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I’m designing a mobile survey platform that includes both required and optional questions. It's very simple with a scrolling format, so all of the questions are available at once- I don't think I can change this aspect about it. Currently, we have a progress bar at the top to record progress, but I'm unsure about the best approach for calculating it.

Originally, we had it so progress was only calculated with required questions, but there are some potential issues with this:

  1. Users may be frustrated or think that something is broken when their progress doesn't increase when answering optional questions
  2. Users may be frustrated when the progress is at 100% but there are still several optional questions left

We also want to incentivize users to answer all of the questions even if they aren't required. We could calculate progress with all of the questions, but in my mind, it's doesn't make sense to be able to submit the survey when progress is at 50%.

Regardless, here are all of the options I'm considering:

  1. Progress Based on Required Questions Only: Calculate progress based only on the required questions (the original idea).
  2. Progress Based on All Questions: Calculate progress based on the total number of questions (both required and optional).
  3. Hybrid Approach: Show progress based on required questions and provide a separate indicator of the total number of questions ("5 out of 10 questions answered" or having the progress bar start at the percentage of optional questions).

I would love some input on my dilemma!

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  • Why trying so hard to make a progress bar useful. Maybe it just isn’t? They are useful when there is no other way to see the progression, but since everything is on one page, maybe the scrollbar already gives enough sense of progression.
    – jazZRo
    Commented Sep 13 at 20:09
  • My boss likes having the progress bar. Though I can definitely try pushing to not have one.
    – sillyoon
    Commented Sep 14 at 2:02
  • You should push on that, having a double progress bar would impact on the frustration of your users.
    – Emmanuel Cuevas
    Commented Sep 18 at 22:32

2 Answers 2

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What about a Double Progress Bar as described in this answer:

One progress bar represents the overall progress and the other represents the current task's progress.

In the case of the question, there would be a bar for required questions answered and another only for those answered from the optional ones.

enter image description here

Or a bar for the total number of questions answered and a summary bars for the required and the optionals.

enter image description here

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  • The current layout consists of a header (with the company logo and progress bar) and the survey below in a rounded container. Kind of like a card. What I’m worried about with this idea is cluttering the interface. It would be totally fine on desktop, but it’s been emphasized to optimize for mobile as well. But I will definitely bring this up, because I don’t really see any other way around it.
    – sillyoon
    Commented Sep 14 at 21:20
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One solution for optional questions is to offer a "no answer" selection. So by default optional questions have two options such as "No answer[default state]/Add my answer".

That would mean you can count optional questions even if the person doesn't want to add a custom answer and thus simplifying the progress calculation.

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