A description of True North's trade-off and conjoint analysis survey toolset, Socrates. Socrates enables marketing departments to create and distribute trade-off surveys via the internet.

1. Socrates :
Our trade-off survey toolset
An introduction and example screens

2. Trade-off surveys
• Trade-off surveys differ from standard surveys in that they ask
participants to choose between various product features rather than
grade individual features.
• They can offer a more complete picture of what is truly important to
a consumer or employee.
• They are also the best way to measure factors like price sensitivity
• There are various types of trade-off surveys:
– Discrete choice
• Participants are presented with attributes choices packaged together and choose their preference or
none of the above.
– Non-packaged
• Participants are presented with all the attribute choices and asked to rate them and assign importance
– Conjoint
• Attributes are grouped in to packages and then ranked or rated
• There are variants of conjoint (e.g. pairwise, partial, full profile) that either limit the number of choices
in each package, or limit the combination of attributes that are permitted.
• However, trade-off surveys are often perceived as complex to
perform and this could explain why they are less commonly used.

3. What is Socrates?
• Socrates is a survey toolset that allows rich-featured
trade-off surveys to be created, managed, delivered and
completed over the internet.
• Socrates was created with two central principles¹:
– Pragmatism
• We have implemented the features that we believe will bring the
greatest benefit soonest
– Ease of use
• Our intention was to create a toolset that will remove barriers to
constructing and participating in trade-off surveys.
• Socrates is available to be used without installation and
on a fixed-cost or a pay-as-you-use basis.
¹ more on how these principles have informed our design below

4. Functional view (simplified)
FOUR PROCESS STEPS
DEFINTION
• The design, and creation of a
survey.
• This will be undertaken by skilled
marketing / customer insight
strategists
COLLECTION
• This is an end-user performing the
survey and entering their choices
• Collection can be remote or guided
by the analyst
ANALYSIS
• Real-time monitoring of the
survey’s progress
• Analysis of the final results and
rankings
REPORTING
The diagram above outlines the four key areas in an online survey • Presentation of the results of the
toolset and breaks them down in to smaller functional components. analysis to the customer
• These can be delivered online or
Not all components are shown, and this diagram is oriented through traditional means (e,g.
towards trade-off surveys rather than all surveys in general. Slideshows etc)

5. Socrates 2.1 – Functional view
OUR DESIGN RATIONALE
• We have implemented the
functions that will make
the biggest difference to
the marketing strategist
and customer
• We have left the specialist
analytical components to
existing tools, preferring to
allow data to be imported
and exported integrate in
an open way
• We have focused on
areas that we can apply
The orange-bordered boxes highlight the features Socrates 2.1 our skills in usability and
implement. implementation to create a
better toolset.
Those with a grey border are on our planned product roadmap.
Those shaded in grey are features we plan either not to
implement, or integrate other solutions.

6. Socrates – Design Principles
PRAGMATIC APPROACH EASE OF USE
• We focus on the functions that allow • We believe that marketing strategy
trade-off surveys to be created, departments will have specialists
managed, and performed. capable of designing meaningful trade-
• There are many software solutions off surveys
already ideally suited to perform the • Our goal was to ensure these
more complex features, especially specialists had clear and intuitive tools
around statistical analysis to design and manage the surveys.
• We enabled our solution to easily • Socrates guides both the designer and
integrate with these rather than participant through simple steps
replicate features they do better. enhancing their confidence in the tool
• We wanted to remove the cost of and the process.
installation from our product and also • Our experience in Usability and online
get great performance and widest customer feedback shows that end-
access, so we chose to implement on users will abandon surveys they feel
the internet. are difficult to use
• We also wanted our solution to be • We have spent time usability and
secure and scalable so we chose accessibility testing our applications
Google’s hosting platform rather than with real users in order to remove
attempt to implement ourselves. barriers to participation.

7. Our experience with online surveys
• Major multinational telecommunications corporation
– We provide hosted online customer satisfaction surveys for one of the best
known names in mobile technology
– This year we’ve run 12 surveys in 8 countries with over 60,000 invitees
• 360-degree survey for large investment Bank
– We’ve previously created a 360-degree survey tool for a large Investment Bank
– We hosted the survey which was a major factor in the yearly compensation
round for over 15,000 employees
• Online survey tools for direct marketing organisation
– We created a custom survey tool that enabled a Direct Marketing organisation to
better connect with their customers.
• Architecture and design advice to market research company
– We provided software architecture and design advice to a market research
company seeking to create a new survey product suite.
– Our recommendations ensured their system could perform and scale to support
their existing and future business needs and also provided performance
improvements of several orders of magnitude.

8. The Socrates survey process
A walkthrough with screenshots

9. Terminology used in Socrates
Before the walkthrough this is the terminology we use
• Designer
– A marketing strategist who devises the survey
• Participant
– An end-user (usually a customer or employee) who performs the survey
• Attribute
– A feature of a product or service (e.g. Price, Free minutes, Basic salary, Holidays)
• Package
– A group of attributes collected together, each with a value assigned (e.g. Price=£39.99; Free
minutes=300)
• Iteration (Page)
– A set of packages presented to the participant for ranking or rating
• Ranking
– Where packages are selected in order
• Rating
– Where packages are given a score either out of a fixed amount (e.g. Score out of 10) or
where a certain number of points is shared between the packages.

10. The survey process – Designer perspective

11. Designer: Creating a new survey
• The designer creates a
new survey from the
dashboard
• They then can enter
the basic details for the
survey
– Its name
– A description
– The text of the email that
will be sent to the
participant when inviting
them
– The welcome text that
will greet the participant
when they follow the link
to their survey page
– ...
• Once finished the
survey is stored and
ready to add attributes

12. Designer: Defining attributes
• Attributes are the basis
of any survey
• Here the designer is
able to add, view, and
edit the attributes in
place
• The screen opposite
shows three existing
attributes and the
ability to add more
• Attributes have a
name, description, and
optionally units (e.g.
GBP, minutes, etc)

13. Designer: Defining packages
• Once the set of
attributes is created the
Designer can group
them together in to
packages
• The attributes are
made in to columns
and the designer sets
values for them in the
particular package.
• Most importantly the
designer is able to see
and change the values
that she/he has added
making it easy to
ensure the right
package combinations
are there.

14. Designer: Defining pages
• Once the packages have
been created, they can be
grouped together in to
“pages”
• These are iterations in the
surveys where the
participant will be
presented with a number
of packages to choose
between.
• The upper table shows the
pages already defined and
the packages therein
• Highlighted items show
what has just been
changed
• The lower portion allows
the designer to drag and
drop packages in to the
workspace (grey) to create
a new page or edit another

15. Designer: Launching surveys
• Once the survey has been
defined, and participants
added it is ready to be
launched
• Surveys are launched via
the dashboard – along
with any other actions that
can be performed (close,
archive, create new,
delete)
• The dashboard has a
summary of alerts relevant
to the designer as well as
real-time monitoring of
survey take-up.
• Once a survey is
launched, Socrates will
email the participants and
provide them with a
unique link to their
personalised survey pages

16. The survey process – Participant perspective

17. Participant: Welcome
• The participant will
have a unique URL to
their survey page in
their personalised
email.
• When they follow this
URL they will see a
welcome page.
• This can contain a
personalised greeting
(if set up by the
designer) and
instructions on how to
complete.
• The participant presses
“Start” to begin the
survey.

18. Participant: Ranking packages
• Each of the pages in
the survey correspond
to a page set up by the
designer
• In the example the
participant is on the
first (of three) pages.
• This is indicated by the
highlighted progress
bar
• The participant drags
and drops the package
boxes in order to rank
them
• The attributes and their
values are shown in
each box

19. Participant: Rating packages
• This example shows
an alternative where
the designer has asked
the participant to rate
the packages
• This rating is from a
total allocation of 20
points
• The participant has
allocated 8 points to
Package A and 2 to
Package B
• The boxes at the foot
of the screen clearly
show how many more
points there are to
allocate.

20. Technical Overview: A cloud-based solution hosted on
Google’s infrastructure
FEATURES
• No installation needed
– Application is ready to
use
• Secure
– Survey data is protected
per client
• Highly scalable
– Can grow to the needs of
the survey. From 1
participant to 1000s
• Pay for what you use
– Cloud-based and
charged on usage
• Accessible through
multiple devices
– Browser
– Smartphone
• Global
– Google’s infrastructure
means good
performance worldwide

21. Find out more
• Read about zico our standard online survey tool
– http://truenorth.gb.com/products/zico
• Latest news about Socrates on its product page
– http://truenorth.gb.com/products/socrates
• Contact us about using Socrates
– Sid Haniff, sid@truenorth.gb.com, 07968 277 116
– Mark Thomsit, mark@truenorth.gb.com, 07801 480 820