedback for an upcoming release, understanding how well the existing product is performing, or exploring a new concept and so on).

Choosing your features

Now comes the fun part - which features shall we include?

Think about how many features you really need to test. Filling in a Kano survey can be quite taxing for participants, so if you have 20+ features people may give up halfway through. We'd recommend about 10 to start with.

If you're testing new ideas, write a list of the top 10 feature ideas that you think have the best potential, or that you're most unsure about.

If you're analysing your own product's existing features, write a list of features that you need to know about - maybe the oldest (if you'd like to remove them), or the newest (to see how well they're being received).

If you're analysing a competitor's features, choose the ones you're considering copying, or the ones that are significantly different from your product - you might learn that they're a waste of time or an absolute goldmine for your audience.

Describing the features in the survey

Now you can enter the features into the survey. This is where you've got to really make sure that the participants will understand what you mean for the feature. The better they understand and can imagine that feature in the product, the better the data you'll get.

For each feature:

Write a short and clear name for the feature that sums it up.
Then write a more detailed description that includes where the feature would appear in the product, how it would work, what the output would be and what benefits it would bring the user. You could also mention pricing details if that's relevant.
Lastly we'd suggest using images - you can show a wireframe of the feature, or a screenshot of the actual feature if it already exists. These will really bring the survey to life and make it much more engaging, increasing your response rate and getting the absolute clearest results from the participants.

That's it! Your survey now exists. You've got a title and description of the overall product, and a set of features with names, descriptions and images. All you need now is some responses...

Getting responses

Think about who is the right type of person that you want an opinion from. It's no good getting responses from random people that don't represent your target customer, otherwise the data is meaningless.

You can share your survey with your existing users by distributing the survey link to them however suits you best.

You can use our platform to post the survey on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc).

You could even pay for participants from one of the many survey exchange websites that are available. Sometimes these are exchanges, so you complete other people's surveys and then they'll do yours. This is a good way of reaching new people for free.

Lastly you could buy participants, either by going through a survey panel website, or by buying online ads to your survey link.

Good luck!