This guide walks you through creating your first study in Ballpark. By the end, you'll have a working study ready to share with participants.
Before you start
Make sure you have a Ballpark account. If you don't have one yet, sign up at ballparkhq.com. The free trial lets you run studies with up to credits for 10 responses at 10 minutes long, which is plenty for getting started.
Creating a new study
From your dashboard, click Create study in the top right corner.
Choose how you want to build your study:
Select Using AI to describe your research goal or paste in your questions and let Ballpark generate a study for you.
Select From scratch to build your study manually with full control.
Select Use a template to start from a pre-built research template.
Building with our AI Coach (recommended)
If you chose the AI option:
Select the type of study, like Survey, Live interview or Prototype test
Choose whether you would like Coach to formulate the questions or paste questions you've already written
Describe your research goal in plain language, like "I want to understand why users abandon our checkout flow."
After some clarifying questions, Coach will generate a draft
Edit, remove, or add questions until you're happy with the flow.
Click Create study
Building from scratch
If you chose to build manually:
Click Add step to insert your first question or task.
Choose from question and step types like multiple choice, rating scale, prototype task etc.
Type your question and configure any options (like answer choices or required responses).
Repeat for each question or step you want to include.
Drag steps to reorder them if needed.
Adding a welcome and thank you message
Every study needs a beginning and an end:
Click the Welcome step at the top of your study to customise your intro message.
Explain what participants will be doing and how long it takes.
Click the Exit step at the bottom to add a closing message.
You can include any next steps or compensation details here.
Previewing your study
Before sharing your study with real participants:
Click Preview in the top right corner.
Walk through the study as a participant would see it.
Check that questions make sense and the flow feels natural.
Return to edit mode to make any changes.
Note: You can also preview from a specific step instead of the whole study at the top-right of that step.
Launching your study
When your study is ready you're able to find participants from Ballpark's panels or your own participants.
Next steps
Once responses start coming in, Ballpark has a number of ways that you can analyse results.