Create and launch a Mixed Method Study

Mixed Method Study in Marvin lets you combine survey questions, prototype testing, card sorting, rating, ranking, and AI-led follow-ups in a single session. Understand what customers want and then learn why, without having to schedule follow-up interviews.

You can screen for the target audience, set rules to skip questions or sections, set response limits, and include terms and conditions.

Tailor your study to the feedback you need.

Participants go through a Mixed Method Study like a survey. But you can gather feedback in much more detail than traditional surveys because participants can test prototypes, share their screen, record audio and video, card sort, choose designs and messaging they prefer, and rate and rank options. Soon, you will be able to ask matrix and maxdiff questions too.

With flexibility to combine objective, multiple choice questions with subjective, open-ended questions in one session, here are some of the studies you can run:

All Admins, Full seat users, and Collaborators have access to the Studies tab. They can create and edit all the studies.

Admins, Full seat users, and Collaborators can only view the results of a study if they have access to the project where responses are collected.

Head to the Studies tab from the left navigation menu to create new Mixed Method Studies and manage existing ones.

You can access all the studies created by your team, including Live Intercepts and AI-Moderated Interviews.

To quickly locate the study, you can search for it by keyword or apply filters to see published studies, and sort by date and name.

Against each study, you’ll see options to

Learn more about each action in our help center article.

Under Mixed Method Study, click Create.

Give your study a name. Use the naming conventions followed by your team so that everyone can easily find the study. Remember that it will be visible to all

Next, choose the project where you want to store and evaluate responses. You may also create a new project.

To launch a new study, you must add information for three sections:

While adding or editing information, you can move between the three sections using the top toolbar. At any stage, just click Setup, Questions, or Settings to add or revise details for that section.

In this section, you must add information about the study that will be shown to participants before they start the session. You can also control the design from this section. You can choose

As you make changes to the Setup, you’ll see the preview update as well. This is the first screen participants will see when they click the study link.

You can add questions, the introduction message, and the conclusion message in any order. For example, you may want to add all the questions and then write the introductory message. Rearrange the order of the questions. Just hold, drag and drop the question block to change the order.

Add a message you want participants to see before they start the study. Consider mentioning the objective of the study and how you will act on their feedback.

Once you’ve added the introduction message, began building your study.

Prototype:

Add an open-ended question to your study when you want to learn more about a topic, understand user experience, and want to discover unexpected insights. Participants can choose what they share and in how much detail. You decide whether participants add responses as text, video, screen share, or screen share with video.

Some open-ended questions you can ask:

Participants may share behavior, tasks, pain points, and motivations you didn’t expect.

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Image and link: You may add an image and ask questions about it. Or ask participants to open a link and tell you their thoughts about it.

Response type: Choose whether you want participants to add responses as

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Probe deeper: Toggle on if you want AI to ask follow-up questions. You direct how the AI should probe, so you can gather the exact insight you need. The AI’s follow-ups appear as text and it never speaks aloud.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants. We recommend you do this for each question to test and tweak the instructions and text before you launch.

You can even respond to the question to see how screen share and recording will work, but the responses to previews will not be saved in Marvin.

Let participants choose between a set of illustrations, creatives, design mock-ups, photographs, etc. Learn which ad, messaging, design concept, or UI resonates more with them so you can incorporate user preferences in new products and versions.

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Compare options: You can add up to 15 images for participants to compare before responding.

Click Add image to upload an image from your device. You can also edit the name of the option to be descriptive or be a number. This will be visible to participants. Choose option names that will be clear to track and follow during analysis.

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Conditions: You can ask participants different questions based on the option they select. Under If choices, select equal to (=) or not equal to (≠), the selected option, and the question you want to send them to. The question you want to redirect them to must appear in order after the current question, otherwise it will not be visible in the dropdown.

For example, If choices = option A, they can Jump to an open-ended question. If choices = option B, show them another image preference question.

Or If choice ≠ option A, you can show them the conclusion message and end the study.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants.

Consider adding an open-ended question after image preferences to learn why participants chose a specific option.

For single-choice questions, participants must choose from a fixed list of options, but they can give only one answer. For example,

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Choices: Add each option you want to show to participants in a separate field. Click + Add choice to increase the number of options. To allow participants to add a custom response, toggle on Allow “Other”.

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Conditions: You can ask participants different questions based on the option they select. Under If choices, select equal to (=) or not equal to (≠), the selected option(s), and the question to which you want to send them. The question you want to redirect them to must appear in order after the current question, otherwise it will not be visible in the dropdown. For example, you may have different questions for Marketing compared with Engineering.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants.

For multiple-choice questions, participants must choose from a fixed list of options. They are not restricted to one answer and can choose all the options that apply to them. For example, Which of these features have you heard of?

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Choices: Add each option you want to show to participants in a separate field. Click + Add choice to increase the number of options. To allow participants to add a custom response, toggle on Allow “Other”.

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Conditions: You can ask participants different questions based on the option they select. Under If choices, select equal to (=) or not equal to (≠), the selected option(s), and the question to which you want to send them. The question you want to redirect them to must appear in order after the current question, otherwise it will not be visible in the dropdown. For example, if participants selected more than two features, you can ask for feedback about the platform. If they selected just one option, you can limit feedback to that feature.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants.

Collect and track Net Promoter Scores in your Mixed Method Study. Select the NPS option to add a scale of 0 to 10 on which participants can rate you.

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Labels: You have flexibility to revise the labels to guide people what each end of the scale means. For example, 0 corresponds to Not likely to recommend while 10 corresponds to Extremely likely to recommend.

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Conditions: You can ask participants different questions based on the score they give you. Choose an If score rule of equal to, less than (>), or greater than (<), the score, and the question to which you want to redirect.

For example, if participants gave you a score of less than 5, you may want to ask how you can make their feedback better. Or, for participants who rated you higher than 8, you may want to ask for a review or share your referral link. You can do this by directing them to an open-ended question.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants.

With these questions, you can ask participants to arrange some options in their order of preference. For example, ask participants to rank features in the order in which they use them the most.

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Ranking choices: List all the options you want participants to see and arrange.

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Conditions: You can ask participants different questions based on the option they select. Under If choices, select equal to (=), not equal to (≠), less than (>), or greater than (<), the selected option(s), and the question to which you want to send them. The question you want to redirect them to must appear in order after the current question, otherwise it will not be visible in the dropdown.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants. They need to click an option, and drag it to the order of choice.

With this question type, you can record how participants rate a product or experience.

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Scale setup: Decide

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Conditions: You can ask participants different questions based on the option they select. Under If choices, select equal to (=), less than (>), or greater than (<), the selected option, and the question to which you want to send them. The question you want to redirect them to must appear in order after the current question, otherwise it will not be visible in the dropdown.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants. They need to click an option, and drag it to the order of choice.

Add a card sort question to your Mixed Method Study to learn how your participants categorize the information you present to them. You can use this to uncover patterns in how they think, organize information on your product, and more.

Question title: Type your actual question here. It will be shown in bold to participants.

Question description: Add any explanation, clarification, prompts, and details that you think participants may need. It will be visible to participants just below the question.

Cards: List all the information you want participants to sort into categories.

Categories: Create the groups into which participants should sort information. You may allow participants to create categories if they believe none of the cards fall under the groups you’ve created. To do this, toggle on Allow “Category creation”. Or leave it off to restrict participants to your categories.

Required question: If you toggle this on, participants cannot skip this question. Leave it off to make this an optional question.

Conditions: Ask participants questions based on how they categorize the cards. The question you want to redirect them to must appear in order after the current question, otherwise it will not be visible in the dropdown. For example, you expected Ask AI to fall under AI analysis, but you want to learn more from participants who categorized it as part of the Knowledge Hub.

Once you’ve added all the details to the question, click Preview in the top toolbar to see how it will appear to participants. They need to click an option, and drag it to the order of choice.

Have participants move through a prototype to learn what they think of a feature, design, concept or messaging. You can add a Figma prototype or have people complete a task on a public URL. You can add multiple tasks for them to complete, along with questions and instructions, while they are accessing the prototype or link. Probe deeper for each task and tell the AI when to probe and what to probe about.

Marvin’s AI never sees the prototype itself. It only has access to the instructions you add. Participants must complete prototype tasks on a desktop browser.

Link: If using a Figma prototype, the link must have "/proto" in the URL. It should look something like this:

https://www.figma.com/proto/XXXXX

If using a URL, please add a public link,

Content description: Add instructions or give participants context on what you expect them to do while moving through the prototype.

Response type for all tasks in the prototype:

Add tasks you want participants to complete while viewing the prototype, and ask them about the experience alongside. You can do this as a:

Text screen: Simple instruction

Perform a task: Capture interaction and feedback via recording

Open-ended: Free response as text or recording

Single choice: Participants choose one option

Multiple choice: Participants can choose multiple options

Ranking: Prioritize in order

Rating: Rate an experience