You have most likely participated in a marketing survey. Perhaps, you were asked to provide feedback on your satisfaction with a recent hotel stay, a service you used, a product you purchased, and so on. You were asked questions that had you convert your experience into numbers--questions, such as on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being terrible, and 7 being great, please rate the cleanliness of the room you stayed at or the attitude of the service representative or the sound quality on your new headset.

Companies such as Survey Monkey, Typeform, Survey Gizmo, and others, helped popularize the survey method. Improved survey authoring, publishing, collection, and analysis tools, combined with free or otherwise affordable subscription options, greatly reduced the need for professional researchers. Experience designers were early to identify the possibilities and incorporate surveys into the design process.

Of course, the direct consequence of surveys being so popular has resulted with us all being constantly bombarded with them. Survey "fatigue", leading people to ignore participation in surveys, has had some impact on overall response rates, but in general, if the request relates to a product or service people care about, they are more likely to respond.

With surveys, designers can form a measurable understanding of people's needs, attitudes, expectations, and concerns. They use the results to map out the gaps between the current version of a product and the expectations of the product's target audience. Understanding the gaps helps develop a holistic experience product strategy. Additional surveys during the user research and concepting phases focus on specific product features.