Personalisation Questions
A short set of setup questions whose answers visibly change what the user sees next.
The problem it solves
Products serve several distinct jobs and cannot show the right starting point without knowing which one applies. Guessing produces a generic experience that fits nobody.
The pattern is common and the honest version is rare. Most personalisation questions are market research wearing an onboarding costume. The user answers four questions, the answers go to a dashboard somewhere, and the next screen is identical for everyone.
There is one rule, and it is absolute: ask only what will change the next screen. If the answer does not branch anything, it is a survey, and putting a survey between a user and your product costs you users to learn something you could have learned later.
Survey in disguise
- What is your company size?
- How did you hear about us?
- What is your role?
- What are your goals with our product?
- Every answer leads to the same dashboard.
Question that branches
- Are you scheduling for yourself or for a team? Changes whether round robin exists in the interface.
- Asked later, in the profile, or inferred from the referrer.
- Designer or developer? Changes which panel opens by default.
- Skipped. Goals are inferred from the first three actions.
- Each answer changes the templates, the defaults and the first screen.
Two or three questions is the ceiling. Each one must be answerable in under three seconds by someone who has never used the product, which rules out questions phrased in your internal vocabulary. A user who has to think about what you mean by workspace type will guess, and a guessed answer branches them into the wrong product.
- Write the branch before you write the question. If you cannot describe what changes, cut the question.
- Use words from the user's world, not from your data model.
- Offer an escape on every question, either Skip or a Something else option that lands somewhere sensible.
- Make the effect visible on the very next screen so the user learns that answering was worth it.
- Let every answer be changed later from settings, because people pick wrong on day one.
Worked example
Halyard, a design tool
Halyard asked five questions including company size and how the user heard about them. None changed anything. They cut it to one: do you work mostly in interfaces, illustration or presentations. Each answer changes the default canvas size, the starting tool and the six templates shown. The question earns its place because the next screen visibly obeys it.
If you genuinely need attribution or firmographic data, collect it somewhere it does not stand between a user and the product. After first value, in the profile, or from the source that sent them.
When it fits
- Products serving several distinct jobs that need genuinely different starting configurations.
- Tools where a default can be set well from one answer, such as canvas size or currency.
- Template driven products where the answer narrows a large gallery to a handful.
- Cases where the branch is visible on the next screen, so answering feels rewarded.
When it backfires
- When the answers change nothing, which is a survey charging admission to the product.
- When questions use internal vocabulary, so users guess and get branched into the wrong experience.
- When there are more than three, at which point the flow reads as a form and people abandon or click through.
- When an answer cannot be changed later, locking someone into a choice they made before understanding the product.
Products using it
Duolingo
The placement question at signup changes which lessons appear first rather than only recording a level.
Notion
Signup has asked whether the workspace is for personal or team use, which changes the starting workspace setup.
Figma
Choosing the kind of work at signup shapes which file types and templates are offered on the first screen.
The psychology under it
The takeaway
Write the branch before the question, cap it at three, and make the next screen visibly obey the answer.
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