In recent years there’s been a lot of attention in the research industry on the need to engage online participants to address declining response rates and the risk of poor quality data. The number of people available through online panels has plateaued, and we are seeing cooperation and completion rates plummet. Gamification as a method of transforming the survey experience is not a new idea.

This paper describes a unique experiment on the impact of visualisation and gamification on survey design for a low-engagement topic. Exploring why, when compelling evidence for the impact of more engaging surveys exists, the average survey has changed little in recent years.