Surveys are a vital part of testing and it’s something we can meet with some trepidation. I remember being at the Chicago Auto Show (big surprise, I know) a few years ago and being approached by folks at the Mitsubishi booth by a woman with a clipboard asking me questions. *snore* Sorry, but that’s what it felt like.

By contrast, the surveyors at the Toyota booth walked around with tablet PCs, asked me questions which then got transmitted into a database immediately. Then, after a few more questions, she emailed me PDF brochures of cars I wanted to check out. Translation: I was directly placed in their database and was marketed to immediately, starting that nurture stream before I had a chance to leave the venue.

So I saw this article and thought how cool would it be to have a handheld survey machine? Frogmetrics takes a Nokia n810 Internet Tablet, updates the firmware and designs an intuitive user interface arund a survey. I imagine they can add photos and video witout much difficulty because the Nokia operating system is so extensible (and, soon, open-source).