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Tips to design neat and engaging projects

Updated at 2021-01-28 13:42:29 UTC

The fun of Protobi is to easily explore survey responses even when the surveys themselves were complex to design and field.  Whether your project is to share with your end clients or for your team only, here are a few tips to design views that are easy to navigate and easy on the eyes.

Example Pharma Survey project showing the Screener section with survey eligibility content, medical-themed imagery, embedded video player, and navigation tabs including Screener, Report, Banners, and multiple numbered sections.

Add an introduction

Professional surveys can collect a lot of data.  When a client or colleague first opens the project, it can be reassuring to see a simple introduction providing context, like what the survey is about, who was invited, and how it's organized.

You can include text and graphic elements for visual interest and flow.  These can include text, images, links to PDF or PowerPoint reports, or video.  See  our tutorial "Add a project intro:

Intro section showing 'Example Pharma Survey' title with medical imagery featuring hexagonal icons for healthcare, summary text describing a healthcare professional survey, and sample information indicating 100 physicians.

Group elements to organize the view

Projects with elements organized into groups are neat and easy to navigate. 

  • Autogroup to create an initial question order. Batteries of questions will be grouped together. 
  • Group related questions into sections. 
  • Add a tab to group banner variables. 
  • Use the chart type “tabs” for groups that exceed 1-2 screens in vertical length.
Section 3 titled 'Future prescribing' displaying questions Q14-Q17 as cards with horizontal bar charts showing comparisons for product features, gamma antagonist prescribing patterns, and environmental considerations.

Related tutorials: Autogroup How to group elements Add a banner tab Change chart type to tabs

Compact grids and checkboxes

Batteries of questions with identical response items can often summarized by a "compact" value. 

This works for:

  • Select-all-that-apply questions
  • Scale questions
  • Ranking questions
Question Q8 displaying 'What are the primary strength(s) of the device you just reviewed? Compact to Yes' with a horizontal bar chart showing percentages for various device features including Extended release (79%), Dose counter (79%), Simple packet replacement (70%), Easy to use daily (68%), and others.

Related tutorials: Compact to... Compact set of questions

Color elements to highlight organization

Set element colors on groups to created a color-coded organization. All questions within the group will inherit the parent element’s icon color. 

Navigation sidebar displaying hierarchical project structure with main sections (Screener for Survey eligibility, Report with subsections S1, Q7 coded, Q4 charts, Word clouds, Banners, Section 1 for Current prescribing, Section 2 for Product profile, Section 3 for Future prescribing, Pricing, Training, Patient treatment, Verbatims, Quality checks, and Fields).

Related tutorials: Set element color

Customize the color theme to your firm or client

Add your brand colors as a custom color scheme. Here we have Slack’s color palette as an example.

Conceptual image of an organized binder system with multiple colored sections (purple, yellow, orange, teal) featuring ring binders, tab dividers, and visible content pages, representing structured document organization.

Apply the custom colors to charts. They’re selectable from the colors dialog along with Protobi’s default colors.

Colors: Screener dialog displaying options to choose icon color (showing palette of blue, yellow, orange, purple, and teal squares) and chart color scheme options (Example-brand-colors, default, ascending, descending) with corresponding color palette previews, plus Cancel and Ok buttons. Question Q13 displaying 'Now, thinking about the current Product B device, please can you rate the new extended release device on the following features? Using a 7-point scale' with subtitle 'Compact to Top 2 Box'. Shows horizontal stacked bar chart with colored segments for ratings (-3 is significantly worse, 0 is the same, +3 is significantly better) across features: Ease of daily use (25%), Ease of packet and pri... (24%), Size (24%), Wastage (42%), and Dose counter (54%).

Related tutorials: Colors Add global color schemes Set chart colors

Label elements clearly

Avoid confusion by using clear labels on each element.

  1. Display keys are presentable question labels 
  2. Headlines draw a conclusion 
  3. Title text is the survey question 
  4. Footnotes show additional details
Three-panel summary display with labeled sections a, b, c, and d. Panel a shows section ID 'Se', panel b displays summary 'Majority of physicians mange 10-50 patients', panel c contains full question 'How many patients do you manage per month with Condition Y?' with horizontal bar chart showing distribution (1% for 5 to 9, 36% for 10 to 24, 32% for 25 to 49, 19% for 50 to 99, 11% for 100 to 249, 1% for 250 to 499, Mean 43.7, N 100), and panel d shows termination logic '[TERMINATE IF <5]'.

Related tutorials: How to change labels on elements

Round numeric values into custom ranges

Most questions that ask for numeric values should be rounded into ranges. Ranges are useful for analysis, and visually neater and more compact.

Question Q1 with gray circle icon showing response distribution for number of Condition X patients receiving gamma antagonist treatment. Chart displays ranges: ≤ 0 (5%), 1 to 10 (68% with longest bar), 11 to 25 (19%), 26 to 50 (5%), 51 to 100 (3%), with Mean 11.1 and N 100.

Related tutorials: Round numeric values into ranges

Hide missing or skipped values

Hide missing values that are not relevant to your analysis.

S2 is shown to Practice nurses only. When [NA] values are hidden, only responses from nurses are shown (N = 40).

Question S2 with teal circle icon displaying nurse grade distribution with bars showing Equivalent band 7+ at 60% (longest bar), Equivalent band 6 at 35%, Equivalent band 5 at 5%, Equivalent band 4 or below at 0%, sample size N=40, and conditional logic note at bottom stating 'Skipped if S1 is not 'Practice Nurse''.

When [NA] is showing, the full survey population is shown, with 60% of values skipped.

Question S2 displaying nurse grade distribution including non-applicable responses: [NA] showing 60% (those who skipped), Equivalent band 7+ at 24%, Equivalent band 6 at 14%, Equivalent band 5 at 2%, Equivalent band 4 or below at 0%, total N=100, with skip logic note 'Skipped if S1 is not 'Practice Nurse''.

Related tutorials: Blank, skipped, and missing values Edit properties: "showMissing"

Clone elements to create different views

Clone elements to create independent copies. 

Make changes to the clone, and keep the original element as is.

Question labeled 'state' displaying 'State from FIPS code' with a Filter text box and Apply button. Vertical bar chart shows state-by-state frequency distribution with Value and Freq columns, listing California with highest frequency (177), followed by Texas (104), New York (89), Florida (82), Pennsylvania (58), Ohio (54), Georgia (48), North Carolina (48), Virginia (46), and Illinois (45).

This is useful when you want to display a question in a different chart type, calculate a question as a ratio, recode values, etc.

Question 'state_cloud' displaying word cloud of US states from FIPS code data. State names are sized proportionally to their frequency: California appears largest in gray, followed by New York and Texas in orange/yellow, Florida in teal, and smaller states like North Carolina, Washington, Tennessee, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Massachusetts, and others in various colors and smaller sizes.

Related tutorials: Clone elements

Customize element chart type

When a survey is first imported, every question is displayed as Protobi's default chart type. To create more interesting views, use different chart types.

Three visualization types: Left - Pie chart titled 'S1 Sample overview' showing specialty distribution (60% General Practitioner in green, 40% Practice Nurse in orange). Center - Stacked bar chart 'Q7 coded by Specialty' showing initial device thoughts with segments for categories like #COST EFFECTIVE (8%), #OTHER (5%), #SIMILAR (10%), #NOT EASY (28%), #ECO-FRIENDLY (20%), #DOSE INDICATOR (8%), #GOOD (28%), #EASY TO USE (48%) split between General Practitioner and Practice Nurse. Right - Cumulative line chart 'Pricing' showing four curves (Too affordable not to use, Great value, Expensive but worth it, Prohibitive) from 100% to 0% across price points 2000-5000.

Related tutorials: Chart types

Use consistent widths for elements

Elements initially have the same width.

 If you resize an element, use a consistent width for all the elements on the page. This will give your project a uniform look.

Section 1 titled 'Current prescribing' displaying four question panels in 2x2 grid. Top-left Q1 shows patient counts receiving GA with ranges and percentages (83% in 10-20). Top-right Q2 shows therapy percentages for Condition X patients (Product D 36.0%, Product B 26.4%, Product F 6.52%). Bottom-left Q2 shows same therapy data with identical layout. Bottom-right Q3 shows patient counts receiving GA for Condition Y with distribution (64% in 1 to 20, Mean 11.1, N 100).

Related tutorials: How to resize elements Edit "width" in JSON

Hide advanced tabs from end clients

Set internal tabs or specific elements to "EditorOnly". This removes the questions for View access users, and provides a cleaner view.  Users with Edit and Admin access can still see the elements. The element will appear with a lock symbol on the icon:

Navigation sidebar in collapsed state showing hierarchical project structure with section names and brief descriptions: Screener for Survey eligibility, Report, Banners, Section 1 for Current prescribing, Section 2 for Product profile, Section 3 for Future prescribing, Pricing for 'At what price wo...', Training (no description), Patient treatment, Verbatims, Quality checks, and Fields. Each section has a color-coded square icon.

Related tutorials: EditorOnly tabs Permission levels

Upload the survey document for reference

Another way to keep a project tidy is to upload the survey document in project data. The questionnaire provides the Protobi team with additional information like question text that is missing from survey data.

Project settings screen with left navigation menu (Open, Overview, Wiki pages, Data, Permissions, Elements, Pre-calculate, Custom CSS, Downloads, Log, History, Properties, Advanced, Help, To do) and main Data table panel showing document 'survey.docx'. Document details include Name field, Type showing 'document', Updated timestamp 'Wed Feb 10, 2021 12:30 pm', Description field, Upload area with instructions 'Drop a CSV or SAV data file here | or click to select', View button (blue), Admin section with Edit/Run and Delete buttons, and Download Docs section with Wiki button.

Download the PowerPoint version of these tips

Tips to design engaging Protobi projects.pptx