Acupoll. Making real-time online surveying fast and simple.
3D Pipelining + Native Application
3D Pipelining + Native Application
Substance Batch Render Studio enables teams to utilize 3D assets for on demand content creation.
Working with major brands like Sabra and Gillette, Acupoll provides services that are designed to discover, evaluate, or improve new products or marketing innovations quickly and help garner more success.
Scope: Strategy, UX/UI Design
Role: Lead designer: experience design, prototyping, base UI
Bring market research online, so researchers can capture qualitative and quantitative data from real users in live sessions, in real time.
Put control back in the hands of the people using the product. Faster setup lets them add features sooner, based on client and user feedback.
The product saved thousands and turned a profit within a year of launch. Survey volume grew by 30% annually, enough to eventually fund ongoing maintenance and new features.
From there we began to focus on the app's architecture, immediately identified that there were 4 main user roles for the applications users.
Follow the data: Acupoll had their own list of to-dos mainly around the idea of updates the respondents UI. The data however told a different story. A quick round of initial surveys revealed the real problem, the admin side of the app.
The internal team: Employees struggled with the setup time. Not enough of them felt comfortable using the software, and if they did were they still referencing a help guide. Also due to lack of use, there was a need to refresh there knowledge of the app since last using it.
Survey Exert: "The amount of time it takes to setup up a survey parallels the amount of time it takes to conduct the survey itself."
Outside users: Aside from an outdates interface that was a bit clunky to use, clients and the respondents who took the surveys were surprisingly satisfied with their view of the app.
Survey Exert: "I find it annoying that I need to scroll down to see all the answer options, but then am required to scroll back to the top to submit my answer"
From there we began to focus on the app's architecture, immediately identified that there were 4 main user roles for the applications users.
I structured the platform so each client can own multiple surveys. This simplifies client management, lets teams reuse surveys across sessions, and keeps data accessible whenever it’s needed later.
Alongside engineering, I added start times, so surveys can’t be accessed until they go live. Paired with custom URLs generated at creation, this makes unauthorized access very difficult.
I introduced a suite of starter templates and implemented survey duplication, cutting setup time dramatically. What once took hours now takes minutes.
I re-evaluated the available question types, added new ones, and introduced question templates. Teams can save their own questions and draw from a preset pool, which speeds up survey creation even further.
The base UI tokens, components, blocks, and some patterns are shared across this and the Variant Compiler.
I mapped user journeys, then used UX Pilot to quickly plan the application. This process allowed for rapid iteration giving us something to test early on and helped clarify assumptions with the Substance team.
Build Principle: AI speeds up the process and adds efficiency, but human judgement is still integral to every step.
I built this foundation so two complex tools would feel like one product. Every screen in both started from the same decisions, and engineering had proven parts to build from, so new features ship faster and stay consistent as the product grows.
Add assets, choose which variants to include, and select the scenes to render them in.
Initial planning and mapping out of the AI feature using Miro.
Initial planning and mapping out of the AI feature using Miro.
Looking forward
The end result was a product that has created it's own value and one that has driven a new stream of revenue and clients for Acupoll. While Acupoll was acquired in late 2025 the app still remains an integral part of it's new companies offering.
"From the onset Ricardo and his team were invested in the applications success and that the end result provided value back to our company". - Elizabeth Bingle, VP Operations