Here are some of the best questions for a user survey about product usability, plus tips for crafting them. If you want to generate a tailored survey in seconds, you can build it with Specific—it’s fast and deeply customizable.
Best open-ended questions for user survey about product usability
Open-ended questions let users express themselves in their own words, revealing needs and frustrations you might miss with rigid choices. They’re especially powerful when you want honest, in-depth feedback, even though their nonresponse rate can be higher—Pew Research found open-ended survey questions often had skipped rates as high as 18–50%[1]. Still, the qualitative gold from these responses is worth it, especially with conversational formats. Here are 10 strong open-ended questions for your product usability survey:
What was your first impression when you started using our product?
Describe a recent experience where you struggled to accomplish something in our product.
Is there any feature or process that felt confusing or unintuitive?
Can you tell us about a time when our product made your work easier?
If you could change one thing about our product, what would it be?
Were there any moments where you got stuck or needed help? What happened?
Which features do you use most often, and why?
How would you describe the overall flow from start to finish in our product?
Is anything missing that would make you more likely to recommend our product?
How does our product compare to others you’ve tried?
Many users are eager to share—one PubMed study found that 76% of patients left at least one thoughtful comment when prompted, so the opportunity for deep feedback is real[2].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for user survey about product usability
Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when you need to quantify responses or lower the effort for users. They’re ideal for quickly spotting trends or getting a broad directional sense before diving deeper. Sometimes, picking from a few focused options nudges users to respond when open text might feel like too much work. Start with these three practical examples for your survey:
Question: How easy is it to accomplish your main tasks in our product?
Very easy
Somewhat easy
Neutral
Somewhat difficult
Very difficult
Question: Which area of our product causes you the most frustration?
Navigation/menu
Speed/performance
Features not working as expected
Finding help/support
Other
Question: Overall, how intuitive do you find our product interface?
Extremely intuitive
Somewhat intuitive
Neutral
Somewhat confusing
Extremely confusing
When to follow up with "why?" Always trigger a follow-up "why" when you want to understand the reasoning behind a particular answer—especially for negative or neutral choices. For instance, if someone answers "Somewhat difficult" to ease of use, a follow-up like “Can you tell us more about what made it difficult for you?” turns a generic response into an actionable insight.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Add "Other" when your list can’t possibly cover every user situation. This opens the door for surprising feedback you didn’t anticipate, and targeted follow-ups then let you explore those unexpected issues in depth.
Should you include a net promoter score (NPS) question?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a single, proven question that captures user loyalty and product satisfaction: “How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend or colleague?” Respondents answer on a 0–10 scale, giving you a very benchmarkable measure. NPS is especially valuable in product usability surveys because it reflects not just satisfaction, but how much your product solves real user problems in a way worth sharing. It also pairs perfectly with follow-up questions about “why” they gave that rating. Want to see how this works? Try building an NPS survey for user product usability here.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where the real discovery happens. They clarify and probe, much like a skilled human interviewer—and with Specific’s AI-powered surveys, this happens automatically in real time. That means you capture every nuance, without following up days later by email. Read more in our guide to automated follow-up questions.
User: "I got lost when updating my profile."
AI follow-up: "Could you walk us through what was confusing, or which step tripped you up?"
How many followups to ask? Two or three targeted follow-ups are usually plenty—enough to clarify or explore without causing fatigue. If you already have the detail you need, it’s smart to skip further probing. Specific lets you control this, keeping the conversation both deep and efficient.
This makes it a conversational survey—not just a static questionnaire. Respondents feel heard, and their answers are richer.
Qualitative insights, AI analysis, theme extraction: Even with lots of unstructured open-ended and followup responses, AI tools like those in Specific make analysis easy—see our guide on analyzing user survey responses with AI.
These smart automated follow-ups are a new concept. Try generating a survey yourself to experience just how effective conversational interviews can be.
How to prompt GPT for product usability survey questions
Want to use ChatGPT or another AI to brainstorm survey questions? Here’s a rapid-fire way to get powerful results:
Start by asking:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for user survey about product usability.
AI generates better questions when you give context—tell it your goal, the kind of users, and the product type. For example:
We launched a new SaaS onboarding flow for first-time users. Our goal is to discover pain points as they complete main setup tasks. Suggest 10 open-ended survey questions to uncover struggles, confusion, or delight in their journey.
Once you have a good set of questions, organize them:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Narrow the focus further by prompting:
Generate 10 questions for the categories “Navigation” and “Feature Discoverability.”
This style of iterative prompting will help you dig much deeper—and is built right into Specific’s AI survey generator, if you want a shortcut.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey is a new way to gather usability feedback. Instead of long, rigid forms, users interact in a chat-like exchange—with dynamic follow-ups and a personable tone. This not only improves the survey experience, it drives richer, more genuine responses: over half of conversational survey responses are more than 100 words, compared to just 5% in traditional open-ended surveys[3].
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated (Conversational) |
|---|---|
Usually takes hours to brainstorm and write questions | Builds a tailored survey from prompts in seconds |
Static, pre-set; hard to adjust as data comes in | Adapts with dynamic follow-ups for richer data |
Analysis of open-ends: slow, labor-intensive | AI instantly summarizes, extracts themes, chats about results |
Feels like work for users; prone to abandonment | Feels interactive, engaging, and quick to complete |
Why use AI for user surveys? You get smarter, deeper, more contextual insights with less effort. AI survey examples reveal how conversational interviews collect context you’d rarely get in a one-shot form. The time savings are huge and analysis is nearly instant. If you want to see for yourself, check out our article on how to create a conversational product usability survey.
Specific is built for best-in-class conversational surveys, making giving—and receiving—feedback simple, natural, and a pleasure for both user and product teams.
See this product usability survey example now
Ready for richer feedback? See how Specific turns product usability interviews into engaging conversations that users love and teams learn from. Create your own survey and experience smarter, faster research today.